Nouri al-Maliki preps for the big dance...kill the lights...

Last week, ethnographers at UCLA revealed evidence for the Balkanization of Iraq.

Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved.

Analyzing patterns of light and darkness in the Baghdad night sky, they discovered that Shia areas of Baghdad remained unchanged, and Sunni and mixed areas were abandoned, leaving the city pacified by February 2007.

Ethnic cleansing -- which we've all known about via anecdotes -- turns out to be not the thing the surge was meant to end, but its core building-block.

'Bout a year ago, when the surge had begun and Sunnis were blowing each other up to figure out which among them would get guns from the al-Amriki tribe, Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin responded to an unhinged screed of mine, elucidating the reasoning behind the surge:

[...]unless every last ditch effort is made to temper the consequences of a pullout, the results will be even more horrible for Iraqis, the region and us than what you see now. And I don't mean some slogan of "they'll follow us home" - I mean total collapse in Iraq, even more bloody fighting, a return of Al Qaeda there in force and negative consequences for the rest of the region.

And the reasoning for extending the "surge" indefinitely rests on the same ground: we have to square this country away. This week we learned that between Sadr's truce and the complete ethnic partition of Baghdad, the country was pretty well squared away 18 months ago...

Which brings us to what the future holds...oil wealth, a speculative boom, rampant unemployment and a host of splinter-regions...this is Russia at the dawn of the Putin era. The combination of crony capitalism and a crackdown on opposition parties that Nouri al-Maliki has been overtly orchestrating for the past year is pure Putin, as the man says...so expect two Maliki versions of the Chechen war, arguments with Turkey, and an Iraqi Guggenheim branch, built by Shia oligarkii...
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