I’m not much sure that another thread on how things are going in Iraq will be of much help in this already polarized membership, but this article from The Washington Post by its just returned bureau chief in Baghdad seems to confirm and bolster the bad prognoses contained in this summer’s intelligence estimate and what we have been hearing for any number of sources.
It still looks as if the options available are limited to bug out, more of the same or supreme effort to put a rifle squad on every street corner. Bugging out is not a viable option and one seriously discussed only by the partisans who want to pin that approach on a political adversary. More of the same has not worked and appears unlikely to work if it relies on a restoration of security through the use of raw, untrained and part trained soldiers, police and border guards to pull off a credible nationwide election in January. I question that the US has the resources, even using Iraqi auxiliaries, to put enough boots (and rifles) on the ground to suppress the insurgency enough to do all the infrastructure things that need to be done and which were projected to be done a year ago.
Apparently the donor nations conference hasn’t produced much except promises to pony up the money that was promised before. There seems to be some reluctance on the part of the donor nations to pull the Bush Administration’s chestnuts out of the fire – especially when what is going on is just what some predicted and others feared. That is not to say that these people are going to be any more willing to contribute and significant help if the US has a regime change this winter.
In other words, things look bleak. I ask: where do we go from here no matter who is the President.
Best choice would be to divide Iraq into three independent states – Kurdish, Sunni, Shi’ite – even if that does piss off the Turks. The process of preparing three new national governments might at least preoccupy the discontented, such as al-Sadr, for a while, if we let them participate in it. Get their minds off fighting the occupation and on shaping their own post-occupation futures.
NPR ran an interview with the arcticle’s author, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, this sunday, and one of the things that surprised me was the assertion that only 27% of the funds marked for reconstruction in Iraq are actually going to reconstruction. The rest is siphoned off for security, insurance, profits, the CPA etc.
Was the UN’s Oil for Food program this inefficient?
But that’s just more of someone imposing their ‘vision’ on Iraq. Partitioning should be done by Iraqis, if at all. It’s been hard enough fighting one guerilla war. You could be looking at multiple guerilla wars plus a multitude of border disputes. The Iraq debacle cubed.
Look at how much trouble the US is having trying to set up ONE government (the only idea we got). Setting up THREE is a better idea?
Is partitioning what the Iraqis want?
If Iraq is chopped into three pieces, what’s to stop Iran from invading one of those pieces?
In light of how badly the US has botched things so far, do you really think we’re capable of something as complicated as successfully partitioning Iraq?
Partitioning might be a good concept. I just don’t think it should be for the US to decide whether or not to do it, draw the borders, and be the enforcers. We’ve caused enough trouble already, we can’t begin to fathom the consequences, and the Iraqis won’t buy it if it comes from us anyway.
Well, look at it this way. If Bush wins the election, we’re almost certainly going to be partitioning Iran* in a few years. :mad: We might as well take this chance to practice on something smaller.
Some Iraqis do want partition. The Kurds definitely do. And the Sunnis are terrified at a democratic process that would give the government to a Shi’ite majority.
*Into Iranian Kurdistan (goes to the new Republic of Kurdistan), Iranian Azerbaijan (to be united with the existing Republic of Azerbaijan), Arabistan (the Arab Shi’ite region of the southwest coast – might or might not be united with Shi’ite Iraq), Iranian Baluchistan (in the southeast – its independence, of course, sours our relations with Pakistan by stirring up secessionism in their neighboring Baluchistan Province) – leaving a more-or-less purely ethnically Persian rump state of Iran – rump state, but still pretty sizeable.
Oh please, the Bush administration, along with the US forces cannot implement the resources of World opinion and military power against an Iranian theocracy. Its over stretched already.
If war with Iran ever happened, then thats it. Middle East and Muslim world on fire, Bush might fuck things up, but even his advisors know the limitations of US power.
Yes, some but not all. the Kurds only want out because of the shitty security situation, if the US ever clamps down along with the Iraqi security forces, then its clamouring for independence will quieten down.
With out something of the largest regional conflict in Islamic history occuring? The Mullahs aren’t dumb enough to let large pieces of Iran break off. If we split up Iraq, what example are we setting? We’re just around to invade and break up states? Thats not how it goes anymore.
Yes, the millitants from the population whilst creating a viable Iraqi state which comprises different ethnicities, if different cultures can get along in Afghanistan without recent mass genocide, I think its in the Iraqis nature too.
You’re really underestimating the cost of the Iraq conflict and its numerous insurgencies in which the US has been hard pressed to Quell, do you really think the administration is that dumb to provoke another war right on the Iraq border, I don’t bet on it. Look, just because the US is turning the heat on Iran, doesn’t mean its going to kick its ass. Its got enough problems in Iraq without taking on 60 million people along with the 50 or so million its just sorted out, so to speak.
Yep, they have, doesn’t mean they’ll get it anytime soon, the Kurds are going to have to be an integral part of Iraq to secure the integrity of the Arab state. Give the reconstruction time and the security problems etc to quieten down, some of the wind may go from its independence claims.
Yes, but for all its faults, the Bush administration isn’t that stupid.
