Mideast’s worst case: A ‘big war’ pitting Shia Muslims against Sunni
McClatchy NewspapersJune 10, 2015
ISTANBUL — The Middle East crisis that peaked one year ago Wednesday when the Islamic State captured Mosul may result in the breakup of Iraq and an indefinite continuation of a war in Syria that’s already out of control, analysts say.
Yet still worse things could happen.
“The conditions are very much like 1914,” says Michael Stephens of the Royal United Service Institute in London. “All it will take is one little spark, and Iran and Saudi Arabia will go at each other, believing they are fighting a defensive war.”
Hiwa Osman, an Iraqi Kurdish commentator, was even more blunt: “The whole region is braced for the big war, the war that has not yet happened, the Shiite-Sunni war.”
U.S. and foreign experts say the U.S still has not developed a strategy for dealing with the Sunni extremists who now hold more territory Iraq and Syria than one year ago. President Barack Obama on Monday acknowledged that the U.S. strategy in Iraq was a work in progress. “We don’t have, yet, a complete strategy, because it requires commitments on the part of Iraqis as well,” Obama said at the close of the G-7 summit in Germany. “The details are not worked out.”
The experts criticize America’s detachment from the four wars now under way in the region. And they say the Obama administration is banking on Iran to stabilize the region, a very dubious course.
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The "breakup" of Iraq and Syria was bound to happen at some point, as the boundaries on the map in the Middle East go back to Western colonialism, and are not aligned with cultural demographics. It's why we've seen sectarian violence in Iraq previously, as you have a "country" created in boundaries that contain Sunni, Shia and Kurds as majority players, none who wish to play nice with the other.
ReplyDeleteWow. Truly impacting to see how some people have to destroy others to make there point. This will solve nothing. This will bring more problems and deaths that are unnecessary because in the end. No side will be permanently destroyed.
ReplyDeleteWow. Truly impacting to see how some people have to destroy others to make there point. This will solve nothing. This will bring more problems and deaths that are unnecessary because in the end. No side will be permanently destroyed.
ReplyDelete