The Third Hundred Years War Has 86 To Go

[Minimalist]

http://hideme.be/browse.php/92glbocc/zDV...ss_3D/b13/

ISIS is near defeat in Iraq. Now comes the hard part.

“All the writing is on the wall that there will be another ISIS,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “The scale of frustration. The lack of hope. The lack of government stepping in. What can you expect?”

Meanwhile, distractions loom as Iraq’s focus shifts to the long-standing political rivalries that were put on hold by the imperative of confronting the Islamic State.
The Kurdish region is pressing ahead with a referendum on independence — over the strenuous objections of Iran, Turkey and the United States — that has the potential to ignite a new war before the present one is over. The vote is reopening the contentious question of where the borders of the Kurdistan region lie, and tensions are rising in areas where the Kurdish peshmerga forces and Iranian-backed Shiite militias have been brought face-to-face by the war against the Islamic State.

Rifts are emerging within Iraq’s governing Shiite majority, which rallied behind the country’s security forces and militias — known as al-Hashd al-Shaabi, or the popular mobilization units — for the sake of fighting the Islamic State. There are sharp divergences, however, over the future identity of the country, over whether it should tilt further toward Iran or maintain an alliance with the United States, and over how far to go to reconcile minority Sunnis with the Shiites.

These issues are expected to come to the fore in elections due in the spring that could become a focus for conflict as the political parties behind the Iranian-backed militias that played a big role in the fighting seek to capitalize on their victories by winning a bigger share in parliament.

Will we keep our noses out of it?


Do we ever?