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Partition Iraq? 'Plan Z' the soft
partition
19.6.2007
By Stephen Schwartz
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June
19, 2007
On Monday, June 18, some of Washington's "usual
suspects" in the controversy over the Mesopotamian
war assembled at the invitation of Sen. Joseph Biden,
the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, and George Washington
University professor Amitai Etzioni. The topic for
debate was the so-called "plan Z" for Iraq, which
Biden has embraced and which calls for a "soft
partition" of that country.
With Etzioni moderating, the participants were ten
representatives of Beltway culture. I was the only
speaker who did not condemn neoconservatism, lash
out at President George W. Bush, or declare the Iraq
war unwinnable. Other commentators included Michael
O'Hanlon of Brookings, Marina Ottaway from the
Carnegie Endowment, and two prominent
neo-isolationists, Ivan Eland of the Independent
Institute and Christopher Preble of the Cato
Institute. The Senate hearing room was, to put it
simply, filled with the atmosphere of "cut and run."
As redacted by Etzioni in a paper titled "Plan Z:
For a Community Based Security Plan for Iraq," the
Biden proposal calls for a "high devolution state"
in Mesopotamia. Iraq would be broken up into
districts with Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shia
majorities, and such considerable local control as
to render the Iraqi national state almost
nonexistent. The Etzioni paper included a number of
statements to which I objected, based on my own
consultations with Iraqi Arab (both Shia and Sunni)
and Kurdish intellectuals and clerics, as well my
experience in the former Yugoslavia.
Bosnia-Herzegovina, thanks to the Dayton Agreement
of 1995, was repeatedly invoked as a success story
for partition.
Decentralization of political power is hardly a
novelty in global politics-note the recent
pro-independence vote in Scotland-and there are
obviously worse options for Iraq. But the Biden
"solution" is problematical. It uses federalization
as a pretext for a partition that, even if in "soft"
form, would be an incentive for more, not less,
bloodshed. Oil, too often cited, is not the only
issue in Iraq on which distinct religious and ethnic
communities are at odds. Land and water resources
are objects of rivalry. Mixed families and villages
would be even more violently divided by partition,
exacting psychological injuries for generations to
come. The intentional uprooting of communities is
simply forced relocation.
Supporters of "Plan Z" write in a carefree manner
about "voluntary ethnic relocation" in Iraq, but no
community in history has voluntarily accepted
relocation.
The Biden-Etzioni sketch presents an Iraq in which
all groups-Arab Sunnis, the long-oppressed Shia
majority, the Kurds -are viewed as sharing equal
responsibility for the crisis of the state. But
national identity and sectarianism cannot be judged
as if they were neutral phenomena. The division in
Iraq is primarily a consequence of a long period of
domination by Arab Sunnis.
As exemplified by the Iraqi Kurds, nationalist and
religious-identity movements can establish stability
on the territories they inhabit when the community
is homogeneous, its demands are perceived as largely
resolved, and the community feels itself to be
"masters in its own house." Conflict may then be
mainly avoided, as in Québec, Catalonia, or
Slovenia.
It is for this reason that in Iraqi Kurdistan, as
noted in the Etzioni document, "according to Major
General Benjamin Mixon . . . because Kurdish areas
are patrolled by Kurdish troops, 'there's no need'
for an American presence in Kurdistan." I would add
that Saudi-financed Wahhabi terror in Kurdistan, led
by the so-called Ansar al-Islam, was handily
defeated by the Kurds.
"Plan Z", however, would encourage Sunni radicals,
Shia militias, and Kurdish combatants to press for
full control over the areas in which they claim a
majority constituency. Many participants in the
panel took the position that since bad things have
already happened, there is no way to stop them. But
that ethnic expulsions, segregation of neighborhoods,
formation of uncontrolled militias, and other
atrocities have taken place in many parts of Iraq
does not mean that they should be legitimized. They
should not. Where one group has committed injustice
over a long period, that injustice should be
recognized and rectified. Where another group has
demanded enhanced autonomy over its affairs, that
call should be heeded. A short-term appearance of
peace through appeasement of radicals who have
committed ghastly atrocities is not a solution.
