This Strategic Studies Institute writes about an issue I worry about although I don't think I've really mentioned it much. Looking back at building the South Korean army:
The creation of mixed security force units that reflect society can only mean a Shia majority unit. Regionally based military and police units are now predominantly single sect-dominant units. Such a force suggests serious potential lines of fracture that can undermine national identity, loyalty, purpose, and will. The mutinous soldiers in South Korea formed the core of the insurgency that, in fact, started a Korean civil war well before June 1950. The sectarian Iraqi security forces are now forming the core elements of Iraq’s civil war.
The Iraqi army--which we call the most stable national institution we have build in Iraq--cannot be allowed to develop with units segregated along religious and ethnic lines. Unless we integrate the units with Shias dominating all military units because of their greater numbers, if a civil war does break out in Iraq it will be carried out by far more lethal army units that take sides based on their ethnic and religious composition.
Submerged within Shia-dominated units and alongside Kurds in equal numbers, the Sunnis will come to learn they lost the centuries-long struggle for dominance in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
