1 October 2007
Is the civil war in Iraq about religion? Surprisingly to me, it’s more about power and control of the country and it’s assets. All along I’ve been thinking of it as a religious war without thinking of the bigger aspects. The way Bush is going he is never going to get a sovereign, democratic nation in Iraq and if that is what he’s waiting for we are going to be there forever.
A poll conducted by the University of Maryland show that the majority of Iraqis (61 percent) want a stronger central government. Our government supports the separatists, who control Iraq’s Cabinet, not the nationalists, who want a unified Iraq. Separatists in Iraq want an Islamic government and nationalists want a technocratic, centralized government. So how is our support at this time going to lead to democracy? If we don’t understand why the Iraqis are fighting, we have no hope for a long-term peace that will allow Iraq to heal.
Local governments are bypassing the bureaucracy of the federal ministries in Baghdad because they have failed to spend billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenues to be used to rebuild roads, schools, hospitals and power plants. Independence exercised by provinces like Babil in local rebuilding shows the uselessness of the old Iraqi centralized government. The national ministries seem to be incapable of spending their budgets. In the meanwhile the Sunni and Shia continue to fight each other.
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