Already Started

Following an earlier post about how Islamists could be given their own territories to run as statelets technically within, and at the expense of, larger entities, just as the IRA has been given parts of Northern Ireland, it has occurred to me that of course this has already started.

Kosovo is one example, although the UDI there rather complicates matters. A better example is the Gaza Strip, which has been given over to Hamas as its state in all but name. Hezbollah can expect something similar in part of Lebanon very soon. Parts of Iraq face a similar future. There will be plenty of others: in Chechnya, in Kashmir, in all sorts of places. Doubtless including several parts of Britain within one generation.

Osama Bin Laden's demands might be non-negotiable. But those of Hamas, or of Hezbollah, or of either the Sunni or the Shi'ite insurgents in Iraq, or of the Chechen or Kashmiri separatists, among many others, are anything but non-negotiable, any more than is the desire to govern parts of London or West Yorkshire in accordance with Sharia Law.

Turkey is already well on the way to becoming an entire country like that. The same is planned for Kosovo. And see this, published in a journal whose editor has an email address of the European People's Party, which includes both Turkey's ruling AKP and our own Tories.

In any case, the belief that the Provisional Army Council is the sovereign body throughout Ireland is in principle non-negotiable. But given enough instead, the people who hold that belief are not pressing it. The same will happen in the Islamic cases.

As in Northern Ireland, this is despicable and it will be disastrous in the long term. But it is true.