Not everyone agreed of course. “Some civil society organizations and some political parties have an agenda that’s been given to them by foreigners,” said MP Ali Shabbar, a Shiite Muslim politician from the ruling State of Law coalition. “They want Iraq to go back to square one by calling for autonomous regions and buffer zones.”
The creation of a buffer zone, and even the call for it, was a message to the outside world that the Iraqi government was incapable of running its own affairs, he said.
“This idea is simply a reflection of freedom of expression, as guaranteed by the Iraqi Constitution,” Mahma Khalil, a Kurdish MP, told NIQASH. “However it is completely impossible. And it’s not the right thing to divide people into groups and separate them with concrete barriers.”
Instead, Khalil thought that the youthful campaigners should try and change their reality through the ballot box and through campaigns that demanded realistic and achievable changes. He wanted to remind them that Iraq was due to hold elections in less than a year too.
Whatever the spoilsport politicians and the grownups say, the young Iraqis are determined to continue with their plans for a buffer zone. “The campaign will continue to mobilize supporters and to form coordinating teams in all of Iraq’s provinces,” they say. “And we’re going to continue to collect signatures too, after promoting the idea on social network sites like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Skype and others.”
Additionally the young campaigners say, their buffer zone idea is going to keep them pleasantly busy – too busy to think about the tortuous reality of everyday life for young people in Iraq.
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