Everybody should read this article in today’s Times about the new crackdown in Baghdad. The plan is basically to reverse ethnic-cleanse the city, evicting the new tenants of neighborhoods that have been already cleansed and then resettling the evictees.
Under the generalâs plan, people who have illegally occupied homes will have 15 days to leave. While they are there, he said, they must protect the home, not steal from it or damage it.
âAnyone who does not follow this law will be treated according to the antiterrorism laws,â he said, adding that the government would set up committees to determine ownership.
We have a fair degree of experience at this point in how to attempt or in many cases not even to attempt such cleansing reversals in the Balkans. One almost never attempts such a plan until you’re definitely in a post-war period. Doing it in the midst of an escalating cycle of sectarian violence seems like a recipe for disaster. The Times quotes Samantha Power describing the plan “as either a public relations ploy that would never be enforced, or worse, a prelude to more sectarian cleansing and catastrophe.”
