Ethnic Cleansing in Iraq

If the NYTimes is indeed "the paper of record," then this is a pretty big deal. There had been previous sporadic reports of refugees and ethnic cleansing in Iraq, but this is the first major media to report it as a headline story.

The new pattern, detailed in casualty and migration statistics and in interviews with American commanders and Iraqi officials, has led to further separation of Shiite and Sunni Arabs, moving the country toward a de facto partitioning along sectarian and ethnic lines — an outcome that the Bush administration has doggedly worked to avoid over the past three years.

The NYTimes cites a number of 30,000 Iraqis fleeing from their homes to further ethnic divisions and boundaries. It must be said that that is not a huge number when compared to the population, but unless something changes pretty drastically in the security situation, it is just the lead wave.

My fear is that once the the separate ethnic groups have achieved division, they will begin to fight with each other over their boundaries in the significant force actions which we have been told are the definition of a civil war.

I liked having nothing to write about better.