disturbing the comfortable

And a telling post from the Independent about the on-going disaster in Iraq. In June, 3,149 civilians were killed in what's essentially religious warfare; there will be many more this month. The country is disintegrating—as did Yugoslavia after Tito’s death. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Iraq vanishing off the map, since it was a construct of the winners in World War One, with the major powers trying to protect their interests in the area. But it’s too damn bad there can’t be another way for the country to split up.

Sectarian break-up of Iraq is now inevitable, admit officials
By Patrick Cockburn in Amman
Published: 24 July 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1193108.ece

The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, meets Tony Blair in London today as violence in Iraq reaches a new crescendo and senior Iraqi officials say the break up of the country is inevitable.

A car bomb in a market in the Shia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad yesterday killed 34 people and wounded a further 60 and was followed by a second bomb in the same area two hours later that left a further eight dead. Another car bomb outside a court house in Kirkuk killed a further 20 and injured 70 people.

"Iraq as a political project is finished," a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: "The parties have moved to plan B." He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west," he said.

In the past two weeks, at a time when Lebanon has dominated the international news, the sectarian civil war in central Iraq has taken a decisive turn for the worse. There have been regular tit-for-tat massacres and the death toll for July is likely to far exceed the 3,149 civilians killed in June.

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