The Current Situation in Iraq and Syria Without the Iraq War

BooNZ

Banned
Sadam Hussain wasn't imortal and he kept the line of sussesion purposely blurred. He'd probably be dead of natural (or unnatural)caused by now and his sons and underlings would be fighting it out to see who would rule.
Probably not - refer earlier post
The most likely replacement would be Qusay Hussein (second eldest son), who by 2003 already had command of the Iraqi Republican Guard and internal security forces among others. It is probable he would have brutally suppressed any competition and continued to suppress religious freedoms if expedient.
Think Game of Thrones with WMD and foreign support.
Dragons maybe, but WMDs less likely...
 
I think having Sunni mosques in a 'Shia country' demonstrates a degree of religious tolerance. I'm not familiar with nuances of personalities within the Islamic faith to offer an opinion on décor.

The Saudis have a large Shia minority that is discriminated against so its a big FU to any Shia nation, khomani's picture in a government (not Democratic and heredity give Assad inherited the Presidency from his father) built mosque when the dictatorr is shia in a majority sunni nation wouldn't be comforting as he founded political shia islam.

Desperate and ill considered - like the Republican support of the Tea Party movement...

However worse in that it has a link to the rise of Daesh because those that participated in it ended up joining AL-Qeda then Daesh so I think your original dismissal of pick another meal entirely ignores that it was brainwashing people regardless of if Saddam actually believed in it.

I really still have no idea what you are banging on about. Saddam may have been pure evil, but enlightened self interest meant he was incapable of inflicting anything like the scale of carnage inflicted by 'the good guys'.

I'm saying the idea of him not believing in the Back to Fiath program doesn't matter what matters is that he created it and he radicalised the population before the invasion in 2003, which whilst wasn't a good move retrospectively, only resulted in what would blame Daesh emerging because the Shia were given a political voice after a decade of Saddam's brainwashing of the minority Sunnis.

Probably not - refer earlier post

Dragons maybe, but WMDs less likely...

However unless a heir is named I think the oldest son wouldn't be secure especially given the 2nd son has actually murdered people.
 
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"1986 Politburo" - you are confusing Iraq with Russia

You aren't aware that Saddam's Iraqi actually was planned? I think your coming in here opinionated but not aware of the whole story.

"You are confusing islamification, fundamentalism and radicalisation.

No your are denying that when a dictator backs such a program it leads to radiclisation, we know the effect the NAZI state had on Germasn so why wouldn't the Back to faith Program have a similar effect especially when considering Saddam's persecution of the (majority) Shia and the Kurdish minority following an uprising after the Gulf War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq

In March and early April, nearly two million Iraqis, 1.5 million of them Kurds,[34] escaped from strife-torn cities to the mountains along the northern borders, into the southern marshes, and to Turkey and Iran. By April 6, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) estimated that about 750,000 Iraqi Kurds had fled to Iran and 280,000 to Turkey, with 300,000 more gathered at the Turkish border.[21] Their exodus was sudden and chaotic with thousands of desperate refugees fleeing on foot, on donkeys, or crammed onto open-backed trucks and tractors. Many were gunned down by Republican Guard helicopters, which deliberately strafed columns of fleeing civilians in a number of incidents in both the north and south.[15] Numerous refugees were also killed or maimed by stepping on land mines planted by Iraqi troops near the eastern border during the war with Iran. According to the U.S. Department of State and international relief organizations, between 500 and 1,000 Kurds died each day along Iraq's Turkish border.[21] According to some reports, up to hundreds of refugees died each day along the way to Iran as well.[35]


Kurdish children in a refugee camp built during the U.S. and coalition Operation Provide Comfort play on a ZPU gun which was abandoned by Iraqi forces during Operation Desert Storm, 1 May 1991
Beginning in March 1991, the U.S. and some of the Gulf War allies barred Saddam's forces from conducting jet aircraft attacks by establishing the no-fly zone over northern Iraq and provided humanitarian assistance to the Kurds. On April 17, U.S. forces began to take control of areas more than 60 miles into Iraq to build camps for Kurdish refugees; the last American soldiers left northern Iraq on July 15.[21] In the Yeşilova incident in April, British and Turkish forces confronted each other over the treatment of Kurdish refugees in Turkey. Many Shia refugees fled to Syria, where thousands of them settled in the town of Sayyidah Zaynab.[36]

Resistance and reprisals in the south[edit]
In southeastern Iraq, thousands of civilians, army deserters, and rebels began seeking precarious shelter in remote areas of the Hawizeh Marshes straddling the Iranian border. After the uprising, the Marsh Arabs were singled out for mass reprisals,[37] accompanied by ecologically catastrophic drainage of the Iraqi marshlands and the large-scale and systematic forcible transfer of the local population. The Marsh Arab resistance was led by the Hezbollah Movement in Iraq (completely unrelated to the Hezbollah of Lebanon), which after 2003 became the Marsh Arabs' main political party. On July 10, 1991, the United Nations announced plans to open a humanitarian center at Lake Hammar to care for those hiding out in the southern marshlands, but Iraqi forces did not allow UN relief workers into the marshlands or the people out. A large scale government offensive attack against the refugees estimated 10,000 fighters and 200,000 displaced persons hiding in the marshes began in March–April 1992, using fixed-wing aircraft; a U.S. Department of State report claimed that Iraq dumped toxic chemicals in the waters in an effort to drive out the opposition. In July 1992, the government began trying to drain the marshlands and ordered the residents of settlements to evacuate, after which the army burned down their homes there to prevent them from returning. A curfew was also enforced throughout the south, and government forces began arresting and moving large numbers of Iraqis into detention camps in the central part of the country.[21]


U.S. 3rd Infantry soldiers wait to be deployed in support of Operation Southern Watch, the U.S. and coalition enforcement of the no-fly zone over southern Iraq
At a special meeting of the UN Security Council on August 11, 1992, Britain, France, and the United States accused Iraq of conducting a "systematic military campaign" against the marshlands, warning that Baghdad could face possible consequences. On August 22, 1992, President Bush announced that the U.S. and its allies had established a second no-fly zone for any Iraqi aircraft south of the 32nd parallel to protect dissidents from attacks by the government, as sanctioned by UN Security Council Resolution 688.

