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A divided Iraq just doesn't add up
4.10.2007
By Pepe Escobar
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October
4, 2007
The United States Senate in 2003 authorized
President George W Bush to illegally invade and
destroy Iraq. A horrendous quagmire and more than
half a trillion dollars later, the Senate in 2007
wants - by 75 to 23 - to split Iraq into a (very)
loose, three-region sectarian federation.
And the senators - Democrats plus a smattering of
Republicans - want Bush to force the Iraqis to agree
to what is essentially a mandate for ethnic
cleansing. It may be a non-binding resolution,
calling for a "federal system" in its sanitized
language, but this "solution" to the Iraq quagmire
couldn't be more explosive. It was passed as an
amendment to a defense policy bill last week.
Without doubt, the Senate has no authority to
promote federalism or to dismember Iraq. The Iraqi
Parliament does. The resolution in itself blows up
the myth of a "sovereign" Iraq - as if additional
proof was necessary. The Senate even managed the
feat of clashing with the White House, which says it
wants a unified Iraq. Bush would certainly veto the
measure if it ever materialized on his desk.
Eyebrows should not be raised. This is the Senate
that approved the branding of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a "terrorist
organization".
Count us out
A weak central government in Baghdad and three
super-strong, de facto autonomous regions spell only
one thing for a majority of Iraqis who harbor very
strong nationalist pride: partition. And all over
the Arab world, partition is above all synonymous
with Western imperialism.
Embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, from
the Da'wa party, is against it ("They [the US]
should stand by Iraq to solidify its unity and its
sovereignty"). Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, Grand
Ayatollah Sistani's man in holy Karbala, is against
it ("It's a step toward the breakup of Iraq"). It's
fair to assume he is expressing Sistani's position.
The powerful Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars is
against it - stressing that the breakup of Iraq has
always been a prime motive behind the US invasion.
Influential Sunni cleric Harith al-Dhari even
accused Maliki of a plot to break up Iraq. Nine
political parties and party blocs - Sunni and
Shi'ite alike - vowed to pass a law banning any
sectarian split.
Hashim Taie, from the Iraqi Accord Front, the main
Sunni party, is against it ("We refuse resolutions
which decide Iraq's destiny from outside Iraq. This
is a dangerous partitioning based on sectarianism
and ethnicity.")
Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's parliamentary
leader, Nasr al-Rubaie, is against it ("This project
is the strategic option for the American
administration in its failure to ignite a sectarian
war inside Iraq. They started to search for a
replacement [strategy], which is to divide Iraq.")
Sadrists, contrary to US myth, are not sectarians,
but in favor of a strong national government. They
maintain that a provincial balance of power will be
debated, but only after total US withdrawal.
Even the US Embassy in the heart of the Green Zone
is against it ("Our goal in Iraq remains ... a
united, democratic, federal Iraq that can govern,
defend and sustain itself.") That's about the only
time ever that the US Embassy has agreed with the
Sadrists.
It's obvious that were partition to be approved, all
the oil wealth would be controlled by Kurds and
Shi'ites. Sunnis would be left with loads of desert
sand. That would be a recipe for endless war. A
recent ABC/BBC poll tells it all: only 9% of Iraqis
polled are in favor of partition. This means even
Kurds have some misgivings.
What's in it for us?
The Kurds - faithful US allies, like the president
of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Massoud
Barzani - mostly loved the Senate resolution. No
wonder. Kurdistan, with its three provinces, is
virtually an independent country already. Its
relations with Baghdad are minimal.
With the US's Shi'ite allies the picture is much
more nuanced. The Senate resolution happens to be
the Supreme Iraq Islamic Council's (SIIC's) plan
almost verbatim. Its author is Abdul Aziz al-Hakim,
the SIIC's leader, currently in Iran undergoing
cancer treatment. His original plan - establishing
an eight-province Shi'iteistan - was approved by a
simple parliamentary majority (with minimum quorum)
in October 2006. It will not be implemented before
mid-2008. For the Iraqi street (not the elite),
Sunni and Shi'ite alike, the fact that the US Senate
and the SIIC want the same thing for Iraq says
everything there is to know about where true
alliances lie.
