Long read about the disintegration of the Middle East

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

This article is a fantastic read, but fair warning...it's long.

 

A snippet from the very end:

 

 

For 25 years, the K.R.G. has existed as a stable quasidemocracy, part of Iraq in name only. Perhaps the answer is to replicate that model for the rest of Iraq, to create a trifurcated nation rather than the currently bifurcated one. Give the Sunnis their own “Sunni Regional Government,” with all the accouterments the Kurds already enjoy: a head of state, internal borders, an autonomous military and civil government. Iraq could still exist on paper and a mechanism could be instituted to ensure that oil revenue is equitably divided between the three — and if it works in Iraq, perhaps this is a future solution for a Balkanized Libya or a disintegrated Syria.

Even proponents acknowledge that such separations would not be easy. What to do with the thoroughly “mixed” populations of cities like Baghdad or Aleppo? In Iraq, many tribes are divided into Shia and Sunni subgroups, and in Libya by geographic dispersions going back centuries. Do these people choose to go with tribe or sect or homeland? In fact, parallels in history suggest that such a course would be both wrenching and murderous — witness the postwar “de-Germanization” policy in Eastern Europe and the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent — but despite the misery and potential body count entailed in getting there, maybe this is the last, best option available to prevent the failed states of the Middle East from devolving into even more brutal slaughter.

The problem, though, is that once such subdividing begins, it’s hard to see where it would end. Just beneath the ethnic and religious divisions that the Iraq invasion and the Arab Spring tore open are those of tribe and clan and subclan — and in this respect, the Kurdistan Regional Government appears not so much a model but a warning.

Because of its two feuding tribes, the K.R.G. — a statelet the size of West Virginia — now has essentially two of everything: two leaders, two governments, two armies. For the moment this schism has been masked by the threat from ISIS and the desire to present a unified front to the outside world. But it remains an undercurrent to everything. It also goes a long way toward explaining the sad fate of the Yazidis. As Azar pointed out, any fool could see exactly where ISIS was headed in August 2014, but because the Yazidis existed outside the K.R.G. power structure, because they had no traditional alliance with either rival faction, they were left to largely fend for themselves. For all the excuses offered up by K.R.G. politicians and generals, the undeniable fact is that Sinjar simply wouldn’t have happened if its residents had been named Barzani or Talabani.

 

What a mess, but a great insight into the disaster that is the arc from libya through iraq:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-middle-east-arab-spring-fractured-lands.html?_r=0

[meazza]

Thx for posting this.

[ExiledInIllinois]

Yes. Thanks for posting this!

[GG]

One more.

[B-Man]

The New York Times Magazine has published an extensive feature on the Middle East’s decent into chaos that is sure to be in the running for all the awards.

Billed as “a story unlike any we have previously published,” the Times piece documents the lives of six individuals throughout the troubled region in order to paint a picture of “the catastrophe that has fractured the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq 13 years ago, leading to the rise of ISIS and the global refugee crisis.”

As with many popular narratives of the existing crisis in the Middle East, there is scant mention of the role President Obama and his policies toward the region might have played in exacerbating the chaos. “Obama” is mentioned just once in the entire 40,000-word piece, in a section about the deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, nearly a year after the United States-led (from behind) military air campaign concluded.

[IDBillzFan]

I tend to stay out of the foreign affairs and policy stuff because it ws never something I was able to easily absorb and understand to the extent that felt confident to discuss.

 

Today my Twitter timeline is filled with this photo of a child pulled from rubble in Aleppo.

 

 

 

The photo works for publicity because it's a brutally sad photo of very confused young boy.

 

The thing, though, was I simply wasn't fully aware of what is going on in Aleppo, and after a little bit of digging, I started to realize that by all accounts, what is happening there is just heart-wrenching. The videos and stories are maddening as al-Assad and (apparently) Putin, bomb the living snotphuck out of innocent people, including hospitals and clinics, according to this WAPO piece.

 

We all know our country has no interest in helping the people of Syria after the WH made a threat it refused to follow through on, so I can understand why this is happening unchecked. Little surprise that al-Assad and Putin don't fear the US.

 

But my question is, if we were going to get involved, what could we do? In spite of the left's dire need to just let these people fend for themselves, I have to believe if we see enough photos like this kid, we'll probably need to do something, no? Obviously we're not going in to Syria, but what could we do to help?

 

 

 

 

[Deranged Rhino]

But my question is, if we were going to get involved, what could we do? In spite of the left's dire need to just let these people fend for themselves, I have to believe if we see enough photos like this kid, we'll probably need to do something, no? Obviously we're not going in to Syria, but what could we do to help?

 

The US is very involved in Syria, funding, training, SpecOps on the ground.

 

Problem is some of the people we're funding there are ISIS supporters and fighters. That makes talking about the US activity there difficult as it undercuts the entire narrative on the War on ISIS.

Edited August 17, 2016 by Deranged Rhino