100,000 Iraqis a month fleeing the country.
The rash of violence in Iraq is reaching record proportions. The latest official figures show that 3,700+ Iraqis have died in civilian violence in Iraq during October. But the official figures are misleading because they only take into account those Iraqis taken to one of the country's morgues and counted. Many others are unclaimed and do not get counted. Lancet's latest study estimates the true death toll in Iraq since the occupation started is now over 600,000.
Most of the violence is not directed at our troops -- it is massive sectarian strife that pits Iraqi against Iraqi. We can no longer control the violence or chaos or restore any kind of order even with the strongest military in the world. Typical examples include a band of thugs taking Sabah, a Shiite, and her Sunni husband, and locking them in the trunk of a car. After driving them around to many different places in the back of their trunk, the husband is shot and Sabah set free.
The article notes that places that are not ethnically mixed -- the Kurdish North and parts of the Shiite South -- are far safer. All this evidence, along with the massive influx of refugees, indicates that Iraq's violence has progressed to the point where the warring parties are now practicing ethnic cleansing. Iraq's people are no longer loyal to a central government as such -- their leaders are now completely powerless. Their people have reverted to tribalism and loyalty to warlords, similar to Afghanistan.
Last year, we were told that the elections would put an end to the violence. But the steady increases in violence indicate that this notion has been totally debunked. The only country that will be a beneficiary will be none other than our arch-enemy Iran, who along with Turkey are eyeing the Kurdish North like vultures and who could accomplish with the help of the Bush administration what they could not accomplish alone -- the takeover of Iraq and the spreading of their revolution throughout the Middle East.
The collapse of any meaningful central government in Iraq has turned the place into a power vacuum which all the major players are rushing to fill. This is a gruesome game of Last Man Standing, where the parties will continue to kill each other off and engage in ethnic cleansing until someone -- or nobody -- wins.