As'ad Sultan Abu Kalal, the governor of Najaf
province (from the SIIC), predictably likes it. Vice
President Adil Abdul Mahdi (also from the SIIC) at
first was against it. Then he (slightly) changed
his mind, saying that a model for Iraq would be the
United Arab Emirates, which is a loose association
of relatively autonomous sheikdoms. But anyway, that
"wouldn't fit" Iraq.
The Gulf Cooperation Council, which groups six
Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms, is against it. The
toothless Arab League is against it - accusing the
US of destroying Iraq and offering it to al-Qaeda.
Yemen is also against it. US ally Saudi Arabia has
been mute.
Meanwhile, in Tehran, Major General Yahya Rahim
Safavi, former leader of the IRGC and recently
promoted to special advisor on military affairs to
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Iraq is
bound to be broken up into a federal government
anyway, and the US will keep military bases in the
country for years.
Does it ring a Bell?
US senators seem to be sufficiently ignorant of the
Middle East not to see that partition would set the
region on fire. Turkey - a US ally - would be
terrified by too much autonomy for Iraqi Kurds (who
would be encouraged to help their Kurdish brothers
inside Turkey). Saudi Arabia would be alarmed at
Iraqi Shi'ites controlling their own, resource-rich,
mini-state and enjoying very close relations with
Iran.
The Iraqi daily Az-Zaman was close to the mark,
noting that for the US, Iraq is and will remain a
"vassal state". A weak, dismembered Iraq makes sense
only in a scenario of the US exercising control,
directly or indirectly, meddling in "sovereign"
decisions, keeping its "invisible" military bases
and profiting from Blackwater USA and assorted
mercenaries' services till kingdom come.
Iraq as we know it is a product of Western
colonialism. It was invented as a country by
Gertrude Bell, T E Lawrence and Harry St John Philby,
and established as a Hashemite kingdom in 1921. Very
few people know that shortly before she invented her
country, Bell met Sayyid Hasan al-Sadr, the
great-grandfather of Muqtada al-Sadr and the key
religious leader at the time.
That's when she finally got the whole picture. She
knew this new kingdom would inevitably turn out be a
Shi'ite-led theocracy. But that's not what British
imperialism wanted. They wanted to control Iraq's
oil fields in the north. So Bell came up with the
perfect scheme: rule by a Sunni minority, the
Shi'ites excluded from power and the Kurds denied
their own state. She also knew this fabricated Iraq
would never be a democracy.
Whatever imperialist machinations, the fact is that
Iraq, over these almost 90 years, has been
constituted into a nation - at least for Sunnis and
Shi'ites. National pride is an essential trait of
the Iraqi character. Partition could be the US
scenario towards the Korea model. This means
military bases on the ground for decades. It also
means - unlike Korea - endless war, because the
Sunni Arab resistance (as well as Muqtada's Mahdi
Army) will never give up.
Partition could also lead to a Vietnam model. A
unified Iraqi resistance eventually wins (it already
has almost total popular appeal), topples the
government in Baghdad and the US is forced to
perform a humiliating remix of the helicopters
abandoning Saigon in 1975.
The kingdom, then state, created by Bell is no more.
Saddam Hussein was basically perpetuating what had
been invented in the 1920s. When Bush's troops
invaded in 2003, they destroyed not only the regime
but the whole state. Bell was indeed a visionary.
Liberal democracy in Iraq is virtually impossible.
The Shi'ite-led theocracy that British imperialism
tried to prevent in the 1920s is back with a
vengeance.
But for the moment, all the horrors built into the
Bush administration's disaster in Iraq have been
able to engender above all a truly horrific process:
ongoing, slow-motion ethnic cleansing. Kurdistan
will be populated almost exclusively by Kurds.
Sunnistan will be poor and resentful, with no oil,
and sprinkled with US military bases. Baghdad will
be an overwhelmingly Shi'ite city (it used to be
majority-Sunni). And Shi'iteistan will be a wealthy
beacon of the Shi'ite revival all over the majority
Sunni Middle East. This will all be accomplished by
overlapping ethnic cleansing.
Now let's see whether any senators are able to at
least begin to comprehend the weight of all these
implications.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How
the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War
(Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
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