With Saddam gone… what do you think are the chances of Iraq staying as one country in the near future? To be fair, a brutal dictator is perhaps the only way to keep such a divergent country together. Lesson from USSR is that once the dictatorship is gone, its very hard to stop the breakage.
Sunnis occupy a relatively smaller portion of Iraq. Shias occupy most of South. They don’t see eye to eye with the sunnis, cz Saddam had tortured shias to no end. Kurds in the North are altogether a different case. They hate Saddam’s sunnis as much shias, may be more.
So, will Iraq break down in three distinct parts? Will Turkey allow a Kurd state? What will happen to the oil? If shias break-away, chances are they will grow extremely close to neighboring Iran.
None of the scenarios are particularly palatable to US right now, as they would want a joint Iraq with an obliging government.
What do you think, realistically, may happen in the next one or two years? If elections happen what will be the political landscape of Iraq?