“Iraq as a political project is finished,” a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: “The parties have moved to plan B.” He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. “There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west,” he said.
…
“The government is all in the Green Zone like the previous one and they have left the streets to the terrorists,” said Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Iraqi politician. He said the situation would be made worse by the war in Lebanon because it would intensify the struggle between Iran and the US being staged in Iraq. The Iraqi crisis would now receive much reduced international attention.The switch of American and British media attention to Lebanon and away from the rapidly deteriorating situation in Baghdad is much to the political benefit of Mr Blair and Mr Bush.
“Maliki’s trip to Washington is all part of the US domestic agenda to put a good face on things for November,” a European diplomat in Baghdad was quoted as saying.
It’s all about the photo op. Prime Minister Maliki will be seen and photographed and mouthing the words that his non-Iraqi US “advisors” tell him to mouth.
FOX”News” spin on this story is that “senior US commanders are revising their strategy” on Iraq. The recent upswing in Iraqi civilian deaths, especially in Baghdad, is described as a “failed Baghdad security plan by the Iraqi government.”
That’s the one praised by Bush on his surprise visit to Iraq a few weeks back.
That’s the strategery – blame the Iraqis for failing to stand up. Because of course, how can they stand up if they’re all lying around being dead ‘n shit?
Meanwhile, if the Iraqis are serious about a pragmatic division of the country, that sets up the next 2 generations’ worth of Balkanized violence nicely, unless they get people to swap locations voluntarily (which will never happen, because there will always be mixed areas).
On a related side note, it’s been fascinating watching the slow break-up of super-national/multi-ethnic borders, many of the established post-WWI, some much older, over the last decade. From devolution in the UK to autonomy for Basques and Catalonia in Spain to the breakup of the USSR to the breakup of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia to what’s occurring in Iraq today.