Quote:
Originally Posted by Tribesman
Since there was one long running but stalled civil war what other possibility apart from civil war was there when the Pershmerga were enlisted as allies?
Add in the failed civil wars in the South and it was plain to see what would happen in a created vaccuum.
|
Not that clear to me. The Kurds had been in more or less open rebellion since the 60s and by 2003 had a de facto autonomy.
The sectarian conflict between Shias and Sunnis is a more recent development. It was pretty much unknown in 2003.
You look at the Middle East after 1945 and you see that for a long time it was shaped pretty much only by the Arab-Israel conflict and the Cold War.
Lebanon was in a civil war for most of the 70s and 80s. Both Shias and Sunnis had their own militias, but they were informal allies. The conflicts were: christians vs muslims, lebanese vs Syria, lebanese vs Israel so the muslim militias were usually fighting on the same side.
In Iraq, both Shias and Sunnis got along, the Baghdad neighborhoods were mixed and there was freqent intermarriages. During the Iran-Iraq War, most Iraqi Shias supported Iraq.
Even the Shia uprising in 1991 was perceived as an uprising against Saddam Hussein rather than a Shia-Sunni struggle.
Anyway, one thing for sure, it will be a long time before the US ever puts ground troops in the ME again. It gives a whole new meaning to the old dictum: "Dont start a land war in Asia".
