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Breakup of Iraq almost certain
16.11.2006
BY MONICA DUFFY TOFT
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November 16, 2006
Some 3 1/2 years after the U.S. liberation, most
scholars and analysts accept that Iraq is now in a
civil war. But many policy-makers are failing to
face up to the consequences. The key question is how
Iraq will be stabilized.
It is an important question, because the stability
and prosperity of a post-civil-war state depends in
large measure on how the war ends. Historically
speaking, military victories most often lead to
lasting resolutions. Negotiated settlements
frequently are short-lived.
A negotiated settlement is what the United States
has attempted for the past two years. The process of
adopting a constitution and having elections was
designed to give each of Iraq's communities a say in
the government. The Kurds and Shia participated
fully, but the Sunnis did not. So they do not see
the government as representing, much less
protecting, their interests. The Kurds have
maintained their distance while strengthening their
own militia.
The trend lines in Iraq are toward continued
fragmentation. So the argument in favor of a
sustained U.S. presence to help enforce a peace
settlement ignores both that reality and past
precedent.
Military victories result in more stable outcomes
because typically a strong faction with a robust
military is preserved. Problems with
democratization, governance and political
institutions certainly remain, but the state that
survives retains its monopoly on the legitimate use
of force and is able to leverage that to institute
peace. Only then can issues of democracy,
development and justice be dealt with.
Although the United States seemed to have forgotten
the centrality of a state's monopoly on the
legitimate use of force when it summarily disbanded
Iraqi security forces, it is desperately trying to
rebuild them for more effective policing. But it is
too late. The Iraqi government's forces are
increasingly identified as Shia forces.
As it stands, schisms will continue to grow,
neighbor will attack neighbor, quasi-states with
their own militias will solidify. This means the end
of the state of Iraq as we have known it. Nothing
can stop the disintegration, save perhaps an
invasion by Israel, Iran or Syria.
The United States is faced with an awful choice:
Leave and allow events to run their course or
support one or more of the emerging states.
If U.S. forces leave, the Shia will brutally settle
accounts with the Sunnis before, perhaps, opening
hostilities against the Kurds (with tacit support
from Iran and Turkey).
If the United States supports the Kurds and Shia -
the two peoples most abused under Hussein, most
betrayed by the United States since 1990 and the two
most worthy of our support on moral grounds - it
risks alienating important regional allies: Turkey,
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
On the other hand, supporting the Shia is the most
practical way to ensure a stable peace and establish
long-term prospects for democracy and economic
development. It is possible that U.S. support of the
Shia majority also might pay diplomatic dividends
with Shia Iran.
If the United States supports the Sunnis, it will
be, as in Vietnam, struggling to underwrite the
survival of a militarily untenable, corrupt and
formerly brutal minority regime with no hope of
gaining broader legitimacy in the territory of the
former Iraq.
Even if successful, supporting the Sunnis - in
effect the incumbents in what was until recently a
brutal dictatorship - will result in a much greater
likelihood of future war and regional instability,
not to mention authoritarianism.
It is high time the United States and its allies
began national discussions about the relative merits
of leaving or staying and, if they stay, about the
merits of supporting the Sunnis, Shia or Kurds.
Either way, what we now think of as Iraq is almost
certainly as gone as what we once thought of as
Yugoslavia, and for the same reasons.
Monica Duffy Toft is associate professor of
public policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of
Government and author of "The Geography of Ethnic
Violence." This is excerpted from The Washington
Post
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