Balkanisation of Iraq Inevitable?

The Sunnis have been completely ousted from the Iraqi police and military. The biggest winner has been the Kurds whose peshmerga, its militant arm, forms a disproportionate large component of the new Iraqi security forces. The Kurds, like the Sunnis, consist of only 20% of the Iraqi population.

However, it is well known that the Americans (and Israelis behind-the-scene) favour the non-Arab Kurds. The US military authority has been directly fostering the growth, training and arming of the Kurdish peshmerga until that militant group now forms an inevitable large component of the new Iraqi military and police. The US aim has been to use the non-Arab and pro-US (and Israel) peshmerga against Sunni militants.

On the political front the majority Shiites have combined with the Kurds to again marginalise the Sunnis, allocating 12 top positions in the new government to the Kurds. Both Shiites and Kurds have (naturally) agreed to reject accusations of widespread fraud in the recent elections, where the so-called Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, controlled by Shiites and Kurds, were in a number of cases themselves guilty of fraud.

This can only mean one thing – the continuation of the current civil war (insurgency to the alien US) that has already started, as I have blogged in a much earlier posting.

The neighbouring Sunni states, particularly Saudi Arabia, will undoubtedly want the Iraqi Sunnis to re-acquire its influence and prevent a Shiite encroachment into hitherto Sunni dominated region. Whether the civil war manifests into a conventional model or as an extension of the current insurgency, the Arab Sunni States will be the source of aid to the Iraqi Sunni fighters, who will be supported by volunteer fighters from Sunni States like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, etc

The Kurds being non-Arabs are also viewed with great suspicions as it could be an Israeli Trojan horse. Besides, Turkey will not tolerate an independent Kurdistan. Obviously in any Balkanisation of Iraq, the regional interferences or input will be escalated. We may see Iran (for Shiites), Turkey (against Kurdistan), Israel (for Kurdistan) and the neighbouring Sunni nations providing military aid and launching pads for the insurgents.

And the USA will be placing its bets on several horses at the same time as it did during the Iraq-Iran War.

Related:
(1) al-Muqawama al-Sharifah - The Honorable Resistance
(2) Sunni Worries over Iraq
(3) Iraq - Civil War is inevitable
(4) Civil War in Iraq Begins
(5) American Recipe for Chaos
(6) Iraq's Constitutional Battle May Lead to Civil War