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Make Walls, Not War
23.10.2007
By Peter W. Galbraith |
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October
23, 2007
In a surge of realism, the Senate has voted 75-23 to
acknowledge that Iraq has broken up and cannot be
put back together. The measure, co-sponsored by Joe
Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate, and Sam
Brownback, Republican of Kansas, supports a plan for
Iraq to become a loose confederation of three
regions — a Kurdish area in the north, a Shiite
region in the south and a Sunni enclave in the
center — with the national government in Baghdad
having few powers other than to manage the equitable
distribution of oil revenues.
While the nonbinding measure provoked strong
reactions in Iraq and from the Bush administration,
it actually called for exactly what Iraq’s
Constitution already provides — and what is
irrevocably becoming the reality on the ground.
The Kurdish-dominated provinces in the north are
recognized in the Constitution as an existing
federal region, while other parts of Iraq can also
opt to form their own regions. Iraq’s regions are
allowed their own Parliament and president, and may
establish their own army. (Kurdistan’s army, the
peshmerga, is nearly as large as the national army
and far more capable.)
While the central government has exclusive control
over the national army and foreign affairs, regional
law is superior to national law on almost everything
else. The central government cannot even impose a
tax.
Iraq’s minimalist Constitution is a reflection of a
country without a common identity. The Shiites
believe their majority entitles them to rule, and a
vast majority of them support religious parties that
would define Iraq as a Shiite state. Iraq’s Sunni
Arabs cannot accept their country being defined by a
rival branch of Islam and ruled by parties they see
as aligned with Iran. And the Kurdish vision of Iraq
is of a country that does not include them.
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Former State Department Official, Peter Galbraith
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The absence of a shared identity is a main reason
the Bush administration has failed to construct
workable national institutions in Iraq. American
training can make Iraq’s Shiite-dominated security
forces more effective, but it cannot make them into
neutral guarantors of safety that the Sunnis can
trust. The Kurds ban the national army and police
from their territory.
In a reflection of Iraq’s deep divisions, the
country’s Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki,
and the main Sunni parties denounced the Senate vote
as a plot to partition Iraq, while Kurdish leaders,
along with a leading Shiite party, embraced the
resolution precisely because they hope it will lead
to the partition.
Senator Biden, probably the best-informed member of
Congress on Iraq, insists that loose federalism, not
partition, is his goal. He makes an analogy to
Bosnia, where the 1995 Dayton agreement has kept
that country together by devolving most functions to
ethnically defined entities. He has a point: Iraq’s
Kurdish leaders are willing to remain part of Iraq
for the time being because Kurdistan already has all
attributes of a state except international
recognition.
But over the long term, the former Yugoslavia and
the Soviet Union are better analogies to Iraq than
Bosnia. Democracy destroyed those states because, as
in Iraq, there was never a shared national identity,
and a substantial part of the population did not
want to be part of the country.
So we should stop arguing over whether we want
“partition” or “federalism” and start thinking about
how we can mitigate the consequences of Iraq’s
unavoidable breakup. Referendums will need to be
held, as required by Iraq’s Constitution, to
determine the final borders of the three regions.
There has to be a deal on sharing oil money that
satisfies Shiites and Kurds but also guarantees the
Sunnis a revenue stream, at least until the untapped
oil resources of Sunni areas are developed. And of
course a formula must be found to share or divide
Baghdad.
At the regional level, Iraq’s neighbors have to be
reconciled to the new political geography. The good
news is that partition will have the practical
effect of limiting Iran’s influence to southern Iraq
and parts of Baghdad.
Turkey, understandably angry over terrorist attacks
by a Turkish Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan
Workers Party, has in recent days threatened to
strike at the group’s sanctuaries on the Iraqi side
of the mountainous border. In general, however,
Turkey has adopted a pragmatic attitude toward the
emergence of a de facto independent Kurdistan, in
part by supporting the Turkish companies that now
provide 80 percent of the foreign investment in
Iraqi Kurdistan.
Those who still favor a centralized state like to
insist that partition would further destabilize the
country. But current events suggest otherwise.
Iraq’s most stable and democratic region is
Kurdistan. In Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, the
Americans abandoned a military strategy that
entailed working with the Shiite-dominated Iraqi
Army and instead moved to set up a Sunni militia.
The result has been gains against Al Qaeda and a
substantial improvement in local security.
Let’s face it: partition is a better outcome than a
Sunni-Shiite civil war. There is, in any event,
little alternative to partition. Iraq cannot be
reconstructed as a unitary state, and the sooner we
face up to this reality, the better.
Peter W. Galbraith, a former United States
ambassador to Croatia and the author of “The End of
Iraq,” is a principal in a company that does
consulting in Iraq and elsewhere.
nytimes com
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