Annie
Diamond Member
- Nov 22, 2003
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Probably the most concise and depressing thing I've seen on the discussion:
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/iraq/articles/20070110.aspx
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/iraq/articles/20070110.aspx
Dead Men Walking
January 10, 2007: Sunni Arab countries (everyone in the region but Iraq and Iran) are in an uproar over what is seen as an Iranian takeover of Iraq. The takeover actually occurred centuries ago, when the population became majority Shia Arab. But the Turkish empire delayed the inevitable, by submerging the Shia Arab majority in Basra province, in a Sunni sea called the Ottoman Empire. That empire disappeared in 1918, replaced by many new countries, or at least ones that had not been independent for hundreds of years. Britain created Iraq out of the majority Shia (and former Ottoman) province of Basra, the mixed, but largely Sunni, province of Baghdad, and the largely Kurd province of Mosul in the north. Sunni Arabs were only about twenty percent of the whole, but they were the wealthiest and best educated. The Sunni Arabs had run things for the Turks, had connections, and an attitude of superiority. The Sunni Arabs took over. The Sunni Arabs still have the education, connections and attitude. What they don't have is power, and some of them are desperate to get that back...