Partition is No Exit Strategy - Juan Cole
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Partition is No Exit Strategy - Juan Cole
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
San Jose Mercury News - Nov 7, 2006
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/editorial/15935571.htm
Breaking Iraq apart
PARTITIONING IRAQ MAY SOUND LIKE AN EXIT STRATEGY.
BUT IT IGNORES THE REALITIES OF THE MIDDLE EAST.
By Juan Cole
An emerging issue has made its way into the U.S. election campaign in
recent weeks: the possibility of partitioning Iraq as a way out of the
deepening quagmire there.
Politicians of both parties have increasingly cited the idea of dividing
Iraq into three distinct entities -- Shiite, Sunni Arab, and Kurd -- as an
option that should be seriously considered. For some Republicans, it has
become a way to separate themselves from President Bush's unpopular Iraq
policy; for some Democrats, it has been a way to avoid the "cut and run"
label and suggest an alternative to the current course.
But few of these candidates seem attuned to the dangerous shoals of
religion, national identity and geopolitics in the area, on which the
United States and its regional allies could well founder.
In Washington state last week, Mike McGavick, the Republican running for
the U.S. Senate who trails badly in the polls, aired a new campaign ad that
stated, "President Bush isn't getting our frustrations -- partition the
country if we have to, and get our troops home in victory." Since 60
percent of Washington voters disapprove of President Bush's handling of the
war, and a majority want U.S. troops out of Iraq yesterday, McGavick's
decision to buck his own party's leadership, which has stayed relentlessly
on point on this issue, may not be totally surprising.
But even Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, who is a shoo-in for
re-election, has begun talking about partitioning Iraq, arguing that Kurds,
Sunni Arabs, and Shiites should be able to govern themselves while sharing
in Iraq's oil revenues, though she fails to mention that the Sunni Arab
region has no oil. "Yes, it would be hard to do," she told the Texas
press, "but it would be worth trying. People say, `Well, that would
balkanize the country.' Well, things are pretty stable in the Balkans right
now. It's looking better than Iraq."
Two weeks ago, conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly asked President Bush
about dividing Iraq into three: "Kurds, autonomous region . . . Sunni
autonomous, Shia autonomous, and pay them oil revenues to stop killing each
other." Bush's reply? "I don't think that's the right way to go. I think
that will increase sectarian violence. I think that will make it more
dangerous." White House press secretary Tony Snow called the idea "a
non-starter."
Exactly who would be partitioned? The largest single group in Iraq, perhaps
60 percent of the 27 million inhabitants, are the Arab Shiites of the
south. They speak the Arabic language and believe that the Prophet Muhammad
should have been succeeded, first by his cousin and son-in-law and then by
his lineal descendants, whom they call imams. The Sunni Arabs of the
center, west and north, perhaps 17 percent of the population, also speak
Arabic. But they follow the early pope-like "caliphs," who they believe
did not need to be blood relatives of Muhammad. In 20th century Iraq, there
was no significant history of Sunni-Shiite violence until after the gulf
war.
The Kurds in the north, perhaps 18 percent, are Sunnis, but they speak an
Indo-European language at home rather than Arabic. Iraq also has Turkmens
in the north, about 3 percent of the population, and Christians, about 2
percent. The Turkmens are culturally and politically close to Turkey and
are evenly divided between Sunni and Shiite. Most of these groups are
intermingled throughout the country, despite their concentration in some
regions.
The congressional candidates who suggest partitioning Iraq seem to be
talking about creating three separate countries. That is not the concept
advanced by the first prominent advocate of some sort of decentralization,
Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del. He argued for three big ethnically homogeneous
provinces under a fairly weak federal government, which would nevertheless
try to hold the country together by keeping control of petroleum receipts
and sharing them with the provinces.
Details muddied
Biden, long the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, wrote up his plan last spring in a careful and precise way. Out
on the campaign trail, though, details are getting muddy. Rep. Harold Ford
Jr., the Democratic Senate candidate in Tennessee, said in a recent debate
with his Republican opponent, "My plan for the Iraqis is to decentralize
the three ethnic federations."
It is hard to tell, though, exactly what Ford was driving at. At the
moment, Iraq has 18 provinces, a majority of which are ethnically mixed.
There are not three ethnic "federations" to "decentralize."
The vagueness and, frankly, incoherence of some of the comments made about
splitting up Iraq by politicians on the stump suggests that they are using
the idea merely as an election-season mantra. They are putting it forward
as an exit strategy. Divide the place up and get out, they say, hoping that
if the Iraqis could not live with one another peacefully inside one
country, they will be able to do so once they are separated.
Historically, partition has not always brought peace. The partition of
Germany by the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II
provoked a nuclear standoff and nail-biting tensions for 40 years. The
British Empire in its waning days agreed in 1947 to partition colonial
India into the nations of India and Pakistan, which went on to fight
several wars and now brandish nuclear weapons at one another. The partition
of Palestine in 1948 set the stage for six Arab-Israeli wars.
