Iraq 3--way-split WSJ article

[justchecking123]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/iraq-inches-toward-3-way-split-1427359508

[staunch]

i couldn't read the article as i am not a subscriber, but of all 20 articles for this author on his biography page, every one of the titles and opening paragraphs was doom and gloom.  I know he is a columnist for the WSJ and senior editor, but it seems he has found his niche of writing "the sky is falling" in everything he writes.

Edited March 26, 2015 by staunch

[tlars brother]

If the article states that Iraq is about to split into three pieces--he needs to resign. He has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.  The US will never allow that to happen,,,,at least for several years.  If little ole me knows that, these damned fools writing these articles should.

[justchecking123]

Sorry, here's the text. I'm a subscriber

.

Iraq Inches Toward 3-Way Split

Iraq’s growing number of internal refugees highlight the difficulties of putting country back together again

Iraqi policemen secure a checkpoint at Al-Alam, a town north of Tikrit, on March 22. ENLARGE

Iraqi policemen secure a checkpoint at Al-Alam, a town north of Tikrit, on March 22. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

March 26, 2015 4:45 a.m. ET

58 COMMENTS

KARBALA, Iraq—Jassem Abbas spent the past several months sleeping on the floor of a mosque that has become a scabies-infested refugee camp. But he won’t return to his once-comfortable home in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul even if it is liberated from Islamic State one day.

His reasons highlight just how permanent Iraq’s divisions have become—and how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to put the country back together again.

After more than a decade of internecine slaughter that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion, more and more Iraqis like Mr. Abbas are concluding that living together is no longer possible—and that the country’s three-way partition, formal or informal, may be the only viable option left.

Last summer, Mr. Abbas, a Shiite, escaped to areas protected by Kurdish militias as Islamic State rapidly overran predominantly Sunni Mosul and gave the remaining Shiites a choice between conversion or death. A few weeks later, as the Kurds fled another Islamic State offensive, Mr. Abbas and more than a hundred neighbors and relatives ran for their lives again, finally settling among fellow Shiites in the holy city of Karbala.

“There will always be threats and killings directed at us in Mosul, as there had been even before Islamic State took over,” said Mr. Abbas, 45. “My neighbors helped Islamic State in killing us—and even those who did not help did nothing to oppose it, so they are its partners. How can we ever live with them together again?”

The despair felt by Mr. Abbas is mirrored by many members of Iraq’s Sunni minority who have had to flee their homes, too. They’re part of Iraq’s burgeoning population of internal refugees, which now numbers more than 2.5 million, five times the number last June, according to United Nations statistics.

“Shiite militias came to our town with the excuse of fighting Islamic State, but what they are really trying to do is to cause demographic change,” said Sunni politician Ahmed al-Hashmawi, who, like most Sunni residents, fled the town of Yathrib north of Baghdad in November. He now shares a small house in a Sunni area of the capital with 81 relatives.

Abdelqahar al-Samarrai, a lawmaker from Samarra, the biggest Sunni Arab city outside Islamic State’s rule, said he hears daily of kidnappings and executions by the Shiite militias that effectively govern his area. Asked whether his constituents would prefer Islamic State, Mr. Samarrai answered: “Anyone is better than the hell they are enduring now.”

For the past weeks, these Shiite militias have tried to push from Samarra into the Sunni city of Tikrit—an offensive that stalled because of fierce resistance and now involves U.S. airstrikes.

With the front lines moving slowly since last summer’s Islamic State blitz, the country’s three-way division is becoming a fact of life.

The Kurdistan Regional Government, based in the northern city of Erbil, already runs an independent state in everything but name, controlling its own borders and limiting access by Arab Iraqis, Sunni and Shiite. The Islamic State-ruled Sunni Arab belt no longer even maintains telephone links with the rest of the country, and travel between those areas of Iraq and Baghdad has become nearly impossible.

In the capital, the central government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is presiding over an overwhelmingly Shiite rump where militias often funded by Iran and answering to Shiite religious parties outmatch the U.S.-built national army that collapsed in the face of Islamic State advances.

And in all three parts of the country, there is a growing sense that living together is no longer possible, or even desirable.

“There is now a public acceptance of the idea of separation, and this acceptance stems from the facts on the ground,” said Zuheir al-Sharba, deputy secretary-general of the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam’s main pilgrimage centers. “The facts on the ground are clear. Before 2003, I as an Arab from Najaf could go to Erbil and buy a house and live there. It is no longer permitted to me. And now it is also not possible for me in Mosul, either.”

Openly sectarian policies by former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who ruled in 2006-2014, have contributed to this split, and to the rise of Islamic State, by alienating many Sunni Arabs and Kurds. The new prime minister, Mr. Abadi, has adopted a more embracing tone, promising national reconciliation and a more inclusive government. He struck a deal on sharing oil revenues with the Kurds and appointed a Sunni as minister of defense. His outreach, however, may be too little too late.

“Iraq is passing through a final stage now. Either it will rectify itself or, God forbid, it will be facing a huge catastrophe,” Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi, a nonsectarian politician and former prime minister, said in an interview “This is the last mile for Iraq.”

While non-Sunni minorities have either fled or been slaughtered in Islamic State territory, large Sunni Arab communities remain outside its confines, most notably in Baghdad. The Kurds and the central government also have a dispute over the northern city of Kirkuk and the adjoining oil fields.

Hunain Alqaddo, a lawmaker from the ruling Shiite bloc, represents the Shobak ethnic minority of the Mosul area. Much of that group is now living as refugees in government-held cities and he warned that any moves to hasten the breakup of Iraq would lead to unimaginable tragedies.

“If we decided to set up independent states, we would be engulfed in fighting over borders. How are we going to tackle the issue of water? What about gas and oil? They could fight for centuries over these issues,” Mr. Alqaddo said.

Yet, this is exactly what may happen, he concedes.

“The advances of Islamic State have brought all Iraqi parties together, but this is temporary. It will not last,” he said. “The main problem in Iraq is that we have very little in common.

[sandfly]

THANKS

[SocalDinar]

Hate to see this happen. But I guess it's possible