are underway now. The Iraqi executive branch, controlled by the 5 Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish Separatist parties want to make sure their rivals won't win the next elections expected to take place before October. But unlike other pre-election preperations that include TV advertisements and sticking posters around the streets, the separatist Shiites in the Iraqi executive branch sends 50,000 troops to Basrah to kill their rivals (the nationalist Shiites).
what a great democracy Iraqis are enjoying!
This Bush-Maliki "preparation" started some hours after dick cheney pushed the executive branch to pass a the "provinces law" last week. The new law will decide whether Iraq will be partitioned into smaller sectarian regions, or will continue to be a united country with one central government.
Five Iraqi cities are under curfew and people from all around the country are participating in the nation-wide civil disobedience that was called for by al-sadr movement.
This Shiite-Shiite fight is an excellent example of how the Iraqi civil conflict is a political/economic one not sectarian/religious conflict as the US mainstream media and politicians has been repeating for years.
Saying that the Iraqi-Iraqi conflict is a war between "the Sunnis" and "the Shiites" doesn't make sense, and doesn't mean anything. Who are "the Sunnis"? the ones in the executive branch? or the armed resistance, or Alqaeda? Who are "the Shiites"? Al-Sadr? or the Supreme Council? or Allawi?
Saying that the Iraqi-Iraqi conflict is a war between "the Sunnis" and "the Shiites" is like someone saying the US civil war happened between "the whites" and "the blacks", or between "the protestants" and "the catholics".
Both the Iraqi and U.S. civil conflicts were/are caused by political/economic splits. the major difference though is that the US was not under a foreign occupation taking sides, but Iraq is.
Imagine if France or the U.K. where occupying the U.S. during the civil war, and where supporting the South against the Union or the other way around, this is how the Iraqi-Iraqi conflicts looks like today. A foreign occupier taking the side of a small minority of Sunnis and Shiites against the majority of Sunnis and Shiites.
The best way to help Iraqis deal with their problems is to leave them alone.
