Quote Originally Posted by Viking View Post
The creation of separate states can encourage a (relatively) peaceful disentanglement. Typically, there are border areas where the mixing is fairly even, but beyond those there is typically one group that dominates.

I am not sure how viable Sunni-Iraq and Shia-Iraq are as separate states, but I think any attempt at a united Iraq runs the risk of becoming another Somalia. In the recent decade, Iraq has at times not been too terribly far away from this scenario, anyway - the status quo is just a new record.

My prediction at this moment, is that without foreign ground-intervention, IS will not be defeated. It may gradually warp into something else (which would be a pretty natural development, should it survive for a longer period of time), or split into smaller groups; but it will not be defeated. Neither the Iraqi nor the Syrian state is strong enough.

IS and the areas under its control will probably turn into some sort of miniature Taliban-Afghanistan, and once there are no minorities left - either because they're fled or dead - the world will stop caring as much as it does now. In this scenario, the de facto, if not de jure, Shia-Iraq may be relatively stable, depending on how much split there is among the Shiites in this part of Iraq.
While Iraq and Syria might not be strong enough to take out IS, Iran probably could help them enough to eventually kick them out. That and the Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistans. And if they ever did take out Syria, they would border Israel which probably wouldn't suffer that sort of state to sit on their borders for very long.