[lit-ideas] Iraqi Civil War? (2)
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 13:45:35 -0700
Last night CSPAN2, Book Notes, had Nasr speaking about his new book, The
Shia Revival : http://www.cfr.org/publication/11179/shia_revival.html . He
has some impressive credentials: http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/people/nasr.asp
and http://www.cfr.org/bios/11622/
During the Q&A period someone asked him if Iraq was having a Civil War. He
said "no." He explained that initially, after Saddam's defeat, that the
Sunni's sought to regain power by so disrupting the American attempts to
help develop an Iraqi government that they would pull out and the Shias who
had never had power wouldn't be able to compete with them. More recently
the Shias have decided to pay back the Sunnis, mostly to show the Sunnis
that what they have been doing isn't going to work. The Shias are in power
and they are going to stay in power. The Sunnis can give up their pouting
and tantrums and join the government or mess around and be destroyed in a
big way. The latter would be a Civil War, but Iraq isn't to that stage yet.
Nasr thought the US was going to have difficulty pulling the Iraqi
government together such that it remains stable unless it brings in the
major players in the area. He describes Afghanistan as the model. We
invited all the neighboring players to join in a meeting in Europe and they
all showed up, even Iran. The Afghan government wasn't going to work unless
the major players supported it. And, according to Nasr, it is working very
well. While saying that the Iraqi government would become a success if we
were to do something like that with them, he admits that Iran will be
difficult to bring on board. They have a die-hard militant as president and
they think they have everything going their own way.
Lawrence
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