← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Leveller
Thread ID: 4328 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-01-05
2003-01-05 10:23 | User Profile
An example of the kind of bitter ethnic squabbles that will have to be dealt with when when Iraq is conquered
Iraq's 'Bosnians' The Turkomans as ethnic scapegoats.
[url=http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110002862]http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110002862[/url]
BY MELIK KAYLAN Sunday, January 5, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
Just as Yugoslavia's collapse showed up the makeshift borders of socialism, so Iraq's demise is teaching us how precariously the old British Empire foisted together much of the modern Middle East.
The recent theater of amity among Iraq's opposition factions at a London conference should not beguile anyone. Iraq's interethnic rivalry smolders daily hotter, especially in the northern areas around the strategic oil towns of Kirkuk and Mosul. That area is facing a potential Balkan-style upheaval of pent-up forces, with the most moderate secular Muslim group, the Iraqi Turkomans, cast in the role of the local Bosnians.
The Iraqi Turkomans complain that their share of the population is being deliberately underrepresented. They and their neighbors the Christian Assyrians are angry that their urban districts--still under Saddam Hussein's control--are being pre-emptively gerrymandered by the Kurdish factions to carve out a greater Iraqi Kurdistan in a future grab for oil terrain.
[url=http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110002862]more...[/url]