Quote Originally Posted by charter6 View Post
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.