The argument to partition Iraq

[SteveMetz]

Here's the reason partition can't work: There are no logical borders.

People look at the big chunk of Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north and figure that it makes sense to cut the country into three, but it doesn't quite work that way.

1. Baghdad: What the heck do you do about Baghdad? 2 million Shia in Sadr City alone, but if any sort of partition is going to work Baghdad has to be in Sunni-land.

2. Karbala and Najaf: Karbala especially is real far north, but both'd have to be incorporated into a Shia state -- no way Hakim or Sistani would accept losing the historical center of Shia Islam, or the tourism revenue from all the pilgrims.

3. Kirkuk: Neither Sunni Arab nor Kurd are going to accept a real partition without Kirkuk being in their zone. It's already a pain in the neck of an issue -- it'll only get worse if you start talking real partition.

4. Coast-lines: You're cutting of the Kurds and the Sunni from the sea. That leaves a Kurdistan at the mercy of Turkey and Iran for everything, and a Sunni-stan at the mercy of Syria. The only route for oil out of Iraq that doesn't pass down to the Gulf is overland through Turkey. Turkey probably wouldn't allow an independent Kurdistan to use their pipeline, and that's assuming Ankara doesn't just invade. They'd want to make sure that the Kurds didn't grow powerful enough to destabilize Dyarbikir.

5. Ethnic minorities: However you draw the map, you have significant ethnic minorities in each area. People also forget to talk about groups like the Turkomen. If we split off a Sunni-stan, suddenly they're a big chunk of the population of that new state; or at least a much higher percentage than they are in Iraq right now. The ethnic tension isn't going to disappear, it's just going to be devolved down to lower levels of minorities.

Baghdad is currently self partitioning. Perhaps it could be an independent free city under international administration. Mosul is actually more of a problem than Kirkuk. If there was a program to share oil revenues, who actually administers Kirkuk becomes fairly unimportant. I think they US would have to retain a major presence in Kurdistan, particularly along its borders. Other pipelines could be built. Iraq's access to the sea is pretty limited anyway. This really struck me while standing on the docks at Um Qasr in 2003.

[Tom Odom]

Baghdad is currently self partitioning. Perhaps it could be an independent free city under international administration. Mosul is actually more of a problem than Kirkuk. If there was a program to share oil revenues, who actually administers Kirkuk becomes fairly unimportant. I think they US would have to retain a major presence in Kurdistan, particularly along its borders. Other pipelines could be built. Iraq's access to the sea is pretty limited anyway. This really struck me while standing on the docks at Um Qasr in 2003.

I see Steve as closest to the mark with the point that Baghdad has self-partioned. That was our assessment on 1990: that a fragmented Iraq was the most likely outcome of any march on Baghdad. I feared as much in 2003 and said so. Now I would say to you is that it matters not what we as Western outsiders want to happen. What does matter is what the "Iraqis" want to happen. In the circumstances of today, inaction on their part is action, meaning that a neutral stance toward survival of the state is not really neutral. It is pro-fragmentation. I also see culture playing a strong role in that regard; Arab and Muslim cultures are fatalistic in accepting what happens as fate. The tendency to talk about about as it happens versus actively influence what does happen is strong. None of this in any case implies a nice, neat solution--which is where I see the proponents of partition going astray. It has not been pretty so far and it is not likely to get in prettier in the near to mid-term.

Best

Tom

[SteveMetz]

I see Steve as closest to the mark with the point that Baghdad has self-partioned. That was our assessment on 1990: that a fragmented Iraq was the most likely outcome of any march on Baghdad. I feared as much in 2003 and said so. Now I would say to you is that it matters not what we as Western outsiders want to happen. What does matter is what the "Iraqis" want to happen. In the circumstances of today, inaction on their part is action, meaning that a neutral stance toward survival of the state is not really neutral. It is pro-fragmentation. I also see culture playing a strong role in that regard; Arab and Muslim cultures are fatalistic in accepting what happens as fate. The tendency to talk about about as it happens versus actively influence what does happen is strong. None of this in any case implies a nice, neat solution--which is where I see the proponents of partition going astray. It has not been pretty so far and it is not likely to get in prettier in the near to mid-term.

Best

Tom

I think we need to get on board and support the idea of reestablishing the "caliphate." But we need to tell the militants that it will not be the Abbasid one, but the more historically terminous one: the Ottoman caliphate. Then let them chew on that.

[Jedburgh]

Foreign Service Journal, Mar 08: After the Surge: Toward an 18-State Federation

....We should not perpetuate the fiction that there are military, regional or economic solutions to a problem that is fundamentally one of internal Iraqi political structure and identification. Nor should we assume that an Iraq consisting of a Shiite-dominated core with a semi-independent Kurdistan and a marginalized Sunnistan will eventually be stable. The current political program for Iraq is to attempt to garner concessions from the Shiite government on behalf of Sunnis. The very nature of this process perpetuates and hardens the ethnic divisions that are at the heart of the dysfunction in the Iraqi state.

The only viable prospect for a unified and stable Iraq at present is to change the political framework so that the basic organizing principle is 18-state federalism. Thisironically, is where Amb. Bremer was headed with his caucus system in the fall of 2003, before the plan was aborted. It is not clear whether it would have worked then, but it is doubtful that anything else will work now. The structure of the Iraqi state must change fundamentally in order to break up ethnicity as the country’s core organizing concept......

[Rex Brynen]

Reidar Visser, Debating Devolution in Iraq, Middle East Report Online,
March 10, 2008

Arguably, though, the greatest problem for the Iraqi centrists is what may be termed “Bush’s Biden policy.” While Washington speaks an admirable language of fidelity to strong central government, in practice it consistently extends material and moral support to the opposite camp, the ethno-federalists that share Biden’s vision for Iraq.

...

Conversely, Washington maintains little or no contact with representatives of the centrist trend whose vision for the future is far more compatible with the long-standing stated objective of US policy: a unified, multi-ethnic Iraq.