It seems that Iraq is bound to break up into three political entities. Kurdistan is one. How would the Sunny and Shi’ite partitions be designated (I was about to say “christened” 
) ? Has any name emerged yet ?
How about “Screwedistan” instead of Kurdistan? Cause no matter what happens, those guys are gonna get screwed bad.
Freedonia, Latveria and Islandia.
Iraq will NEVER be partitioned. To do so would require the creation of a homeland for the Kurds, which Turkey will never permit, as it would put pressure on Turkey to cede land to the new Kurdistan.
Similarly, attempting to partition the majority Sunni areas away from the majority Shi’ite areas will invite Iran to acquire their philosophical brethren, which the United States would never allow.
As stupid as the creation of the country was in the first place, it gets even harder to correct the stupidity now. <sigh>
Just lump the Kurds in with the Sunnis. They’re Sunni too, just not the same group that people are normally talking about when they say “Sunnis.” The Kurds will probably still get screwed, but as you said Turkey will make sure that that happens one way or another.
By that logic, we should have the nation of Catholica stretching from the US’ southern border all the way down to Tierra del Fuego. The shi-ite portion of Iraq
Sorry, hit “Submit” by accident. As I was saying, the Shi’ite portion of Iraq will undoubtably feel an affinity with the Iranians, but that doesn’t meen that they want to be assimilated into their country. In any event, the United States would still be hanging out there for a while, and we’d prevent any such merger until our problems with the Iranians are resolved.
Making up the United States of Iraq.
The problem is that most of the oil is in the southeast corner, which means the the Kurds and the Sunnis get screwed out of all the money. They would never let this happen.
OK, so a partition won’t happen.
If it did, they might well look to ancient history for a name (hey, it worked for Persia, who dug “Iran” up out of the archives). So the oil-rich south can be “Babylonia” (or “Babylon” if you like), and the north can be Mesopotamia. If you don’t like these, there are plenty of other choices: Assyria, Sumer, Akkad, etc.
If they use Windows, I’m going to vote on at least C:.
Yeah, but we want to leave them with a government that will run without crashing or locking up regularly !
Is this the new excuse for extending our foreign adventurism? “If we don’t stay the course in Iraq, we can’t solve our problems in Iran!”
Then, if that doesn’t work, we can manufacture the fear that the mysterious missing weapons of mass destruction have been sent there, too! Yeah! And al Queda! They could be there! Hey, lots of excuses to keep on bombing towlheads, if you look hard enough.
When Iraq has a government that unhesitantly tells the US to get the hell out of their country, Iraq will have an independent country. Until then, it’s a colony.
Colonialism sucks.
Tris
My question has been sidetracked. I didn’t ask for a debate on whether Irak will be partitioned, although, quote:
“Iraq has never been a voluntary union of its peoples…
The U.S. continues to cling to the illusion of Iraqi unity…
Partition is an Iraqi solution…
The Kurds already have their region…
…But with the Kurds and Shi’ites having their regions, partition becomes an accomplished fact. It is hard to see any alternative for the Sunnis except to do the same”
etc…
Time Magazine, Nov. 13. Just opinions of course.
However in the eventuality of a partition, I reword my question:
It is not for the West to name other peoples’ own countries. What, therefore, would the Arabic names the Sunnis and Shi’ites would give their respective regions ? Perhaps only an Iraqi can answer this question…
Actually there is oil in the North East as well
- the population is a bit mixed, but it looks more Kurd than anything else
Possibly Turkey could be persuaded to lose the Kurds.
Partition would be a real problem for the middle, they would be oil-less, but are the adminstrative centre.
@Triskadecamus
It is not ‘colonialism’ going on there, a colony is where people go out, breed and stay there.
Ex British colonies are the USA, Canada, Australia and South Africa.
Places like Uganda etc were never UK colonies
- Kenya and Zimbabwe are failed colonies
- India was never a UK colony
I think that the appropriate word for Iraq is ‘occupation’
- ‘failed’ and ‘incompetent’ could be thrown in
Comments:
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I’m not so absolutely sure as all that that the problem falls neatly into a Sunni/Shia dichotomy – I get the impression that they are uneasy alliances based loosely on the Islamic “sects” (misnomer, but useful parallel) with several dissident groups within each. Without the threat of the Kurds and the other “S group,” I’m not sure how well the alliances would hold together. Someone with better insight into today’s Iraq may have comments.
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Turkey is notorious for having an ironclad grip on its eastern minorities. The sort of pressure it would take to free the Kurds of Turkey from Turkish suzerainty comes in only two forms: near-unanimous international consensus backed by diplomatic pressure and/or threats of military intervention; and active military intervention. I suspect the same will be true for the Iranian Kurds.
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I believe there’s a small Azeri population in the northeastern mountains. AFAIK they get along just fine with the Kurds as two related minorities – how they will react to being a minority in an independent/autonomous Kurdistan is anyone’s guess.
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Who gets the deserts? Anbar, Karbala, An Najaf, and Muthanna governments contain a lot of land, mostly arid, but with possible resources including perhaps oil. Further, the southern two were largely fertile irrigated areas prior to the Mongol invasions, which in passing wrecked the irrigation systems.
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A Shi’a realm with the ports and southern oil areas is really vulnerable to someone’s takeover bid. A Sunni area with the core of the nation bereft of both oil-producing areas and the lands they’ve been accustomed to have hegemony over is likely to be resentful of the fact. We’ve done Urartu/Assyria/Babylonia already; no need to reduplicate ancient history to see how it works out this time.
Halfandagainistan, Donunderstan, Al-akazam, Rilirilibad, and the Dagnab region.