"If the security forces continue to be dominated as they are now by political groups or sects, then the people won't trust in them - and the result will be civil war or fragmentation of the country"
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A warning dressed as a conditional, Pachachi's line is really a diagnosis of state failure: when the armed organs of a country are captured by factions, the state stops feeling like a neutral referee and starts looking like just another militia with a flag. The genius of the phrasing is its chain of inevitability. Dominated forces lead to distrust; distrust leads to citizens hedging their bets; hedging becomes self-arming, sectarian gatekeeping, and parallel authorities. By the time "civil war or fragmentation" arrives, it's not a dramatic break but the logical end of everyday suspicions.
Pachachi also chooses his villains carefully. He doesn't blame a single party or community; he blames the structure that makes coercive power answer to identity rather than law. "Political groups or sects" sits there like a paired indictment of modern patronage and older communal loyalties, a reminder that both can corrupt institutions when hiring, promotions, and protection are traded as spoils. The subtext is pointed: trust isn't a feel-good civic virtue, it's the currency that keeps people from seeking security elsewhere.
In the Iraqi context Pachachi knew intimately, this reads as counsel to any regime trying to stabilize a post-authoritarian state. After decades of coups, repression, sanctions, and then the post-2003 scramble to rebuild under intense sectarian competition, security services were never just about policing; they were about who gets to survive. His line is less prophecy than policy memo: de-sectarianize the gun, or the country will.
Pachachi also chooses his villains carefully. He doesn't blame a single party or community; he blames the structure that makes coercive power answer to identity rather than law. "Political groups or sects" sits there like a paired indictment of modern patronage and older communal loyalties, a reminder that both can corrupt institutions when hiring, promotions, and protection are traded as spoils. The subtext is pointed: trust isn't a feel-good civic virtue, it's the currency that keeps people from seeking security elsewhere.
In the Iraqi context Pachachi knew intimately, this reads as counsel to any regime trying to stabilize a post-authoritarian state. After decades of coups, repression, sanctions, and then the post-2003 scramble to rebuild under intense sectarian competition, security services were never just about policing; they were about who gets to survive. His line is less prophecy than policy memo: de-sectarianize the gun, or the country will.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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