The Biden plan includes other ill-advised novelties.
It suggests that tax income be radically devolved
from the central authority in Baghdad to new,
ethnically- or religiously-pure districts. Tax
"repatriation" may work in some countries, but in
Iraq there are serious dangers of increased
corruption in enhanced local-authority income.
The plan also calls for rigorous regional border
control, with residents of one district barred from
entry into any other.
This can only lead to dissolution and hard, not
soft, partition. Even the so-called "Serbian
Republic" in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which maintains a
separate political administration, does not impose
such border checkpoints, although the illegal
Serbian zone north of Mitrovica in Kosovo does.
Internal border controls requiring interregional or
interprovincial checkpoints exist in no other
"normal" country and would not contribute to the
normalization of Iraq.
In a truly bizarre excursus, the Etzioni document
states that the now twice-bombed golden-domed Shia
shrine at Samarra should be left in the hands of
Sunnis, since they are a majority in the Samarra
area. A week after the second assault on the shrine,
one must ask how this could make sense. Sunnis will
not honor, protect, or refurbish the shrine, which,
by the way, is supposed to be rebuilt by UNESCO.
From the Shia perspective, to hand it over to the
Sunnis for reconstruction or security would be a
flagrant provocation-entrusting a religious treasure
to the vandals intent on destroying it.
Etzioni has suggested that in Iraq the U.S. should
"separate both warring parties without 'tilting'
towards one or the other." This merely recapitulates
the false policy of moral equivalence pursued by
Europe in reaction to the Yugoslav wars, especially
in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Failure to recognize
responsibility for aggression and terrorism rewards
aggression and terrorism. Serbs attacked
Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bosnians did not attack Serbia.
Sunni terrorism is the main problem in Iraq now, and
is supported by Wahhabi extremists in Saudi Arabia
and elsewhere. When Sunni terrorists die in Iraq,
their pictures and biographies appear in Saudi
media. Notwithstanding Iranian assistance to and
incitement of the Shia militias, to suggest moral
equivalency between the Sunni terrorists and the
Shia majority is to send the wrong message to the
mainly-Shia Iraqi government and people: that the
United States is prepared to abandon them. It is
also the wrong message to send to Sunni radicals:
that the U.S. is ready to placate them.
Etzioni noted that Biden "in an article comparing
Iraq to Bosnia, advocates a three-region solution."
The de facto partition imposed by the Dayton Accords
was not and is not a solution. Bosnia-Herzegovina is
an impoverished country prevented from achieving a
level of reconstruction and success comparable to
that in Croatia. It even, incredibly enough, lags
behind Kosovo in some respects. Success is not
measured simply by the end of violence. It must also
be based on the rehabilitation of society. On that
score, the international community has badly failed
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. There is no
possibility in sight of curtailment of the foreign
military presence in Kosovo.
Finally, the Biden plan argues that the Iraqi Arab
Sunnis need to be convinced that either present
Iraqi governance or "soft partition" is in their
best interests. In fact, Iraqi Sunni radicals need
to be convinced that Saudi Arabia, mainly, along
with the international Wahhabi movement and Syria,
will no longer supply them with finances,
volunteers, and easy entry into Iraq for terrorism.
That is essentially a matter of U.S. relations with
Riyadh and Damascus.
Ultimately, such policies cannot be decided from
inside the Beltway. The future of Iraq remains with
the Iraqis. It is somewhat strange to see experts in
a place once identified with "realism" and the
status quo, and now, often enough, with a critique
of neoconservative democratization, suddenly embrace
a plan for the partition of Iraq. Take it from
someone who has spent 20 years involved with
ex-Yugoslavia: partition is potentially more radical
and destructive than democratization would ever be.
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