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As violence escalates, so does talk of a
divided Iraq
11.9.2006 |
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An idea to redraw the map to give religious and
ethnic groups more autonomy gains traction in Iraq
and US.
WASHINGTON – In Iraq's Kurdish north
(Kurdistan), the
Iraqi flag no longer flies alongside the Kurdish
banner on public buildings - the president- dent of
the largely autonomous Kurdistan region has banned
it.
And in Baghdad, Shiite politicians last week
introduced legislation defining how the sectarian-riven
country could eventually be divided into autonomous
regions - including a powerful and oil-rich Shiite
region in the south.
Following recent fighting between Iraqi government
forces and the militia of Shiite powerhouse Moqtada
al-Sadr, the steps suggest a further spiraling
toward at least a semiautonomous confederacy, if not
a complete dissolution of the country.
A small but apparently growing number of Iraq
experts believe dissolution of the country is
inevitable. Others say a united and nominally
democratic Iraq may still be possible, but suggest
other solutions - including a redrawn Iraq - would
eventually make the Middle East more stable. Still
others say the US should face reality and help
create the new Iraq that is already splintering
along sectarian and ethnic lines.
But where many specialists agree is that the Bush
administration is not planning ahead sufficiently
for the curveballs that continuing sectarian and
religious conflict might have in store for the US in
terms of Iraq's final architecture.
"Of course we should be planning, and not just for
Plan B but Plans C, D, E, and F, and maybe G and H,
but I see very little sign we're doing that," says
Ralph Peters, a retired Army intelligence officer
and Middle East specialist who consults on regional
policy. "They've gone through the motions of
war-gaming some alternative scenarios, but they're
not serious about it, and that's because they are
still convinced this [Iraq project] is going to
work."
Even some Iraqis insist the recent suggestions of a
gradual slide toward a divided country are being
given too much weight. Some Kurdish leaders,
including Iraq president Jalal Talabani, say the
banishing of the black-star-studded, green, white,
and red Iraqi flag is designed to pressure the
government to make good on a promised replacement of
a banner that is associated with Saddam Hussein.
And some Shiite politicians say the legislation on
regions would merely define a provision that is
already contained in the new Iraqi constitution
approved by referendum last year.
But Mr. Peters says that's the point: that steps
being taken now are merely fulfilling the direction
the Iraqi people chose with a series of votes over
the past year.
"The voters did what we didn't have the courage to
do, their voting divided Iraq," he says, pointing to
voting that was overwhelmingly along ethnic and
sectarian lines. "The question now is whether [Iraq]
can continue as a loose confederation - or will it
officially break up? We need to be prepared for all
of that."
That may be true now, but some experts say the
option of a united Iraq - which remained viable
after Hussein's fall - may have been doomed by
subsequent American action, including empowerment of
the Shiites at the expense of the Sunni elite.
"What we're seeing now may be signs of things to
come, but that wasn't so much inevitable as it is a
result of our actions," says Michael Hudson, a
professor of Arab studies at Georgetown University
in Washington.
An Iraqi confederacy with a weak Sunni enclave
sandwiched between oil-rich Kurdish regions to the
north and Shiite regions to the south is a "recipe
for endless trouble," he says. As far back as 2002,
before the Iraq war, he says the late Lebanese Prime
Minister Rafik Hariri warned him in a conversation
about the repercussions of such an outcome.
One worst-case scenario for the US - and perhaps the
global economy - is that an autonomous Shiite region
in the south could embolden the Shiite minority in
Saudi Arabia's north, a significant petroleum
region, to press for its own autonomy, or even to
join with its Iraqi brethren to the north.
Worries over this kind of scenario, Peters says,
caused the US to dismiss the breakup of Iraq after
the war - the very thing that may be happening now,
he says, though more haphazardly. "At the time of
Operation Iraqi Freedom the best solution was to
break up Iraq," he says, "but the Bush
administration didn't pursue it because the Saudis,
among others, absolutely didn't want it."
Peters has raised hackles across the Arab and Muslim
worlds in recent months with a proposal for
redrawing the post-colonial-era borders of the
Middle East. Many experts are critical of such a
top-to-bottom redo, including Georgetown's Mr.
Hudson, who says it is reminiscent of a Zionist plan
of the early 20th century to create many small and
unthreatening Arab states.
Peters says his plan would simply follow the ethnic
and sectarian contours of the region, and thus over
time result in greater stability.
As for Iraq, it may actually take a division into
ethnic regions - and outside help to facilitate that
- to save the country, some experts say. Already Sen.
Joseph Biden (D) of Delaware, seconded by Council on
Foreign Relations President Emeritus Leslie Gelb, is
calling for Iraq to be divided into Shiite, Sunni,
and Kurdistan regions that would provide their own
security but share oil revenue -and leave foreign
policy to a central government.
Another proposal, from Michael O'Hanlon of the
Brookings Institution in Washington, calls for the
US to accept that its project for a "multiethnic
democracy" in Iraq may no longer be viable. In its
place the US should consider facilitating voluntary
sectarian and ethnic relocation, he says, as a means
of short-circuiting a long and potentially genocidal
civil war.
Any ideas to mold Iraq may remain just that, since
the period of the US dictating what happens in the
country has largely passed, analysts say.
Hudson notes that it has been suggested, though
certainly facetiously, that if the US is set on
seeing Iraq remain united, it should switch sides in
the civil conflict and champion the Sunni
insurgents, since they may be the strongest force
opposing Iraq's division.
Short of that, he adds, the US might be best off
leaving the fight and letting the Iraqis decide what
they really want. "Maybe we need to let things play
out," he says. "If we're out of there, the Iraqis
might be forced to start talking sense to each other
- and to find out if they are irretrievably
sectarian or not."
The Christian Science Monitor
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