Seeing all of the bombing and violence in Iraq is depressing. It is just awful. The news portrays Iraqi’s as the victims of this, but there is more to it in my opinion. With all of these militants and suicide bombers around someone or some group must be supporting them. That is, the bombs are being built somewhere and the bomber and militants are someone’s neighbor. It is hard to imagine that those local neighbors are not aware of what is going on. If they indeed know this, then don’t they report the insurgents to the authorities who could take action? I have no idea if this is being done, but the news certainly makes it sound like is not. If this is not being done, then why? One obvious answer is fear though one could imagine anonymously providing the tip. I propose another possibility below.
Another possible reason why the populace may be less active is that religious groups dislike each other so much that they are unwilling to take action against terrorists attacking the other religions. Thus Sunnis may not take action against people in their midst attacking Shiites because they either want revenge or perhaps they dislike the Shiites. If this is the case, it is a major problem and will likely prevent any success in a unified government. If these people’s identity with their religion is so much and hate the others then how can they identity with a state that represents all religions?
My final point is that if indeed the scenario above is correct then perhaps the solution is to split Iraq into three different countries based on religion/ethnicity. Thus you would have a Kurdish country, a Shiite Country and Sunni Country. Each could have their own independence and govern themselves as they wish. One possible sticking point is oil revenues, and so there would need to be some kind of split to ensure that the revenues are spread amount the different groups.
Of course, I am neither a politician nor a Mideast expert, and so I could be way off base, but it just seems to me that this might be a possible solution. It has one that I have never heard mentioned by any politician and I wonder why.