|
The Case For Dividing Iraq
6.11.2006
By PETER W. GALBRAITH |
|
|
|
With the country descending into civil war, a
noted diplomat and author argues why partition may
be the U.S.'s only exit strategy
Iraq is broken.
Iraq's national-unity government is not united and
does not govern. Iraqi security forces, the
centerpiece of the U.S.'s efforts for stability, are
ineffective or, even worse, combatants in the
country's escalating civil war. President George W.
Bush says the U.S.'s goal is a unified and
democratic Iraq, but we have no way to get there. As
Americans search for answers, there is one obvious
alternative: split Iraq into separate Kurdish, Sunni
and Shi'ite states.
The case for the partition of Iraq is
straightforward: It has already happened. The Kurds,
a non-Arab people who live in the country's north,
enjoy the independence they long dreamed about. The
Iraqi flag does not fly in Kurdistan, which has a
democratically elected government and its own army.
In southern Iraq, Shi'ite religious parties have
carved out theocratic fiefdoms, using militias that
now number in the tens of thousands to enforce an
Iranian-style Islamic rule. To the west, Iraq's
Sunni provinces have become chaotic no-go zones,
with Islamic insurgents controlling Anbar province
while Baathists and Islamic radicals operate barely
below the surface in Salahaddin and Nineveh. And
Baghdad, the heart of Iraq, is now partitioned
between the Shi'ite east and the Sunni west. The
Mahdi Army, the most radical of the Shi'ite
militias, controls almost all the Shi'ite
neighborhoods,
and al-Qaeda has a large role in Sunni areas. Once a
melting pot, Baghdad has become the front line of
Iraq's Sunni-Shi'ite war, which is claiming at least
100 lives every day.
Most Iraqis do not want civil war. But they have
rejected the idea of a unified Iraq. In the December
2005 national elections, Shi'ites voted
overwhelmingly for Shi'ite religious parties, Sunni
Arabs for Sunni religious or nationalist parties,
and the Kurds for Kurdish nationalist parties. Fewer
than 10% of Iraq's Arabs crossed sectarian lines.
The Kurds voted 98.7% for independence in a
nonbinding referendum.
Iraq's new constitution, approved by 80% of Iraq's
voters, is a road map to partition. The constitution
allows Iraq's three main groups to establish
powerful regions, each with its own government,
substantial control over the oil resources in its
territory and even its own regional army. Regional
law supersedes federal law on almost all matters.
The central government is so powerless that, under
the constitution, it cannot even impose a tax.
American leaders seem to be in denial about these
facts. President Bush continually asserts that the
Iraqi people have voted for unity, while Condoleezza
Rice once told me how impressed she was by the
commitment of the Iraqi Kurds to building a new
Iraq. James A. Baker III, co-chairman of a
congressionally mandated commission tasked with
formulating new policy options, has ruled out the
idea of dividing Iraq. The most prominent American
politician to endorse anything resembling partition
is Senator Joseph Biden, who, along with former
Council on Foreign Relations president Leslie Gelb,
proposes dividing Iraq into three regions while
maintaining a "central government in charge of
common interests."
U.S. officials are now asking that Iraqis agree to a
program of national reconciliation, changes in the
constitution to protect Sunni interests, and an oil
law that would share revenues equitably. It's
instructive that this initiative aimed at unifying
Iraq comes from Americans and not the country's
elected leaders. A U.S. effort to put Iraq back
together would involve endless micromanagement of
Iraqi affairs and an open-ended presence of large
numbers of U.S. troops. Breaking up Iraq, on the
other hand, could provide an exit strategy for U.S.
troops, mitigate the worst effects of civil war and
give all Iraqis a greater stake in shaping their
future. Few Americans imagined that 3 1/2 years
after "liberating" Iraq, the U.S. would be presiding
over the country's demise. But in a war in which
there have never been good options, partition is the
best we have left.
