"Clerics push for Shiastan in southern Iraq" (This position could perhaps signal the end of the modern Iraqi state.) As an anti-nationalist, I do not necessarily lament the fragmentation of a territory. The question for me is what kind of a new state will be established. Thus, I cannot celebrate the creation of an Israel-like enclave in the north--although I do support Kurdish national aspirations and even their territorial ambitions but I strongly oppose the politics of the two tribal Kurdish leaders who in the past had double-dealings with Saddam, and who killed thousands of Kurds in their civil wars), and a Shi`ite religious theocracy in the South. This will only guarantee the creation of a mini-Sunni enclave dominated by either Saddam's Ba`th or by Sunni fundamentalist demagogues, or by a combination of both.