The Constitution is seen by the Arab world as a stimulus to rising inter-communal tensions and violence and Iraq's break up. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, told Americans that it is "part of a dynamic pushing the Iraqi people away from each other. If you allow for this - for a civil war to happen between Shias and Sunnis - Iraq is finished forever. It will be dismembered." What is alarming for the West is that, unlike the Kurds, whose independence Turkey staunchly opposes as it would give ideas to its own Kurds, Iraqi Shias, enjoy the strong support of Iran, which recently elected a child of the Khomeini revolution as their new President. “Iran is clearly accumulating all the Shia-based geopolitical assets it can, from Iraq to south Lebanon, in preparation for the grand showdown that threatens it from the US."

Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for 'The Independent'

Would the "Lebanonisation" of Iraq, lead to further divisions in the region, aided by ill planned and ill thought US policies? With the US led crusade supported by UK and France with its old colonial interests in Lebanon, which Paris had detached from Syria, US policies on a vulnerable Syria would unleash terrible convulsions. While Iraq was ruled by 20% Iraqi Arab Sunnis for centuries, in Syria a small minority, the Shia Alawites,( 12%, the rest are mostly Sunnis) has ruled the country for more than 40 years. What the US led action in the UN would do is not clear but if Iraq breaks up then Sunni majority restoration will become unstoppable in Syria. Then, what about Jordan, where majority population is of Sunni Palestinian origin and Saudi Arabia, where its Shia populated regions hold vast oil wealth under its sands?

More than the ossified tribal or colonial imposed and created states and Sheikhdoms, now the region itself is also threatened by the growth of non-state activities, the cross-border traffic in extreme Islamist ideology - along with the jihadists and suicide bombers who act on it - or ethnic and sectarian solidarities of the kind that threaten to tear Iraq apart.

In conclusion; Harold Pinter, winner of this years Nobel Prize for Literature said in the Independent. “We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery and degradation to the Iraqi people and call it "bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East." But, as we all know, we have not been welcomed with the predicted flowers. What we have unleashed is a ferocious and unremitting resistance, mayhem and chaos.

"You may say at this point: what about the Iraqi elections? Well, President Bush himself answered this question when he said: "We cannot accept that there can be free democratic elections in a country under foreign military occupation". I had to read that statement twice before I realized that he was talking about Lebanon and Syria."

(Gajendra Singh., served as Indian Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan in1992 -96. Prior to that, he served as ambassador to Jordan (during the1990 - 91Gulf war), Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies, in Bucharest. The views expressed here are his own

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