Iraq has never been a voluntary union of its
peoples. Winston Churchill, as Britain's Colonial
Secretary, created Iraq from the wreckage of the
Ottoman Empire in 1921, installing a Sunni Arab King
to rule over the Shi'ite majority and a rebellious
Kurdish minority. Churchill later described Iraq's
forced unity as one of his biggest mistakes. In 2003
the U.S. not only unseated the last and most brutal
of Iraq's tyrants but also destroyed the
institutions--notably the army and the Baath
Party--that held Iraq together. The sectarian
slaughter that followed the Feb. 22 bombing of the
Shi'ite Golden Mosque in Samarra accelerated Iraq's
disintegration.
Nonetheless, the U.S. continues to cling to the
illusion of Iraqi unity. President Bush's hopes for
success in Iraq depend on two pillars: Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki's national-unity government
and the establishment of security forces that are
trusted and respected by all Iraqis. But both are
shams. Al-Maliki leads a religious Shi'ite coalition
that includes parties that operate the death squads
that kill scores of Sunnis each day. While he says
illegal militias should be disbanded, he has
vigorously resisted every U.S. operation against
them. The Sunnis in Iraq's government are, if
anything, even more extreme. Mahmoud al-Mashhadani,
the Speaker of the Council of Representatives and
Iraq's highest-ranking Sunni, has been closely
associated with Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaeda- linked
terrorist group that has targeted Shi'ites and
secular Iraqis. He has blamed Iraq's problems on the
Jews and has said statues should be erected to those
who kill American troops. President Bush has
lavishly praised both al-Mashhadani and al-Maliki,
but flattery has not produced statesmanship. The
real problem is that they reflect the views of their
respective communities, which voted overwhelmingly
for them.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials speak of Iraq's army and
police as if they were neutral guarantors of public
safety. Iraqis see them for what they are: Shi'ites
or Sunnis who are active combatants in Iraq's civil
war. Shi'ite police units have kidnapped, tortured
and executed thousands of Sunnis since the Samarra
bombing. Sunni policemen are often insurgents or
sympathizers. The army, while marginally better than
the police, is divided along sectarian lines and is
largely ineffective. Whole battalions do not show up
for combat duties they don't like. It is not
possible to build a national army or police force
when there is no nation to begin with.
So what can be done? The most realistic option is
for the U.S. to abandon the idea of creating a new,
united Iraq and instead allow the country to break
apart, enabling each of the country's three groups
to choose its own government and provide for its own
security. It is possible that Sunni and Shi'ite
regions would remain together in a loose
confederation, but Kurdistan's full independence is
almost certainly a matter of time.
Partition is an Iraqi solution. The U.S. could help
make it go more smoothly, but it mostly needs to get
out of the way. The Kurds already have their region.
Last month Iraq's parliament approved a law to allow
the Shi'ites to merge Iraq's nine southern provinces
into a single state. The one group that resists
dividing Iraq is the Sunnis, some out of nostalgia
for the days when they ran the country and others
because they reject all that has happened since
Saddam's overthrow. But with the Kurds and Shi'ites
having their regions, partition becomes an
accomplished fact. It is hard to see any alternative
for the Sunnis except to do the same.
In fact, the Sunnis may have the most to gain from
partition. The Sunni insurgency feeds on popular
hostility not just to the Americans but to a Shi'ite-dominated
Iraqi government. Most Sunnis don't support al-Qaeda
and its imitators, but they often prefer them to
Iraqi security forces, which are seen as complicit
in the killings of Sunnis. If the Sunnis were to
establish their own region, they could have an army
and provide for their own security. Since Iraq's
known oil fields are in the Shi'ite south and the
Kurdish north, the Sunnis do have reason to fear
being stuck in the middle with no resources of their
own. So, for partition to work, the Kurds and
Shi'ites would have to guarantee the Sunnis a
proportionate share of Iraq's oil revenues for a
period of time, as they have already agreed to do.
Over the long term, exploration for oil in the
largely unexplored Sunni areas provides the region
its best prospect for revenues.
