Shi'ites to set up autonomous region

[bemildred]

NAJAF: About 600 leaders from central Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim provinces announced plans to begin setting up their own autonomous region, following a meeting yesterday in Najaf.

Representatives agreed to set up a security committee for their five provinces and a regional council to stimulate the economy of their neglected region.

Iraq's provisional constitution recognises the federal nature of Iraq, most of whose Kurdish population lives in three northern provinces with a large degree of autonomy.

Participants of the Najaf meeting underlined the importance of holding elections, and backed Shi'ite leaders' rejection to delay the vote.

Gulf Daily

[Mr_Spock]

1. Hehe - the United States of Iraq!

Three or four independent states sharing the oil revenue. Sound familiar?

[NYC]

2. Is Iraq breaking up?

That's what it sounds like to me. Will it be in 3 parts at the end?

[Gman]

3. I read this as

the long expected splitting up of Iraq has begun. Outright civil war is coming soon. That is as soon as they expel the American invaders.

[Mr_Spock]

4. Those evil American invaders need to be expelled at once.

I just wish some freeper moron would read this subject title so I could watch his tiny little brain explode out his ear holes!

[Fenris]

5. Hooray! Now that's power to the people!

I say let them do it. To each country its own destiny.

[sandnsea]

6. Good

They should have done this from the beginning. Democracy is built from the people upwards, always has been, always will be. Hopefully they'll be able to do well, then elect representatives to a national council of some sort.

[autorank]

7. The beginning of the end. Great bemildred

CORPORATE AMERICA controls the media and we get MANUFACTURED NEWS.
CORPORATE AMERICA now controls the voting machines and we get MANUFACTURED ELECTIONS.

[bemildred]

8. Does seem to indicate a power vacuum.

And we're supposed to be cozy with the Shiia now, so I
don't think we can just blow them all away ...

[autorank]

9. The Shia have vivid memories of *I telling them to revolt and

then abandoning them to be slaughtered by Hussein. I feel just awful for our guys/gals over there. This is simply impossible.

[bemildred]

10. Well, I do wish we could bring them home now.

This is all political anyway, there is no "threat".

[Erika]

11. Yeah - What are our troops fighting for exactly?

Other than corporate globalists.

[bhikkhu]

12. Good for them

Freedom loving peoples, taking the initiative for peaceful self-government on their own terms. I expected many of them to be dead soon, sad to say.

[GainesT1958]

13. It's about time Iraq's ethnic groups...

Started behaving in their true colors: three seperate, distinct, and eventually independent republics, one authoritarian Sunni-dominated; one a Shi'ite theocracy based on Iran's model, and the other, Kurdistan.

No "election" in January will prevent this really pre-ordained devolution, because Iraq was the Yugoslavia of the Middle East anyway, just waiting for Saddam to be toppled to "Balkanize" into political entities that represent each of its populations.

As soon as we're either out, or mostly out, of Iraq, this process will begin in earnest, and it's going to be a bloody one, with so many of the three groups living in each other's areas.

It's going to happen, folks; as Poppy once told us--much to his later disdain--"Watch and learn!"

B-)