|
Iraq Is Bound to Fail, Based on Squiggly Index
Authors Alberto Alesina and Janina Matuszeski of Harvard University and William Easterly at New York University divided countries into two categories: natural and artificial. A natural state is one defined by ethnicity and geographic features such as mountain ranges. Mountains reinforce ethnic communities -- if only by isolating them. Natural national borders would tend to be bumpy.The map of an artificial state by contrast looks like it was drawn with a ruler, which it often was. Its straight borders sometimes partition ethnic communities, placing them in two countries. Other times, they place tribes that are hostile to one another in the same nation. The data bear that out. The squiggliest country out of 144 studied turns out to be Luxembourg, such a model of comity that many of us forget its existence. Slovenia is No. 3, and is indeed one of the calmer of the new nations to emerge since the Cold War ended. Switzerland, the classic mountain country, comes in fourth. The less squiggly countries prove more problematic. The least squiggly nation in the world is Papua New Guinea, the site of chronic and violent feuds. Saudi Arabia is right down there with a squiggliness rank of 143. Somalia and Libya are 142 and 141. Iraq is 110. Iran is 86. Afghanistan is fairly squiggly, ranking 62nd. Less squiggly countries, the scholars found, generally have lower income, worse public services and higher infant mortality rates. They also found that social unrest, the sort that leads to wars, was also more frequent in unsquiggly places. The net finding, says Alesina, is that artificiality is ``correlated with bad stuff.'' The bigger problem with the study is the circularity of the argument. The great powers of a 100 or 50 years ago drew the lines that created the colonies or satellite countries. Britain for example arbitrarily constructed Iraq, and arbitrarily decided its size, which is a bit less than twice that of the U.S. state of Idaho. ``The worst thing that ever happened to Iraq was the invention of the straight edge,'' Easterly says. ``They took Mesopotamia and combined mutually antagonistic groups in one nation.'' Colonialism or tyranny sets trouble in motion. The lines themselves came later. ``The lesson of history is respect nationality,'' Easterly says. ``For Iraq, at the very least you want to emphasize the federalism established there and strengthen it.'' He and his partners are looking at this in a new study, on wars and squiggliness. As for the Kurds, ``the Turkish government should continue what it has started to do,'' he said. ``Respect language rights, do more to foster local autonomy.'' Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-08-29 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=164401 |