We should have no illusions: partitioning Iraq would
not be easy. Some groups would resist bloodily. But
the adverse consequences of partition have already
occurred. There's no reason to believe that
formalizing Iraq's breakup would make anything
worse--in fact, it might even help contain the
violence. It's useful to outline the three main
arguments raised against partition and explain why
none are as convincing as their proponents portray
them to be:
The sectarian bloodbath will get worse. Iraq's
Sunni-Shi'ite civil war has already claimed tens of
thousands of lives and forced Sunnis and Shi'ites to
abandon coexistence. This is tragic and certainly
not what most Iraqi Shi'ites or Sunnis want. But
once under way, civil wars tend to empower the most
extreme elements. Civil wars do not end because the
parties get tired of fighting. Rather, they end
because of outside intervention or, more often,
because one side wins. Partition will not stop the
sectarian cleansing in mixed areas, but by giving
Shi'ites and Sunnis their own regions, it can avoid
an outcome in which Iraq's more numerous Shi'ites
completely crush the Sunnis.
Iran will dominate the Shi'ite south. Iran's Iraqi
allies already dominate Shi'ite southern Iraq. If
the U.S. were serious about countering Iran's
influence, U.S. troops would have to forcefully
disarm the Shi'ite militias and dismantle the
southern theocracies. But this would mean taking on
a whole new enemy in Iraq and also require
committing more troops. The Bush Administration has
no intention of doing either. Right now, Iran's
allies control both the central government in
Baghdad and the south. Partition would limit Iran's
influence to the southern half of Iraq.
A divided Iraq will be destabilizing to Iraq's
neighbors. Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbors all fear the
destabilizing consequences of partition. But they
fear an Iran-dominated Iraq even more. Turkey,
Iraq's other powerful neighbor, has a population
that includes at least 14 million Turkish Kurds. The
Turkish nightmare has been the emergence of an
independent Kurdistan in Iraq. But now that it is
actually happening, Turkey has responded
pragmatically: it is by far the largest source of
investment in Iraqi Kurdistan and has cultivated
close relations with its leaders. As Turkey's more
sophisticated strategic thinkers understand, Turkey
and an independent Kurdistan have a lot in common.
Both are secular, pro-Western, democratic and
non-Arab. Not only will Kurdistan depend on Turkey
economically, but it can serve as a useful buffer to
an Iran-dominated Islamic Iraq.
For many Americans, the biggest appeal of partition
is that it makes possible a relatively rapid U.S.
exit from much of Iraq. If U.S. goals no longer
include preserving national unity or establishing
Western-style democracy, there is no need for U.S.
troops in the Shi'ite south or Baghdad. We would
leave behind a civil war and an Iran- dominated
south, but that outcome would be no different if we
were to stay with the current force levels and
mission. One overriding interest in Iraq, however,
is still achievable: that Iraq's Sunni areas not
become a base from which al-Qaeda and its allies
might attack the West. With the security that comes
from having their own region, the Sunnis might deal
more effectively with the terrorist threat, since
continuing violence would prevent economic progress
in the Sunni areas. While local leaders are now
unwilling to fight the most radical elements of the
insurgency when the beneficiary is Iraq's Shi'ites,
they may be more willing to do so when it benefits
them.
The U.S. will still need an insurance policy against
the threat of al-Qaeda in western Iraq. This could
be accomplished by deploying a small force to
Kurdistan, from which the U.S. could readily move
back into the adjacent Sunni areas if necessary to
disrupt al-Qaeda operations. This force would
discharge a moral debt to the Kurds who fought on
our side and could help consolidate democracy in the
one part of Iraq that turned out as we hoped.
American administrations are instinctively committed
to existing lines on the map. But not all breakups
are a disaster. Although President Bush's father
tried to hold the Soviet Union together, few mourned
its ultimate demise. Trying to put back together
Iraq, a state that has brought nonstop misery to
most of its people for its entire 80-year history
and is not desired by a substantial part of its
citizens, will only bring about more pain and blood
for Americans and Iraqis. If the country's people
are to be saved, the only choice is to end Iraq.
