Published August 31st, 2007 by Future Atlas
Iraq’s slow self-partition
The Iraqi Red Crescent relief organization and the UN have found that Iraqis continue to become internal refugees on a large scale–possibly 100,000 a month–and displacement may have accelerated since the US troop buildup began in February 2007, the International Herald Tribute reports.
For the moment, this vast movement of people is draining ethnically mixed areas in the center of the country, with Shiite refugees flowing toward the overwhelmingly Shiite areas to the south and Sunnis heading toward majority Sunni regions to the west and north. The demographic shifts could favor those who would like to see Iraq partitioned into three semi-autonomous regions: a Shiite south and a Kurdish north sandwiching a Sunni land in between.
This is another sign that scenarios of division are now more likely than those that include a unified Iraq.