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Iraqis
will have an opportunity to dodge bullets and bombs
to vote for candidates for a constitutional
convention on January 30.
The vote and the convention are steps in the process
of democratization outlined by President George W.
Bush just before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. Bush
declared, "We're committed to a goal of a united
Iraq with democratic institution[s] in which members
of all ethnic and religious groups are treated with
dignity and respect." But why bother to keep Iraq
unified? The region labeled Iraq is nothing more
than a bunch of lines drawn as borders by former
colonial powers anyway
Many of Iraq's Sunni Muslims seem prepared to sit
out the vote. Some because they are afraid for their
lives; others because they know they can't win a
majority of seats in the constitutional convention
and want to make their loss look illegitimate. The
Sunnis are hoping for a rigged deal in which seats
are allocated to them as a kind of affirmative
action. Sunnis fear that the Shi'a majority, which
they oppressed under the Ba'athist regime, will take
political, economic, and possibly even bloodier
forms of revenge when Shi'a political parties win
the vote this coming Sunday. In the meantime, Iraq's
Kurds have no love for the intra-Arab political
fight to the south of their prosperous, fairly well
run northern enclave. Many if not most Kurds long
for independence from the mess they see to the
south.
Elsewhere in the world, partition has worked. Just
look at the former Soviet Union, which dissolved
into 15 different countries more-or-less peacefully.
(Of course, Russia should now let Chechyna go too.)
Other countries whose borders were artificially
drawn by international "statesmen" have now gone
their separate ways. Consider the amicable split
between the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
Both are now members of the European Union. The new
peace agreement between the Sudanese government in
Khartoum and the Sudanese rebels in the south of
that country guarantees that the southerners get to
vote on independence six years from now. If the
powers-that-be in the world are at all sensible,
they will recognize a partition between Somaliland
and Somalia.
Partition in Iraq could forestall a bloody civil war
like the ones that wracked former Yugoslavia and
Ethiopia for years. In both cases, partition
occurred only after hundreds of thousands of
casualties. Of course, the bloody partition of India
and Pakistan shows that things could get messy even
if an agreement for partitioning Iraq is somehow
reached.
Still, Iraq could be divvied up along ethnic lines.
Kurds in the North make up 20 percent of Iraq's
population; Sunni Arabs in the Center are another 20
percent; and Shi'a Arabs in the South constitute the
remaining 60 percent. The North could become
Kurdistan, with its capital at Kirkuk. The Center
could be called Babylonia, and the capital could be
Baghdad or Tikrit. And the populous South,
historically the cradle of the ancient Sumer, could
be named Sumeria, with its capital located at Basra.
Such a partition would right some historical wrongs,
and it also offers a kind of rough justice since the
oil fields are located largely in the areas that
would become Kurdistan and Sumeria. Democratic
institutions can more likely be maintained and
strengthened when political conflicts no longer fall
along ethnic fault lines.
A true constitutional convention can throw out
previous agreements and negotiate entirely new
social contracts. If Iraq's constitutional
convention chooses to go that way, the U.S.-led
coalition should not stand in its way. Perhaps the
Iraqis could reach their own separate peace and bid
our troops farewell. It could happen.
Ronald Bailey is Reason's science
correspondent. His new book, Liberation Biology: A
Moral and Scientific Defense of the Biotech
Revolution will be published by Prometheus Books in
early 2005.
http://reason.com
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