[This article contains maps and diagrams. Please see
hardcopy of magazine.] THE GREAT DIVIDE
Iraq is checkered by different religions and
ethnicities, its history marked by forced
relocations and bloody conflict. The current Sunni-Shi'ite
war has once again changed the demographic map of
Iraq, leading some to call for the country to be
split into three states. But carving up Iraq could
displace millions, provoke struggles for the control
of territory and make the bloodshed even worse.
Shi'ite Arabs 60% Sunni Arabs 20% Kurds 17% Others
3%
Area by ethnic and religious groups
Kurd Sh'ite Arab Sunni Arab Shi'ite/Sunni-Arab mix
Sunni Arab/Kurd mix Sunni Turkoman Christian Mixed
area
Sparsely populated Population density
0 10 1,000 100,000 Per sq. mi. (2.6 sq km) 5 miles 5
km BAGHDAD AIRPORT RASHEED AIR BASE SADR CITY
ADHAMIYA WASHASH MANSUR Green Zone Tigris River IRAQ
Turkey • Neighboring Turkey worries that an Iraqi
Kurdistan would incite its Kurdish population and
that access to the area's oil would be lost. Along
with Iran and Syria, Turkey might be tempted to
exploit internal Kurdish divisions Baghdad With
Sunni and Shi'ite living cheek by jowl, partition
could lead to widespread sectarian cleansing and
more violence for its 6 million residents
Kurdistan • The Kurdish-dominated north
already enjoys wide autonomy and relative peace, but
Kurds want oil- rich Kirkuk to be part of an
independent Kurdistan--something the country's Arabs
fiercely oppose
Central Iraq • Iraq's Sunni Arabs have
resisted partition. With no significant oil fields
and thus no real oil revenues, Sunnis might try to
fight for oil-rich areas like Baghdad, Kirkuk and
Mosul
Southern Iraq • The Shi'ite-dominated south
would probably form a government based on Islamic
law and modeled on Iran's. It has the lion's share
of the country's oil resources Oil Supergiant oil
field (5 billion bbl. in reserve) Other oil field
Pipeline
60 miles 60 km
DAHUK NINEVEH ARBIL SULAYMANIYAH TA'MIM NAJAF WASIT
DIYALA MUTHANNA SALAHADDIN ANBAR QADISYAH KARBALA
BABIL MAYSAN DHIQAR BASRA Kirkuk Mosul Arbil
Nasiriyah Baqubah Najaf Sulaymaniyah Karbala Hillah
Samarra Diwaniyah Fallujah Ramadi Tikrit Tall 'Afar
Kut Samawah Faisaliya Basra Amarah
Tigris River Euphrates River
SAUDI ARABIA IRAN SYRIA TURKEY JORDAN KUWAIT
BEFORE IT WAS IRAQ
• Under Ottoman rule Until WW I, Iraq was a region
divided into three provinces (vilayets), with
Shi'ite Basra in the south, Baghdad in the center
and a largely Kurdish Mosul in the north OTTOMAN
EMPIRE Persia Syrian Desert Vilayet of Mosul Vilayet
of Baghdad Vilayet of Basra British controlled
• Under British rule In the postwar division of
Ottoman territory, the provinces came under British
control, forming the borders for Iraq. It was
granted independence in 1932
Persia Turkey Protectorate of Kuwait British mandate
of Iraq French mandate of Syria
OIL RICHES Total known oil reserves by province Oil
reserves in millions of bbl. 65,810 10,000 1,000 100
Sources: Brookings Institution Iraq Index;
GlobalSecurity.org HealingIraq.blogspot.com Iraq
Revenue Watch; NASA; DigitalGlobe; LandScan/UT-Battelle
TIME Map by Kathleen Adams and Joe Lertola
Peter W. Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to
Croatia who has advised the Kurds on constitutional
issues, is the author of The End of Iraq: How
American Incompetence Created a War Without End
time com
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 