Mexico City, Mexico - Here's to New Year's pessimism. My bet is this: by the Summer Olympics of 2016, there will be no Iraqi flag moving down the track.
In ten years time, the Iraq we know today will no longer exist. Like Yugoslavia, Iraq is a fictional country, a flawed federation that could only be held together by either effective idealism or force, i.e. the presence of either an extraordinary political leader or a vicious strongman. Without either one, like the Balkans, Iraq has become, to think in Nietzschean terms, what it always was: An unsustainable entity that has bred resentment between the different parts of its national puzzle.
By 2017, the Shia will have taken the place that belongs to them through plain and simple demographics, forming an independent, intolerant, and rich majority with close ties to Iran. Iran, in ten years time, will probably still be in the grip of the ayatollahs. The Sunnis -- those that still remain in Iraq, that is -- will probably either establish a country of their own, which will depend entirely on the Arab world for its viability, or be a part of Shia Iraq, in which they will be a repressed minority. An Iraqi Kurdistan will become a reality as well, much to the chagrin of Turkey.
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