Iraqi refugee population soars in recent fighting In a few weeks, number displaced by fighting doubles to about 60,000 Updated: 3:28 p.m. ET April 13, 2006 BAGHDAD - The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes to escape sectarian violence has doubled in less than a month, reflecting a sharp worsening of the security situation across the country. About 11,000 families, or roughly 60,000 people, have now been forced from their homes, compared with just over 30,000 in late March, a government official said on Thursday. As the White house suggests, the situation is becoming better and better everyday.
There are more than 20 million people in Iraq. This would be to consideration is if the people was 200.000, but still it hasn't be an issue because that could happen in whatever situation. They just need to be afraid, just like how somebody is afraid from the government in the westernworld for very few inargueable reasons.
I have a bit of a different view here. If the Iraqi's want to split Iraq into three smaller countries, I do not see this as a bad thing. This is very similar to what we saw in several ex-Soviet republics after the fall of the U.S.S.R. The U.S.S.R. contained several "artificial" nation states which were held together only by brute force. When the brutal force of the Soviet Army withered away, so did those nation states. We have a role in protecting Iraq from foreign terrorists (Al Qaeda and their ilk). We have a similar role in protecting Iraq from their predatory neighbors, such as Syria and Iran. We do not necessarily have the same role in a sectarian civil war to divide Iraq into three smaller countries. The best we can do is work to keep casualties down as the Iraqi's work out this conflict. It's a difficult question with no easy answers.
ferret, let's not be so shallow with our analysis. Oil is one thing of value. But let's say that one faction gets the majority of the oil and another faction gets all of the coastline and the only deep-water sea port. And where does the fresh water for the county come from? Real people have thousands of things which they value. But, of course, when (actually, if) they divide the country -- they divide it. It's not my worry. They are going to have to learn to get along without a brutal dictator making all of their decisions for them. Remember when Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were split up? Expect a lot of the same if this comes to pass in Iraq. Hopefully they won't be quite as bloodthirsty as we were in our own civil war.
ferret, please, let's not be so black and white in our analysis. There is no benefit to addressing complex issues with such simplistic thinking. There is a great difference between "violent" on the scale of the current social unrest in Iraq and "violent" on the scale of the American Civil War. Our population at the time of the American Civil War was approximately 34.3 million -- pretty similar to the current Iraqi population of approximately 26.8 million. There were over 550k soldiers killed in the American Civil War. The current situation in Iraq can become much more violent without ever approaching the violence of our own civil war.