Shi'ite fury

[Pirilao]

Demonstrations of Shi'ite fury in the towns and cities of Iraq

 

Shi'ite fury has spilled over onto the streets of towns and cities throughout Iraq. The wave of anger is a reaction to a bomb attack on one of the Shi'ites most holy sites, the dome of the Al-Askari shrine at Samara. There have already been bloody reprisals. In Basra, gunmen in police uniform seized a dozen suspected Sunni insurgents from prison and took them away. Their bodies were found later lying in the street.

 

Efforts are already underway to stop the tension descending into full-scale civil war. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has summoned the leaders of all sides to emergency talks today. Meanwhile Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, made a rare appearance on television to emphasise the need for calm. However, dozens of Sunni mosques have been targeted by demonstrators and damaged.

 

The United Nations has also called on Iraqis to rally behind its non-sectarian government.

 

 

We go to have a civil war here?

[Orioni]

There already is a civil war. People just may have not noticed with all the abductions and bombings of American (and other) troops. Tensions between shiite and suni muslims, not only in Iraq, has existed for ages.

[Pirilao]

Yes big problem.

[Upper Strathyclyde]

Iraq is already messed up. The government is Sectarian, and when you have have Shi'ite Death squads, what do you expect the Sunni's to do?

[Pirilao]

In that zone we can wait all.

[Tagmatium Rules]

The fact is, Iraq is a wholey false entity. It was drawn up after the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish Empire by Britain and France in the 1900's in a dusty hotel in Bagdad. It disregarded any of the Arabic tribal and religious divisions which had existed for millenia before. If you look on the map, it's clearly a made-up nation. No country has straight lines for borders. It was held together first by the British and then by various dictatorial rulers, who had enough power to keep the various tribal factions from killing each other. Saddam was such a ruler.

 

Now he has fallen, the tribal and religious factions are able to start fighting to their hearts' content. Once the Coalition forces withdraw, it will decend into civil war, and then will either break-up along the ancient boundaries that marked the old tribal divisions, or a Saddam-like figure will arise and hold the nation intact through force of arms or fear once again.

[Orioni]

The fact is, Iraq is a wholey false entity. It was drawn up after the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish Empire by Britain and France in the 1900's in a dusty hotel in Bagdad. It disregarded any of the Arabic tribal and religious divisions which had existed for millenia before. If you look on the map, it's clearly a made-up nation. No country has straight lines for borders. It was held together first by the British and then by various dictatorial rulers, who had enough power to keep the various tribal factions from killing each other. Saddam was such a ruler.

Sounds a lot like Belgium. Well, except for Saddam then, but we've got Haken.

[Tamurin]

@Orioni:

 

Whoooaa, hard words...is it really that bad between the groups in Belgium??

 

@Topic:

 

It's more like Yugoslavia. As long as a powerful and ruthless dictator pushes the people and everyone is equally worthless, there is some kind of "peace". When this dictator leaves, the old differences break out again. It's in Iraq, it was/is still in Yugoslavia, Austria-Hungary, Russia...

 

You can't force different peoples to live together...

[Upper Strathyclyde]

I wouldn't say Russia. Its just that russians like the Status Quo and shun change.

[Tagmatium Rules]

But there is a lot going on down and around Georgia (the Caucasuses, I think?), with many mini-nations attempting to get independent. Hence the situation in Chechnya.

 

Other, more eastern and more recently Russian republics (those only absorbed into Russia in the past 100 years or so) are also looking at attempting to break away. I, personally, think that unless Putin turns out to be another Stalin, the Russian Federation will fragment.

[Upper Strathyclyde]

I've written some papers on Russia, and Putin is definitely a Communist in Disguise. He nationalises Oil Industries, and is outlawing local Elections and having the Kremlin appoint them Directly. Any newspaper that gets too serious in outspeakin against the gov't is dead either by the gov't or the Russian Mafia, hired by the Gov't. Putin is a bloody man already though the west just does not see it, because they are now worried. Russia's time is past. They are more worried about loose Nukes in Russia, and how they are going to stop the Terrorists from getting them. Same w/ North Korea's Black Market

[Orioni]

Things are getting pretty hot with around 400 deaths in a week time. If and when that civil war finally erupts, I hope the USA won't leave the area. Not when they're needed the most.

 

I feel the US government supports the Shiites and Kurds more then the Sunites (Saddam is a Suni), but with the situation in Iran (also a Shiite country) I have some doubts.

[Pirilao]

What for me he is strange and I?m not capable to understand, is that

this people alone think about war, killing, destroying.