Here’s an article by James Pinkerton – http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&pubID=1535 – arguing that since Iraq is an artificial postcolonial entity rather than a true nation-state, the U.S. might as well facilitate its inevitable division into three separate countries – Shi’ite Arab, Sunni Arab, and Kurdish. Do you think this would be a good idea?
There are two aspects to this Pinkerton does not address:
An independent Iraqi Kurdistan would encourage separatism among the Kurds of Turkey, Iran and Syria. And the Turks, at least, have some claim to be American allies. (See my GD thread about this at http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=241845.) This could lead to a general regional war, or series of wars.
If southern Iraq became a new state whose nationality were defined by Arab ethnicity and Shi’ite Muslim religion – guess who else is Arab and Shi’ite? The people of southwestern Iran – a region known variously as Khuzestan, Arabistan, or al-Ahwaz. Some of these Iranian Arab Shi’ites already have aspirations to become independent from Iran – see their website at http://www.al-ahwaz.com/. An independent Arab Shi’ite state in southern Mesopotamia, right next door, would only encourage them. This could lead to a regional war, etc.
So division of Iraq into three states might resolve its internal tensions in the short run – but at the cost of sowing the seeds of even greater regional instability in the future. The near future.
Bad idea. You’ve pretty much listed why already…mainly because a separate Kurdistan would blow the region apart as well as sour our relationship with Turkey (if we supported Kurdistan which I assume we would). I don’t see this as either a short OR long term solution.
I don’t think it would stay together any longer than a single Iraqi state. Probably shorter.
I mean, unless you’re talking about phsyically shipping every person of every group to their representative state, ensuring equal natural resources and value for each group, establishing three stable governments, and keeping the neighboring states from either rebelling or invading, as you address…
Haven’t we learned that countries with straight lines for borders rarely work? This is what caused all the problems in Iraq, Turkey, Iran, etc in the first place.
Wouldn’t it be less troublesome to divide the US into French, British and Mexican territories - then we can all get back to having a reasonably sensible power balance ?
No one is suggesting that (yet). I am merely suggesting the dividing-up of Iran might be a predictable result of the dividing-up of Iraq, which is effectively a colony (an American-British colony) at the moment.
Sorry I mistyped. I was talking about Iraq. Somehow I think more then a few people would object to our cutting it up like a colony (the fact that it is a colony right now is something I’m sure Washington doesn’t want to admit to)
The point of invading Iraq is not to bring in stability or to fight terrorists (except indirectly, and to draw them away from softer civilian targets). The point is the establish a liberal (in the original sense of the word) free-thinking democracy in an arabic-speaking country.
I’ve kicked this idea around myself. A Kurdish state might absorb the displaced Kurds in Turkey and Iran. Particularly since they are oil rich and could fund the effort.
If the “Iraqis” want to go their separate ways then it should be up to them. They’ve never existed naturally as the current borders are drawn. It’s not like there will be a love loss if the different Islamic religions are given their own sovereignty. Frankly, if the Iraqis don’t recognize the problem with private religious armies then they will collapse into the usual BS hellhole that permeates the region. It might be a function of religious evolution to allow this to occur. I’m not sure it’s possible to circumvent the desire to rally around the crescent flag until people realize what religious persecution is.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There needs to be a Martin Luther “Mohammed” to formalize what people are hopefully already thinking. The closest thing to such a person in Iraq was murdered soon after the war started (Abdel Majid al-Khoei). If this cleric could be immortalized in the media as a prophet of peace then people may abandon their desire to shoot everything that moves at the behest of a religious leader.
As a side note: every time I see a demonstration that is launched by an Islamic cleric I can’t help but think of the KKK. All those young men running around with their faces hidden by garments claiming God is on their side.
No, it wouldn’t work like that. The Turkish and Iranian Kurds would not be satisfied with moving over the border, one family at a time, into Iraqi Kurdistan. What they want is to secede from their respective states and take their territories with them.
OK, maybe you can riddle me this. How exactly are three warring fundamentalist religious factions going to equally divide up their perceived homeland and move all of their people, and continue with a peaceful coexistance?
Can you name ONE time a relocation program on that scale has been anything short of a complete disaster?
If we look around the world over the past 50 years or so we can see that countries in the developing world who also have oil tend to be not democracy friendly.
Funny that.
The problem with stable democracies is that they tend to strengthen the nation state, and that isn’t what the US wants in its oil producing ‘partners’. So what the US always tries to do – through the good offices of the CIA - is promote less democracy and a reasonable degree of instability.
And, by golly, it’s worked for decades.
What the US is keen to promote in Iraq – medium term – is a fractious but containable society where factions are too involved wrestling with each other – and keen to suck up to the US to gain advantage over other factions – to worry about the bigger picture.
Meanwhile, who’s controlling the supply, refinement and distribution into the world economy . . . a stable democracy in Iraq - or the other extreme, outright civil war - is not what the US needs; it needs puppets and it needs Iraqi’s to take over security.
Martin Luther was a leader who affected change in a religion that become corrupt with power. Muhammed started a religion whose name translates into peace. It is also a religion with many leaders who are drunk on power.
Religions often make their dead leaders into prophets or saints. This would be a golden opportunity to create a new one.
Hm. Well, the Cherokee Trail of Tears comes to mind. Worked rather nicely for the non-Indians.
Of course, if we look at it from the other point of view, “disaster” is putting it mildly.
There is nothing we can do in Iraq right now that the Iraqis themselves won’t undo in a gory fit of madness the minute we aren’t there to stop them. That is, unless we use the same methodology used by Saddam Hussein and his spiritual kin. And we aren’t going to do that, certainly.
“Relocation” would not be necessary. We could simply draw boundaries between the Kurdish-majority, Sunni-majority, and Shi’ite-majority regions. Each resulting state would then have a house minority. Several house, minorities, actually – e.g., in the area now governed by the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government, there are now substantial populations of Turcomans, Assyrian Christians, and Sunni Arabs. Obviously, this could lead to problems. But protecting the rights of ethnic or religious minorities in a state with a clear overall majority group is a trivial problem, compared to that of governing a state in Iraq’s present form, containing within arbitrary political borders three distinct regions, each with its own clear ethnic majority group which is on bad terms with those of the other two regions.
