Ethnic Divisions Quotes

We are all familiar with Lebanon and with the intrigues of its leaders. Collaboration flows in their veins, and treachery thrives in their midst.

I'm proud of what I've done in Jordan, but the region itself is sitting on a time bomb.

Pakistan is not a unified country. In large parts of the country, the state is regarded as a Punjabi state, not their (the people's) state.

The U.S. cannot force Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds to make peace or to act for the common good. They have been in conflict for 1,400 years.

Nationalism - in other words, the dividing of the church into bodies - consisting of such and such a nation, is a novelty, not above three centuries old, although many dear children of God are found dwelling in it.

This question about Iraq has gotten personal.

The country of Iraq is somewhat of an artificial creation going back to colonial days. And so you have the Kurds and then the Sunnis in the north predominantly and Shias in the south.

I think it's totally possible and plausible that racial balkanization is a recurring aspect of the nature of human politics.

The cultural barriers and social and economic differences separating the Africans and African-Americans is sometimes the cause of a simmering hostility and misunderstanding between them. Sharing the common physical characteristic of skin color has not ensured cultural and economic unity between African immigrants and American-born blacks.

The Germans gathered together ethnic divisions from all over Europe in which men of the same linguistic and cultural background could serve together. The Georgian SS division conducted itself with distinction in normal military action, but a good many people seem to think that anybody who was ever a member of the SS was automatically a war criminal.

The Middle East is so constructed that the rational things are the things least likely to occur.

I mean Afghanistan is a very rugged, complicated country.

Once we destroyed the Saddam regime, we knew there was going to be a civil war.

Dividing groups of people into categories of oppressed and oppressor is a poisonous way to conduct politics in a liberal multiethnic republic. But it’s precisely the way the progressive vanguard believes politics must be conducted to achieve social justice.

African history is filled with experiences of people shooting their way to power and then splintering into factions, like in Somalia and Liberia.

Initially, before the modern state of Iraq was created, there were three separate provinces here: a Shiite in the south, a largely Sunni one in the middle, and a Kurdish one in the north.

I hear a lot of talk about civil war. I'm concerned about that, of course. And I've talked to a lot of people about it. And what I've found from my talks are that the Iraqis want a unified country and that the Iraqi leadership is determined to thwart the efforts of the extremists and the radicals.

[On The Philippines:] ... eighty dialects and languages are spoken; we are a fragmented nation of loyal believers, divided by blood feuds and controlled by the Church.

In a much larger sense, the problem of Sabah is directly influenced by the duplicity of imperial Britain. For whatever devious reason, the dismantling of the British empire created divisions and violence due to ethnic and religious differences.

There is a difference between Iraq, where you have Sunni, Shia, and Kurds put together after the First World War by the Western powers. It doesn't work. It needs to break up into three parts.

A U.S. war with Iran could end with a Kurdish enclave in Iran's northwest tied to Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran's Azeri north drifting toward Azerbaijan, and a Balochi enclave in the south linked to Pakistan's largest province, Balochistan, leaving Iran only Persia.

The Afghans themselves say that if you put two Afghans in a room, you get three factions.

Iraq has slipped enough toward dangerous paths that may endanger the country if we don't realize that the solution ... lies is the concept of national unity

Libya is divided into tribes and clans.

Parallel societies are exactly that: They exist side by side and rarely meet.