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Iraq: Is a "Three-state solution" Viable?
28.7.2006 |
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The level of sectarian
violence in Iraq has escalated in recent weeks,
leading to hundreds of deaths and thousands of
displaced persons and families. To quell the
bloodshed, some are pointing to a proposal made
three years ago to separate the country into three
autonomous regions: Kurds in the north, Sunnis in
the center, and Shiites in the south. With the three
groups separated, the presumption is that peace
might have a chance to prevail in the troubled
country.
This 'three-state solution' was first proposed in an
op-ed published in The New York Times by Leslie
Gelb, President Emeritus and Board Senior Fellow of
the Council on Foreign Relations on Nov. 25, 2003.
In the U.K.'s Sunday Times (July 15) columnist Peter
Galbraith agreed with the plan: "The partition of
Iraq into separate Kurdish, Sunni and Shi'ite areas
is the only route to peace. There is no good
solution to the mess in Iraq. The country has broken
up. The United States cannot put it back together
again and cannot stop the civil war. The
conventional wisdom holds that Iraq's break-up would
be destabilizing and should be avoided at all costs.
Looking at Iraq's dismal history since Britain
cobbled it together from three Ottoman provinces at
the end of the first world war, it should be
apparent that it is the effort to hold Iraq together
that has been destabilizing.
"Pursuit of a coerced unity under Sunni-Arab
domination — from the first British-installed king
to the end of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship in
2003 — has led to endless violence, repression and
genocide. If the Shi'ite south forms a region, it
can set up a theocratic government and establish a
regional guard. Iran will be the dominant power and
the Bush administration has no ability, and no
intention, of countering Iran's position there.
These are not welcome developments but they need not
be catastrophic. For the United States and the
world's Shi'ites (including the Iranians) have a
common interest in defeating Al-Qaeda and its
kindred Sunni fundamentalist movements.
"In sum: partition works as a political solution for
Kurdistan, the Shi'ite south and the Sunni Arab
center because it formalizes what has already taken
place. By contrast, the American effort to build a
unified state with a non-sectarian, non-ethnic
police and army has not produced that result nor
made much progress towards it."
Former Australian deputy prime minister Tim Fischer
concurred with this view in an interview published
in Australia's Melbourne Herald Sun (July 25):
"Likewise, it's inevitable the U.S. is going to have
to realize there's going to be an effective de facto
partition in Iraq: Kurdistan in the north, Sunni in
the central west, and Shia in the eastern and
southern parts of Iraq."
New Zealands's Scoop.co.nz (July 27) carried an
article written by political commentator William
Rivers Pitt with the headline, 'It has come down to
this': "'Sectarian Break-Up of Iraq Is Now
Inevitable, Admit Officials,' read the headline from
Monday's U.K. Independent. 'Iraq as a political
project is finished,' a senior government official
was quoted as saying, continued the report, adding:
'The parties have moved to plan B.' He said that the
Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at
ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the
future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed
population. 'There is serious talk of Baghdad being
divided into (Shia) east and (Sunni) west,' he
said."
Warning of the serious consequences for failing to
provide a solution to the current conundrum, the
U.K.'s KurdishMedia.com (July 16) stated: "The
country is geographically and ethno-religiously
divided into three: Sunni Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and
Shi'i Arabs, with Turkoman and Christian minorities.
The present endemic violence has a strong chance of
boiling over into civil warfare if a federation or
confederation is imposed on terms not acceptable to
all three major groups."
Discussions of the three-state solution have sparked
feelings of unease in a neighboring country.
According to Lebanon's Daily Star (July 3): "Syria
fears any partition of Iraq, whether along sectarian
or ethnic lines, because of the threat this might
pose to its own sectarian and ethnically diverse
population."
Venezuela's Petroleumworld.com (Jan. 23) posited:
"The U.S. has long supported the concept of
breakaway states — Kurdish and Shia — in Iraq.
Iraq's new constitution, sponsored by the U.S., was
drafted with this in mind. Unfortunately, a two or
three state solution in Iraq would destabilize Iraq
and the region. Turkey and Saudi Arabia would almost
surely intervene in Iraq to deter the Kurds and the
Shia."
However, not all in Iraq are convinced that a
descent into civil war leading to partition is
inevitable. KurdishMedia.com (July 27) carried an
interview with a leading Kurdish politician: "As
violence continues to ravage Baghdad and other parts
of the country, [Kurdistan Regional Government]
Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said he does not
believe Iraq has descended into a civil war. 'The
fight is over Baghdad,' he said, 'This is the
problem that is happening. Yes, we are facing
serious problems in Baghdad, especially between the
Shiites and the Sunnis, but I cannot call it a civil
war.' Barzani said he does not believe the violence
will spill over into the Kurdistan Region because
there are no sectarian problems here.
"At a time when Iraq looks ready to split apart, Mr.
Barzani said although the Kurdish people would like
their own state, the Kurdistan Region is not seeking
statehood. 'Sometimes it is important for people to
differentiate between dreams and what is the reality
on the ground,' he said. But he would not rule out
seeking an independent state in the future, saying
only that at this stage, it was not in the interest
of the Kurdish people."
When it was first proposed back in late 2003, Gelb's
three-state solution was not favorably received in
the region.
