Iraq on the brink of another Civil War

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk Conflict in Kirkuk is 'main threat' to peace Iraq's relative calm is threatened by a festering Arab-Kurdish conflict over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other disputed territory that could explode into the worst sectarian war the country has suffered since the 2003 invasion, a new report says today. The report by the International Crisis Group said the territorial dispute was blocking political progress in Iraq, contributing to the delay in passing a law on sharing oil revenue and threatening to put off critical provincial elections. At the heart of the dispute is Kirkuk, home to 900,000 Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, which sits on one of the country's biggest oilfields. It lies outside the northern zone run by the Kurdistan Regional Government, but is run by Kurdish peshmerga fighters and the Kurdish intelligence service, the Asaish.

Whenever and wherever a despot has died and left a country in political limbo, that country has had problems. When Spain and Portugal went through their Nemesis in the 70's and 80's, they had stable European neighbours to call on. Of all the deaths that threatened stability, it was perhaps only Franco who had made provisions for his demise and reinstalled a King to give the population a focal point.
Tito made no provisions at all and the result was the worst form of Civil War imaginable, with, one has to remember, the defining of Ethnic Cleansing.
Those countries were safe for law abiding people. Armed policemen patrolled most streets and their form of rule and law prevailed. The soft minded liberals infested the emergent countries with wholly unattainable ideals. Ideals that do not even work in a stable democracy like Britain. Why does Liberalism not work? Because there are those out there who wish us harm and the Liberal Elite cannot conceive such a truth.