Will Iraq erupt into Civil War in the next year?

Yeah, but there are only like 500 people living there, and their technology is a lot, lot, less than the countries mentioned above.

 

The Dakota comment was a joke.

A real split that went peacefully. Czechoslovakia splitting into The Czech Republic and Slovikia.

 

Yes, but I think a faceslap-stark reality of a civil war is what will get the horses to drink.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4754134.stm

 

Amid fears that Iraq may slide into civil war, political leaders said they had made progress in talks to curb the violence.

Sunni clerics and one of the main Shia militias also announced that they had agreed to work together to prevent further sectarian bloodshed.

Our correspondent says the government is hoping to capitalise on the lifted curfew by restarting the process towards forming a new coalition government.

There appears to be a real determination among political leaders, at least for now, to present a united front and prevent a slip to civil war, he says.


(emphasis from the above link.)

 

I think at the moment the only thing keeping Iraq from civil war is us. If we leave now I positives the Shiites will seek retribution on the Sunnis and the Kurds will declare their own state.

I have the feeling the current Iraqi government and some major leaders are playing nice in public because they are beholden to the US but underneath the mood of the Iraqis is probably a lot more negative and going downhill.

 

Sicne Iraq is a country created by the British, I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iraq#The_Republic

Iraq was carved out of the Ottoman Empire by the French and British as agreed in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. On 11 November 1920 it became a League of Nations mandate under British control with the name "State of Iraq".

The British government laid out the political and constitutional framework for Iraq's government. Britain imposed a Hāshimite monarchy on Iraq and defined the territorial limits of Iraq without taking into account the aspirations of the different ethnic and religious groups in the country, in particular those of the Kurds to the north. Britain had to put down a major revolt against its policies between 1920 and 1922. During the revolt Britain used gas and air attacks on Iraqi villagers [1].

In the Mandate period and beyond, the British supported the traditional, Sunni leadership (such as the tribal shaykhs) over the growing, urban-based nationalist movement. The Land Settlement Act gave the tribal shaykhs the right to register the communal tribal lands in their own name. The Tribal Disputes Regulations gave them judiciary rights, whereas the Peasants' Rights and Duties Act of 1933 severely reduced the tenants, forbidding them to leave the land unless all their debts to the landlord had been settled. The British resorted to military force when their interests were threatened, as in the 1941 Rashīd `Alī al-Gaylānī coup. This coup led to a British invasion of Iraq using forces from the British Indian Army and the Arab Legion from Jordan.

 

i could name a dozen other third world countries which were carved out by the brits that are still around.

what makes iraq that much different than present day pakistan (east pakistan was just too damn far geographically to work)?

 

Will it? It already has. And it's spreading to a regional conflict.

[excerpt] Among the Sunnis, "you have the [militant Islamic] Takfiris, the old Baathists, you have the people who feel they have been marginalized, you have Arab nationalists. If each of these groups is going to have its own militia, then God help us," said Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni legislator and the temporary speaker of the new Iraqi parliament.

"Unfortunately, the last election showed one thing: In order to win, you have to have a lot of money and you have to have your own militia," he said.

Amid the rising violence, many Iraqis feel they have little choice but to arm themselves and their neighbors.

"In Baghdad, for example, there is a perception that the police are not really there to protect them," said a Western official in the capital who would not speak on the record because of the political sensitivity of the topic. But "it is not an acceptable answer to bend to the presence of a militia to guarantee a particular neighborhood."

An escalation in sectarian violence could stir neighboring Sunni states, such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, to funnel arms or money into Iraq to support Sunnis there, some analysts fear. Sunni Arabs across the region have regarded the growing strength of Iraq's Shiites — not to mention the swelling influence of Iran, which is already heavily involved in backing Shiite groups — with great trepidation.

"This is a new stage — it's not a traditional, classical civil war, but it's a sort of civil war," said Ismael Zayer, editor of the Iraqi newspaper Al Sabah Al Jadid. "At the end of the day, if nobody will protect them and the government won't intervene, then they have to protect themselves. But if you ask me, I don't like it. I don't like Sunnis or Shiites to have arms like this."

....

"The situation is escalating to the worst," Mahmoud, the preacher, said. "That's why we're organizing ourselves."


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-militias1apr01,0,7923382.story

 

over the past 20 years the us with its policies has ruined iraq, a once prosperous country albeit it was dictatorship (supported by the us and the west for a long period of the past 20 years)....it has ruined iraq with the bombing and destruction of its civilian infrastructure, sanctions that only hurt the iraqi people, and this illegal invasion and occupation....shi'is need to take over in iraq....majority rule and the rest of the population needs to be pacified