Writing in Qatar's Al-Jazeerah (Jan. 3, 2004),
veteran journalist Robert Fisk excoriated the plan:
"In no less an organ than The New York Times — the
same paper which carried a plea last year that
Americans should accept that U.S. troops will commit
'atrocities' in Iraq — appeared Gelb's 'Three State
Solution,' an astonishing combination of simplicity
and ruthlessness. It goes like this: America should
create three mini-states in Iraq — Kurds in the
north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south
— the frontiers of these three entities drawn along
ethnic, sectarian lines. The 'general idea,' said
Gelb, 'is to strengthen the Kurds and Shiites and
weaken the Sunnis.' Thus U.S. forces can extricate
themselves from the quagmire of the 'Sunni triangle'
while the 'troublesome and domineering' Sunnis
themselves — with no control over Iraq's northern or
southern oil fields — will be in a more moderate
frame of mind.
"True, the chopping up of Iraq might be 'a messy and
dangerous enterprise' — tens of thousands of Iraqis,
after all, would be thrown out of their homes and
pushed across new frontiers — but Washington should,
if necessary, impose partition by force. This is the
essence of the Gelb plan."
The plan was 'damned with faint praise' by Egypt's
Al-Ahram Weekly Online (Dec. 4-10, 2003): "But it
should not go unnoticed that in recent weeks some
senior American analysts have been suggesting
breaking up Iraq into three entities. In a recent
article in The New York Times, top analyst Leslie
Gelb suggested a three-state solution: Kurds in the
north, Sunnis in the center and Shi'ites in the
south. The general idea, he wrote, is to strengthen
the Kurds and Shi'ites and weaken the Sunnis, then
wait and see whether to stop at autonomy or
encourage statehood. This three-state solution is
the only viable strategy and it is manageable, even
necessary, because it would allow Washington to find
Iraq's future in its natural but denied past, he
wrote. It is not clear, however, if such scenarios
are figments of a fertile imagination or yet another
blueprint being drawn up by Washington's
decision-making bodies."
In Hong Kong's Asia Times (May 12, 2004) an op-ed
piece by Sadi Baig mocked the proposed solution:
"Some conservative leaders are already talking about
a three-state solution. The U.S. and subsequently
the United Nations plan is designed to engineer a
divide by having a president and two vice
presidents, each representing the three divisions of
Kurd, Shi'ite and Sunni. A U.S. equivalent of it
will be to have a white president with two vice
presidents, one African-American, and the other a
Latino. The U.N.-sponsored solution will not be very
different than the weakly federated states of the
Balkans that are held together by U.N. and North
Atlantic Treaty Organization forces."
Also in the Asia Times (Nov. 27, 2003) in an article
titled 'Three from one doesn't add up,' Nir Rosen
wrote: "An Iraqi population already skeptical of
American motives would view any suggestion of
further division as proof of a nefarious scheme to
divide and plunder their country. Sunnis and
Shi'ites would all take up arms and the resistance
would be universal. There is no Sunni or Shi'ite
Iraqi who wants to divide his country. The Kurds of
Iraq are of course a separate ethnic group. However,
they have participated in united opposition
movements before the war, the reconstruction efforts
after the war and are represented in the IGC by both
major Kurdish parties. Even the Iraqi foreign
minister is Kurdish. During Saddam's reign and
before, many Kurds actually cooperated with the
regime, serving as ministers and officers and even
fighting the rebel brethren.
"Gelb, like all conscientious observers, is seeking
a just solution for the debacle that poor planning
(as well as poor justification) caused in Iraq. The
solution is to build a strong united Iraq. This can
be done by empowering the IGC, by establishing a
constitution that protects against dictatorship and
the domination of the country by one group, by
returning sovereignty to Iraqis as soon as possible,
and by avoiding the imposition of Washington based
ideologies that are disconnected from the reality of
Iraq."
A highly pessimistic view of the plan was expressed
in Iraq's Al-Basrah.net (March 10, 2005): "One of
the original aims of the U.S. occupation of Iraq was
to weaken and divide a state that served as a focus
of power in the Arab East. Outlined in articles such
as 'The Three State Solution' by Leslie Gelb in The
New York Times of Nov. 25, 2003, the partition of
Iraq along sectarian lines has been a constant in
U.S. occupation policy.
"When the U.S. installed a puppet regime, it
assigned seats along religious lines. In the recent
sham 'election' the U.S. facilitated Kurdish
chauvinists in northern Iraq to flood the city of
Kirkuk with outside voters, provoking ethnic discord
between Kurds on the one side, and Arabs and Turkmen
on the other. Meanwhile the U.S. occupation forces
have incorporated large numbers of Shi'i chauvinist
Badr Brigade gunmen in their puppet police and
so-called 'national guard' and used sectarian
preachers to incite such fighters against defiant
Iraqi Resistance fighters in al-Fallujah."
Taking the opposite position, and positing that
partition would actually be a positive development,
security analyst Michael Clarke in the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation's CBC.ca (Feb 1, 2004)
said: "… and then we start to move towards a three
state solution, because the Sunnis, in the Sunni
Triangle, are desperately frightened of Shia
domination. And the Sunnis want some autonomy and
some guarantees of safety in the new Iraq. But they
won't settle for anything less than the Kurds in the
north have had for the last ten years. Under the
protection of the no-fly zone, the Kurdish area has
enjoyed a great deal of autonomy.
"So what you've got in Iraq is a majority Shia
population who want to assert their natural
democratic rights as the majority, a Sunni minority
who want guarantees, no less sensitive and important
than those guarantees which the Kurds have received.
That means that you've got a natural three state
solution starting to emerge."
Worldpress org
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