Should the current civil conflict in Iraq have come as a surprise? I don't think so. The tensions between the Sunnis and the Shiites have been playing out in the Arab world for a long time. Saddam Hussein felt like the Kurds were in the way and tried to exterminate them, so naturally some bad feelings persisted there.
Recent events in our world should have prepared us to expect some strife if not outright civil war. We have had several notable examples of suppressed conflict bubbling to the surface when the iron fist of oppression was removed. The totalitarian government was the glue keeping the whole together.
Take the former Soviet Union, for example. When the communist government collapsed, the different republics started asserting their own feelings of nationalism. Ethnic tensions that had been glossed over reasserted themselves. The initial attempts to hang together as a loose federation collapsed.
The same thing happened in Czechoslovakia. It also happened in Yugoslavia. Iraq was a similarly divided country held together by an oppressive dictator. When that dictator was removed, why should we expect a result any different from other countries whose ethnic conflicts had been suppressed rather than resolved.
The ethnic conflict genie has been let out of the bottle. There is no putting it back in.
That's my two cents.
Wade Houston
September 6, 2007
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