Reply #12: A somewhat false stability [View All]

[Babel_17]

People live in armed neighborhoods and avoid strangers. The collapsed economy has cut down on interaction. The most vulnerable targets, in their millions, have fled and are refugees. The less mobile are already dead.

Efforts to restore a more normal state to Baghdad will paradoxically, and perversely, provide a fertile ground for more ethnic violence.

The battle in Iraq for us is to get the sides to agree to live together and to end the cycle of violence. It's a top to bottom solution which we seem to be failing at.