AP: Analysts Warn of Effects of Iraq Civil War

[Hissyspit]

http://start.earthlink.net/article/int?guid=20051026/435eff40_3ca6_1552620051026-1667281046

Analysts Warn of Effects of Iraq Civil War

October 26, 2005 7:21 AM EDT
AMMAN, Jordan - Any all-out civil war in Iraq could shake the political foundations of places beyond that stricken land, sending streams of refugees across Iraqi borders, tempting neighbors to intervene, and renewing the half-buried old conflict of Sunni and Shiite in the Muslim world, Middle East analysts say.

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This "really changes the power structure in the Middle East, not only in Iraq, but in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia," said longtime U.S. Mideast scholar William R. Polk, referring to two other Arab lands with fragile religious divides.

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Turkey and Iran top that list. The Turks might be tempted to intervene in Iraq's north to keep its autonomous Kurds from supporting Turkey's own Kurdish separatists. Shiite Iran might act - with arms, intelligence, even "volunteers" - to ensure victory by a friendly Iraqi Shiite leadership in any civil war, analysts say.
"The Turks would be the most worried and have the most capacity" - a strong military - "to do something about it," said Polk.

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Egyptian analyst Mohamed el-Sayed Said worries about a broader struggle between Islam's two branches - the Sunnis, long dominant in the Arab world, and the schismatic, often oppressed Shiites, historically viewed as "subversives."

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[ClintonTyree]

1. "I'm a uniter,not a divider".

Anyone remember who spoke those words? :shrug: