'Iraqis will be left with a country that is not exactly at war, and not exactly at peace. It has improved in many ways since the 2007 troop “surge,” but it is still a shattered country marred by violence and political dysfunction, a land defined on sectarian lines whose future, for better or worse, is now in the hands of its people.
“It is the end for the Americans only,” Emad Risn, an Iraqi columnist, recently wrote in Assabah al-Jadeed, a government-financed newspaper. “Nobody knows if the war will end for Iraqis, too.” '
3 comments :
Let's be positive. If each Iraqi has enough positive energy to give to our country, we can do wonders.
FP in Jan 2010: "Saudi Arabia and post-Saddam Iraq have never gotten along -- the Saudis have never gotten over the fact that a Shiite government is now running the show in Baghdad. Via Nightwatch, I see that Al-Sharq al-Awsat is reporting that the religious aspect of this conflict is moving out into the open.
It all began when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki accused Saudi religious scholars of takfirism -- the habit of declaring fellow Muslims apostates willy-nilly, effectively excluding them from the Muslim community. In response, Sheikh Abdulaziz Aal al-Sheikh, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, fired back that Saudi scholars "do not have a takfirist approach," and that "such mistakes should not be made against a Muslim country that is well known for its goodness and moderation on all things."
It's fairly remarkable that, even as Iraq has achieved some stability over the past several years, its relationship with Saudi Arabia has remained so poor. Despite being, respectively, America's largest commitment and America's most important ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has yet to send an ambassador to Baghdad."
"The takfir mindset – the tendency to name someone a non-Muslim or kafir because of disagreement over theological or other points – has been a serious issue for Saudi Arabia. It’s also been one of the fundamental issues with extremist interpretations of Islam. Although outsiders have been warning about this for years and the Saudi government has condemned it, it continues."
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