There is no “Iraq”. There never was, Iraq was a geopolitical phantasm. The only thing that kept Iraq together as a federal state was the raw power of Saddam. If the US insists on a policy of a united, federalized Iraq, there is only one viable option: new! improved! Saddam Lite. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, only better. They will Putinize Iraq.
Our public pieties about democratic rule in Iraq are horseshit. Does anybody really believe that if all indications were that a Shia theocracy party were likely to win an open and fair election in Iraq, we would permit such an election to go forward?
Kurdistan will break off, in one or another form of polite political fiction, “semi-autonomous” or some such rot. Turkey will accept it, having no real option, but will respond by placing thier own elthnic Kurd population under even tighter control, with predictable results. We will mouth pious hypocrisies about not violating Turkey’s “soveriegnty”, while urging Turkey to be careful about keeping any unpleasantness off our front pages.
We will aid and abet the installation of a new! improved! Saddam because we have no other choice. Allawi perhaps, if he has the sufficient capacity for ruthlessness. Somewhere in Iraq there is a somewhat younger man, probably of military background, who is assessing the situation there much as I am, and reflecting on Mao’s quotation: “There is great disorder under Heaven, and the situation is excellent!” He has a place on his desk reserved for the anticipated photo of him, shaking hands with Rumsfeld. Or perhaps as an honored guest at a future State of the Union adress.
Why should you think I am right? I’m a pessimist, I’m usually right.
There’s highly-placed neocons within the administration who are already laying the groundwork for “regime change” in Iran and have been for at least a couple of years now. It’s a well-documented fact. I ran a thread on it a week or two ago.
And if we try, we might find out that promising to partition Iran along ethnic lines is the only way we can win the war because it’s the only way we can get any real support inside Iran. (The way the Kurds supported us in the Iraq war, but on a larger scale, since it’s a much larger country.) There really is secessionist feeling in some of the regions I named, BTW, particularly Arabistan and Kurdistan. (Not so sure about Baluchistan, but the Pakistani Baluchis are indeed restive.)
BrainGlutton, I’d be worried about that partition plan, too (those this is probably a hijack, and the partioning of occupied states and colonies might deserve its own thread).
Simply put, trying to draw national borders around ethnic or religious groups is a messy things. Western civilization has been trying it for more than three centuries now – first in Europe, and then in the rest of the world, and it’s always a mess.
The problem is that no matter how you draw the map, you always get some of one group in the other territory. And then there’s the problem of determining who fits where, because there are always people who have no obvious categories, and those that base their identity first and foremost on things other than religion and ethnicity.
We got to see the disaster play out in Alsace and Lorraine between Germany and France (mixed German/French heritage). We got to see it with Serbia and Kosovo.
We got to see it, too, in 1945 with the partition of India into India an Pakistan. The years leading up to the partition were filled with violence and ethnic cleansing, and inter-religious atrocities between people who’d used to live together amicably. People uprooted from places they’d always lived, because they were suddenly declared “not their homeland” – didn’t matter if they’d lived there for countless generations.
What happens to the Sunnis who are in the Shiite territory? Or the Shiites in the Sunni territory? A peaceful living together might be possible, but I think it would be a little to optimistic to expect it.
Where in the world do ethnic, linguistic, and political borders make sense where there hasn’t been a great deal of forced migration/ethnic cleansing? Afghanistan isn’t a coherent state - it is merely leftovers that were too much trouble to conquer. Pakistan is merely the western Muslim rump of British India. It makes no sense. Indonesia is a ludicrous concept - so just because the Dutch ruled all those islands means that now they should be united under one government? What proportion of countries in Africa make sense?
There are no coherent three Iraqs. Who gets Baghdad - will it be a Shia enclave in Sunni Mesoiraqia or are we going to completely screw over the Sunnis and leave them no reasonable resources (but a huge grudge and a lot of poverty)? Are we going to encourage the Kurds (by far the most coherent of the three main groups) to eject/harass/terrorize the Turkmen and Chaldassyrian (and for that matter Sunni Arab) communities in the north central regions (or are they too small a minority to give a fuck about)? Will the Saudi’s or Iranians like the idea of an independent Shi’ite Arab state on the border of their Shi’ite Arab areas? Hey why not have two Kurdish states so that Sunni Kurds and Shiite Kurds need not share borders?
Either it is possible to run a multi-cultural, multi-sect nation or not. I don’t think that the divorce would be manifestly cleaner or better long run than the marriage. Three countries with disenfranchised majorities (and boundless irridentism) rather than one is hardly better than one.
A Putinized Iraq could be livable (for us certainly, though not without much soul searching and hand wringing, and most likely for the Iraqis as well, given the current state of their nation), and marginally better than the Saddamized Iraq we overthrew. (governmentally speaking, anyways - the fall of sanctions should help immensely, though there is a lot of lost ground to be made up)
I have not given up hope for Allawi and the Baathists, Sistani and the Shia, and (what’s his name) and the Kurds to work out a modus vivendi. I think I will wait until after January elections (or not), and whether or not the Iraqi’s are willing to accept them as valid (or not) before becoming completely depressed about the prospects for (rather than the current reality of ) Iraq.
Whether we partion or not, we’ve got to do a better job of training the Iraqi army. They’re still deserting like SOBs every time they get into a tussle: