some notes prompted by a post by +Yonatan Zunger who made valuable comments on the rapid progress of the ISIS 'army' into Iraq and the state of the Middle-East.
The ISIS rebels are strong in Syria and are now rapidly spreading over north/east Iraq. I doubt this Sunnite army will attack Baghdad as it's not only an important asset, but most off all the proverbial line in the sand between the two religions in Iraq: the Sunnites and the Shiite.
The Shiite dominated government will defend Baghdad fiercely and will probably get help from the US. Going even further south is basically suicide as the Shiites are the vast majority there.
This is a conflict over religion as well as over favoritism. The Iraqi 'state' is discriminating the shiites hence the local support in the northern regions of Iraq for ISIS.
By going after the Sadam regime the West disturbed a fragile balance. Going forward It has to be sorted out and I can't see an Iraq state survive.
A division along the Shiiti / Sunni lines would make more sense and a neutral independent Kurdistan would be welcome as it would separate the shiites in Syria from their fellows in Iraq
The obstacle to solve some of these conflicts is the Western insistence on territorial integrity while destabilizing the powers that be.
Somehow they (we) want the cake and eat it too. You can't get rid of strong leaders (dictators so you wish) if you want to keep the current nation states.
This is true for Libya (a failed state after bombing Gaddafi out of power), Iraq, Lebanon, Ethopia, Israel (half a century of occupation is not sustainable), heck even Egypt is a difficult combination in itself although its predominantly Sunni.
The difference between the Nile delta and the northern part in income, education and values is huge. Citizens of East Libya would probably feel more connected with their richer neighbors in upper Egypt than with the Tripoli gangs.
The only countries which are sustainable as nation states are homogenous countries like Tunisia (which is doing well after getting rid of its dictator)., Iran, Jordan, SA, etc.
As for the future division line: yes, sustainable would be a greater Iran which would incorporate parts of Iraq, a religiously neutral Kurdistan, a smaller Iraq (but if needs to be merged with parts of Syria) which still controls Basra.
Ah, well it won't happen as for all kinds of stupid reasons Western diplomats favor the old territorial integrity while supporting the rebels that fight the existing unifying leadership. #Politics
Mosul has fallen; Baghdad is in ISIS’ sights
For those who haven’t been following the details of the war in Syria, which has spread out more broadly into… – Yonatan Zunger: Google+
Baghdad won't be getting any help from this US.
Which US? +Billy Harvey
In the US political climate that presently exists.
The threats in northern Iraq are not new and have been festering unattended for several years. The US has expressed minimal interest in stabilizing Iraq or anything else in the Mideast – the commitment isn't there from the top down and are more akin to hand waving and pretending everything will be alright if we just sit at home – and the efforts necessary to aid Baghdad are not an overnight affair, in neither a political sense, a statecraft sense, nor a military sense.
True +Billy Harvey even the promised intervention in Syria never materialized. Maybe the US state department is learning its lessons.
Err US just said they are planning air intervention. Tho im sorry but "Western" is not the right word here. Countries been spit on cause they didnt join this "war on terrorism"…
The mess been created and it was to be expected to happen…
But no i dont think the whole West needs to jump in this now.
Iraq is no longer the critical path in international security, Pakistan is.
If the Pakistani branch of the Taliban actually seizes control of the Pakistan government, they get a huge booty in the form of respectable nuclear Arsenal that Pakistan built in fear of it's Indian Neighbors' arsenal.
Those missiles don't directly threaten US soil, and perhaps not even the E.U.'s, but they can deliver crushing blows to our combined interconnected economies, and their fallout clouds could devastate agriculture around the globe.
The Taliban has made significant gains in recent months, and are trending toward a conceivable victory. The don't have to actually overthrow the government, they only have to convince enough Pakistanis that they could overthrow it before allegiances would hit critical mass and flash over (and spill over the international boundaries).
They would represent the first nuclear power in history that was not motivated by monetary, security, political or other practical concerns, but rather primarily philosophical ones.
This would go way beyond anyone's concerns about Islamist states being nuclear (whether those concerns are real or imagined); because current legitimate Islamic governments/states have very practical considerations (food, commerce, water, security, etc.), which exert some external influence or control. A purely philosophically based government might very well eschew those "worldly" needs in favor of making some greater point or achieving some ends that surpass the mortal or temporal. In which case, they would be the only country in history willing to launch purely for the sake of principle and with little regard for conventional mortal consequences.
In this case, the organization has a brother organization in Afghanistan that is also gaining victories. Combined, the two would have both the means and a significant motive to eschew conventional foreign policy approaches and practices, and they'd be able to back it up. Add to that the need for the kind of hard currency that they need (and which Al Qaeda certainly has), and you have a recipe that puts nuclear weapons in the hands of a group that Hates Israel and the NATO countries with a suicidal passion. That those warheads are on missile based delivery platforms means they wouldn't need to sneak them into the US/EU. In fact, they wouldn't even need to hit the US/EU; they could go after our weaker allies doing what they do best: terrorism with just the threat of doing it.
The biggest threat will be that Islam doesn't immediately recognize that the #1 target of these weapons would ultimately have to be Islamic countries and peoples. These are not ICBMs, after all, they're regional, tactical weapons (in other words, other than Israel and India, what could they actually hit that isn't predominantly Muslim?).
The second biggest threat: that they will recognize it. In which case in-fighting amongst Factions could go well beyond the carnage of the Shii and Sunni conflicts, because then those weapons become domestic weapons, right into the heart of the world's most important oil supply. And in what way would the west retaliate if a nuke makes it to Tel Aviv? What's more: Indonesia is the single largest Islamic State, and it has the power and geo-location to be quite problematic in the Pacific Rim. Further, it, too, is factionalized, except it has hundreds of viable islands on which to store and/or launch those weapons that bring the US Pacific Fleet (and its installations) within its target range. Add in a pact with Iran to secure the Persian Nuclear program and we lose the B2 option leverage. And then there's the North Korean angle…
Either way, the West would find itself between a very nasty rock and a very scary hard place: an infidel pre-emptive first strike against someone's holy land (more or less). India's making that pre-emptive strike only delays the former conundrum, it won't replace it.
If this scenario occurs, life on this little planet is going to go very sideways, very quickly, and for thousands of years (not that the sky is falling or anything).
Yeah, I think that's a whole lot scarier than what's happening in Iraq. It's time to cut Iraq and Afghanistan loose; they need to either sink or swim on their own now, or be willing to be annexed (not). The west is just no longer in a position to effect any meaningful change, nor can we afford to continue making expensive stands on principle.
But that's just my overdone, long-winded, uneducated opinion, for what it's worth.
Not the kind of post which gets popular on G+, but meanwhile my predictions were not too bad. The US is willing to help Iraq (but no boots on the ground of course) and Baghdad seems to be out reach for Isis according to analysts today.