In March 1993, a UN investigation reported hundreds of executions of Iraqis from the marshes in the preceding months, asserting that the Iraqi army's behavior in the south is the most "worrying development [in Iraq] in the past year" and added that following the formation of the no-fly zone, the army switched to long-range artillery attacks, followed by ground assaults resulting in "heavy casualties" and widespread destruction of property, along with allegations of mass executions. In November 1993, Iran reported that as a result of the drainage of the marshlands, marsh Iraqis could no longer fish or grow rice and that over 60,000 had fled to Iran since 1991; Iranian officials appealed to the world to send aid to help the refugees. That same month, the UN reported that 40% of the marshlands in the south were drained, while unconfirmed reports surfaced that the Iraq army had used poisonous gas against villages near the border of Iran. In December 1993, the U.S. Department of State accused Iraq of "indiscriminate military operations in the south, which include the burning of villages and forced relocation of non-combatants." On February 23, 1994, Iraq diverted waters from the Tigris river to areas south and east of the main marshlands, resulting in floods of up to 10 feet of water, in order to render the farmlands there useless and drive the rebels who have been hiding there to flee back to the marshes which were being drained of water. In March 1994, a team of British scientists estimated that 57% of the marshlands have been drained and that in 10 to 20 years the entire wetland ecosystem in southern Iraq will be gone. In April 1994, the U.S. officials said Iraq was continuing a military campaign in Iraq's remote marshes.[21]

Iraq saw further unrest in its Shia dominated provinces in early 1999 following the killing of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr by the government. Like the 1991 uprisings, the 1999 uprising was violently suppressed.

Kurdish sovereign enclave[edit]

Area controlled by Kurds after the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War (area controlled after October 1991 is a combination of both KDP and PUK areas, controlled by Kurdish Peshmerga rebel forces
In the north, fighting continued until October when an agreement was made for Iraqi withdrawal from parts of Iraq's Kurdish-inhabited region. This led to the establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government and creation of a Kurdish Autonomous Republic in three provinces of northern Iraq. Tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers dug-in along the front, backed by tanks and heavy artillery, while the Iraqi government established a blockade of food, fuel, and other goods to the area. The U.S. Air Force continued to enforce a no-fly zone over northern Iraq, and the U.S. military built and maintained several refugee camps in 1991.

This general stalemate was broken during the 1994–1997 Iraqi Kurdish Civil War, when due to the PUK alliance with Iran, the KDP called in Iraqi support and Saddam sent his military into Kurdistan, capturing Arbil and Sulaymaniyah. Iraqi government forces retreated after the U.S. intervened by launching missile strikes on southern Iraq in 1996. On January 1, 1997, the U.S. and its allies launched Operation Northern Watchto continue enforcing the no-fly zone in the north the day after Operation Provide Comfort was over. Kurds further expanded their area of control after participating in the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, which led to the recognition of Kurdish autonomy by the new Iraqi government.

Which Daesh is doing today.

"Shia and Sunnis could make common cause against him" That would have been truly historic - it is doubtful the Ba'athist leadership would have contemplated such cooperation as being possible, let alone fear it.

They also didn't think the US would kick Saddam out of Kuwait so going by what they think is something I would not recommend.

The islamification of Iraq was effectively appeasement arising from regime weakness following the first gulf war. However, this weakness is in no way comparable to the wholesale and wilful destruction of the Iraqi society [by the coalition of the willing] following the 2003 invasion.

A society where the majority (Shia) were politically oppressed and non Sunni minorities as well because society was whatever Saddam determined it, Al-Qeda grew in Iraq because many Sunni who were part of the back to faith program didn't want the Shia in power thus allowed with Al-Qeda in Iraq which became Daesh when exiled into Syria. Whilst the destruction was economically harmful and many people died I think what your forgetting is that in a totalitarian state there is no civil society as you or me know it so I think your hyperbolising there to a significant degree.
 
So secular dictators have what they decide is 'the most holy of all Qur'ans' written in their own blood?









The jihadists allowed in by Saddam and had trained by his armed forces merged. Men like al-Baghdadi came of age and studied theology and got his PhD in it during the Back to Faith movement.

One thing Uday was right about was to fear the Back to Faith movement and in the last several months before he was captured Saddam watched as many trusted officers went over to Zarqawi.

As for Baby Assad no he hasn't had a religious radicalization movement in Syria or at least nothing comparable to Iraq's Back to Faith Movement. There are quite a few Shia religious radicals there now though from around the region.

Now, the Alawites and even Sunnis might be forced to convert to Iran´s (Khomenei´s) version of Shia religion. Thre are even payments in exchange for conversion, now.
 
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