The purely American context of these deliberations about the fate of a
whole Middle Eastern nation seems somewhat detached from reality. In Iraq
itself, the major proponent of new regional confederacies is Shiite cleric
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the largest bloc in parliament. He and his
allies wish to see eight or nine largely Shiite provinces join together in
a super-province or regional confederacy.
Tehran's support
Hakim is widely seen as close to Iran, and it is believed that Iran
supports the idea of a Shiite regional government. Hakim recently rammed
through parliament a law specifying the legal mechanisms for establishing
such a confederacy. The Sunni Arab bloc boycotted the vote. Should not
Americans be suspicious of a plan so warmly supported by Tehran?
No one seems to care that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the elected
leader of Iraq, firmly rejects partition and even opposes ethnic
confederacies. In his interview with O'Reilly on Fox Cable News, Bush said
of his discussions with Maliki: "On the point you brought up about
dividing the country into three, he rejected that strongly. He thought that
was a bad idea. And I agree with him."
Also opposed are the Sunni Arab parties, the traditional elite of the
country. Young Shiite nationalist leader, the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr,
insists on a strong central government. Even President Jalal Talabani, a
strong advocate for the Kurdistan regional government, rejects partition in
the rest of Iraq. "It's very dangerous for Iraq, especially the Arab part
of Iraq. Baghdad, Baquba, the mixed areas, it is not so easy to implement
this policy of ethnic cleansing. Nor Kirkuk or Mosul. There is no
possibility of accepting such kind of policy."
Talabani was pointing out that a province such as Baghdad, with 6 million
inhabitants, is ethnically mixed and could not be partitioned without
massive "ethnic cleansing." He also mentioned Kirkuk, which is a
tinderbox of sectarian and ethnic conflict. This northern oil city is a
contested territory among Turkmen, Arabs and Kurds. Were Kurds, for
instance, to attempt to expel the Turkmen and take complete possession of
Kirkuk, they would risk provoking military intervention by Turkey, which
views the Turkmens as its proteges.
Likewise, the Sunni Arabs have a claim on Kirkuk. If Iraq was partitioned,
the Sunni Arabs would be left with the arid west and center-north without
any significant oil fields of their own. Since they ruled Iraq for all of
the twentieth century, they clearly would refuse to accept such a demotion
to poverty and would mount an armed struggle for possession of Kirkuk,
which has a significant Arab population. On a very good day, Kirkuk can
pump 800,000 barrels a day of petroleum, about a third of Iraq's current
production, though ethnic warfare has impeded its exports and could do so
for years.
The neighbors of Iraq fear that the aftermath of an Iraq partition will be
a regional conflagration. Partition is strongly rejected by U.S. allies in
the region, such as Turkey (a NATO member) and Saudi Arabia. Riyadh's
ambassador in Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, warned last week that
dividing Iraq into three parts "is to envision sectarian killing on a
massive scale and the uprooting of families." He added emphatically that
Iraqis were too intermingled to be neatly divided up, and that "Those who
call for a partition of Iraq are calling for a three-fold increase in the
problems."
Some of the Saudi uneasiness about a breakup of Iraq derives from fear that
a Shiite super-province or new country in southern Iraq will fall under the
influence of the ayatollahs in Tehran. The royal family is also anxious
about what it will mean for the loyalties of the kingdom's own Shiites, who
make up 10 percent of Saudis.
Turkish opposition
Turkey's foreign minister Abdullah Gul told PBS's Charlie Rose in September
that a breakup of Iraq would be too grave for the region to bear. "Yes, a
real disaster. And it's not going to be the problem of the Iraqis. It's
going to be the region and [will mean] wars."
He urged that the option of partition be taken off the table. "We should
do everything to keep them together," he insisted. He added that the
"territorial integrity of Iraq and political unity of Iraqis" is
"essential for all of us."
Turkey's leaders fear that an independent Kurdish state would act as a
magnet for the discontents of its own Kurds, who live primarily in eastern
Anatolia near Iraqi Kurdistan, and possibly provoke the breakup of Turkey
itself. Iran entertains similar fears, having a large Kurdish population of
its own just to the west of Iraq.
American politicians who advocate breaking up Iraq, or even just the
promotion of ethnically based provinces, fail to appreciate the complexity
of the issues they are broaching. A unified Iraq is the cornerstone of the
Persian Gulf order established after World War I. If that order is
violently renegotiated as a result of the partition of Iraq, it could
guarantee decades more of violence, guerrilla wars, and still bloodier
conflicts.
[JUAN COLE is professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at
the University of Michigan. He is the author of the Weblog "Informed
Comment," at http://www.juancole.com.]
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NY.Trans...@blythe.org
Breaking Iraq apart
By Juan Cole
Details muddied
Tehran's support
Turkish opposition
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NY.Trans...@blythe.org
Breaking Iraq apart
By Juan Cole
Details muddied
Tehran's support
Turkish opposition
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