Iraq is the land once known as Mesopotamia – the land of the two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. For years it was ruled by the cruel Saddam Hussein, who oddly enough looked like his hero Stalin. In 2003 American forces landed in Iraq and overthrew him, but now the country is ever at the edge of civil war.
Hundreds are killed every week in the almost senseless violence.
America is trying to make Iraq into a democracy, hoping that will make it a friendly country. But Iraq has never been a working democracy. And it has not been for want of trying: The British tried it in the 1920s but failed. In the end the British were driven out by the endless guerrilla fighting.
Iraq is divided by religion and language: most are Arabs but some are Kurds; most are Shia Muslims, but some are Sunni Muslims. About three in five are Shia Arabs.
But for all that, the Americans and most Iraqis do not want to see the country break apart: it will only make it weaker in the face of Iran, which fought a long and terrible war against Iraq in the 1980s.
No surprise that the Shia Arabs by and large favour democracy. The Sunni Arabs, who ran the country under Saddam Hussein, would lose power under a democracy. So most of the fighting has come from them. It is directed as much against the Americans (a foreign power) as against the government and the Shiites.
A small part of the fighting comes from Al Qaeda. It was led by al-Zarqawi till he was killed by the Americans in 2006. He was a Sunni Arab, but not Iraqi. His purpose was not to save Iraq, but to start a great holy war against both the West and, especially, the Shiites. The same Shiites who, by the way, handed the country over to the Mongols in the 1200s. (The Arabs have a much longer memory than the Americans, who are new in history).
Al-Zarqawi did not succeed but his men fight on.
Al Qaeda had hoped to break the back of American power in Afghanistan, but maybe Iraq will do just as well.
The American forces are too small to keep the all of Iraq at peace all at the same time. It is like a bedsheet that is too short.
To put in a larger force, the American government would have to draft men into the military. The war already divides the American public, a draft would make it far worse. It could well bring a president to power who would pull America out of Iraq altogether.
But America cannot simply let Iraq fall apart, as it did with Somalia: it is too close to too much oil. It needs a friendly country in the Persian Gulf that is strong enough to stand up to Iran.
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