The New, Improved Iraq
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on February 9th, 2009 5:38 am by HL
The New, Improved Iraq
A new Iraq is emerging from five years of American invasion and occupation, and at first glance it looks distressingly like the old Iraq: Its people are still bound by the barbed wire of suspicion and hatred as much as by any sense of common purpose and history. But the new Iraq is clearly a nation in ways that the old Iraq — long considered by experts as an artificial creation that would fly apart under the pressure of outside intervention — was not. It did not fly apart and has in fact undergone significant, positive mutations as a result of a soon-to-subside U.S. presence. The provincial elections held a week ago were far from perfect, and personal relationships among the country’s Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds still range from malignant to murderous. In Anbar province, disgruntled Sunni sheiks didn’t ask for recounts or fire their political consultants. They unleashed threats of new mayhem unless they were immediately declared the winners. Old habits die hard in Iraq, too.
