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Iraqis now talking about dividing nation
9.8.2006
By Borzou Daragahi |
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Iraqis consider separate Shiite, Sunni states
divided by Tigris. In effort to end killing, Shiite
bloc proposes using Kurd enclave as a model
BAGHDAD, Iraq - They have a new constitution,
a new government and a new military. But faced with
incessant sectarian bloodshed, Iraqis for the first
time have begun openly discussing whether the only
way to stop the violence is to remake the country
they have just built.
Leaders of Iraq's powerful Shiite Muslim political
bloc have begun aggressively promoting a radical
plan to partition the country as a way of separating
the warring sects.
Some Iraqis are even talking about dividing the
capital, with the Tigris River as a kind of Berlin
Wall.
Shiites have long advocated some sort of autonomy in
the south on par with the Kurds' 15-year-old enclave
in the north, with its own defense forces and
control over oil exploration.
And the new constitution does allow provinces to
team up into federal regions. But the latest effort,
promulgated by Cabinet ministers, clerics and
columnists, marks the first time they've advocated
regional partition as a way of stemming violence.
"Federalism will cut off all parts of the country
that are incubating terrorism from those that are
upgrading and improving," said Khudair Khuzaie, the
Shiite education minister. "We will do it just like
Kurdistan. We will put soldiers along the
frontiers."
The growing clamor for partition illustrates how
dire Iraq's security, economic and political
problems have come to seem to many Iraqis: Until
recently, Iraqis shunned the idea of redrawing the
81/2-decade-old map of Iraq as seditious.
Some of the advocates of partitioning the country
are circumspect, arguing that federalism is only one
of the tools under consideration for reducing
violence.
But others push a plan by Abdel Aziz Hakim, head of
the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq, a political party.
Hakim advocates the creation of a nine-province
district in the largely peaceful south, with 60
percent of the country's proven oil reserves.
Sunni leaders see nothing but greed in the new push
-- the Shiites, they say, are taking advantage of
the escalating violence to make an oil grab.
Iraq's oil is concentrated in the north and south,
with much of the Sunni west and northwest desolate
desert tundra, devoid of oil and gas.
"Controlling these areas will create a grand fortune
that they can exploit," said Adnan Dulaymi, a
leading Sunni Arab politician. "Their motive is that
they are thirsty for control and power."
Still, even nationalists who favor a united Iraq
acknowledge that sectarian warfare has gotten so out
of hand that even the possibility of splitting the
capital along the Tigris, which roughly divides the
city between a mostly Shiite east and a mostly Sunni
west, is being openly discussed.
"Sunnis and Shiites are both starting to feel that
dividing Baghdad will be the solution," despaired
Ammar Wajuih, a Sunni politician.
Critics scoff at the idea that any geographical
partitioning of Sunni and Shiites will make the
country any safer than it is now.
In fact, some observers warn that cutting up the
country's Arab provinces into separate religious
cantons would be as cataclysmic as the partition of
Pakistan and India in 1947.
Although growing numbers of Iraqis acknowledge that
their country is in the throes of an undeclared
civil war, a partition would "actually lead to
increasing violence and sectarian displacement,"
said Hussein Athab, a political scientist and former
lawmaker in Basra.
Critics of partitioning note that rival Shiite
militias with ties to political parties in
government not only appear to be responsible for as
much of Iraq's violence as Sunni insurgents but have
been known to turn their guns on each other.
"They're always talking about reconciliation and
rejecting violence, but in truth they're not
serious," Wajuih said. "Whenever there is a security
escalation or violence, they bring the issue of
federalism up again."
One Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, suggested that the Shiites were using the
prospect of a southern mini-state to gain other
political concessions from Sunnis, "a threat that
they wouldn't want to have to exercise" because
tearing the country asunder would be so traumatic.
A U.S. Embassy spokesperson declined to comment
publicly on an issue so volatile. But U.S.
policymakers have also begun to warm to the idea.
Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, one of the Democratic
Party's leading voices on foreign policy, began
openly advocating such a move this year.
"I think it's the only way out," says Ivan Eland, a
former Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee
staffer who is now an analyst at the Independent
Institute, an Oakland-based think tank.
"Iraq is already partitioned. Kurds don't want to be
part of it. And any central government controlled by
one group, the other groups are going to be afraid
of being oppressed by it."
"We don't want to establish a Shiite state or a
state within a state," said Mukhlis Zamel, a Shiite
lawmaker from the southern city of Nasiriyah. "But
we want to manage ourselves by ourselves."
latimes com
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