Iraq may be heading towards break up, historians say

"[Boston University historian David] Fromkin said, Iraq once looked as though it might hold together, under the late President Saddam Hussein's iron fist. But today, "if I had to bet, I would bet on disintegration" into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish entities.
[Phebe] Marr, of the U.S. Institute of Peace, has seen a lot of Iraqi history, having first gone there in the 1950s. . . . "I have problems myself seeing where it's going to end," she said. But "Iraq could tend to break up."
. . . Al-Hadithi, the Baghdad political analyst, sees only one chance, and it doesn't lie in new U.S. military strategies.
"What is needed," he said, "is drastic political changes and international involvement under the mandate of the United Nations. Otherwise the country is heading toward the bottom _ civil war and partition."

source
The Associated Press. Historians Offer Dismal Iraq Forecast. January 21, 2007.

posted: tuesday, january 23, 2007, 3:48 PM ET
update: tuesday, january 23, 2007, 8:25 PM ET

tags: iraq partition