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Gen. Petraeus’ Charts: Sectarian Cleansing in Baghdad Has Been Key To Violence Drop |
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In his opening statement to today’s Senate Hearing, General Petraeus used a series of interesting charts to illustrate his view of the current status of Iraq in terms of violence and stability. I highly recommend that people read Petreaus’ full statement (as well as that of Carl Levin) and examine the charts. You can see them here(Note: pdf file). Slide #3 Is especially interesting as it illustrates the decline in ethno-sectarian violence in Baghdad From December 2006, April 2007, to September 2007 up to March 2008 as you can see.
While the increase in US troops has something to do with the decrease in Baghdad violence, this chart, if we can look below its intent to show the level of violence, also exhibits that the sectarian divisions have increased, which leads to less reason for the ethnic cleansing of the neighborhoods. This is basically what Nir Rosen and Michael Ware explained at the Center for American Progress explained, as I wrote in a post last week, that violence in Baghdad has decreased in large part due to the fact that the goal of the violence — dividing Baghdad up between the two major ethnic groups — has succeeded. I would like to see that neighborhood chart starting from April of 2003 and see what has happened every six months since then. My guess is that these maps would only emphasize the point.
This is truly sad in that Baghdad was, in fact, a city where the ethnic divisions were not prominent and the Shia and Sunni did live as neighbors peacefully. To be fair, the Shia did feel oppressed under Saddam in many ways, especially in terms of political power and in reaping the economic rewards of the riches from oil. But we still have to wonder whether there was a way to avoid what has happened to Baghdad even after the invasion.
So, what are we saying here? Fences make good neighbors ? or segregation works?
My God. What a fucking mess.
God, if segregation works is the lesson we take out of this…
There are a number of interesting things being done in research about this.
Basically, as I understand it, segregation is pretty inevitable if people express even the slightest preference for other people like them.
Only in a society of xenophiles or people with a measure of self-hatred can you see desegregation. (I like WC Field’s answer: “I’m not a racist, I hate all peoples equally.”)