Iráq – Forfeit, Fumble, or Field Goal
The latest intelligence assessment on the violence in Iráq cites deepening ethno-sectarian division and dislocation of population. Sunní Kurds in the north, Sunní Arabs in the west, and Şíah Arabs in the south are consolidating and separating.
Opponents of the three-state solution for Iráq need to wake up to the reality that “Iráq” was always an imposed, top-down concept, never a real country. Absent that authoritarian pressure, the three communities are organizing themselves into three states inside the territory of Iraq, no matter what our maps say.
Maps don’t make states; states make maps.
It is especially frustrating that we tried to bring democracy to Iráq while ruling out the one thing that the people of these three communities wanted most: to be free of each other. It demonstrates that those who implemented the Iráq War end-game simply do not understand the basic principles of democracy, like “consent of the governed.”
None of the three Iráqí communities will ever fully consent to a government necessarily dominated by the other two. The Sunní Kurds don’t want an Arab-dominated government,* the Şíah Arabs don’t want a Sunni-dominated government, and the Sunní Arabs don’t want a government dominated by those with a grudge against their Ba’aţist heroes.
The statistics and the studies and the surveys and the situation “on the ground” are all pointing to the same reality: the Iráqís are implementing the three-state solution whether we like it or not. The only real choices we have are:
- How violent will the process be? How many Iráqís and Americans have to die for a country that never really was?
- How will America’s reputation fare at the end of it all? Will the US be seen as bumbling incompetents that pushed Iráq out of Ḥussayn’s frying pan into the flames of genocide and holy war, or as a superpower that recognized and took responsibility for its mistakes, and midwifed the birth of three relatively peaceful states?
It’s too late for a touchdown in Iráq. We should have been planning for the partition of Iráq from the very start, studying historical examples (like India) so we could avoid their mistakes and failings.
But, we still have a chance. We can fumble the ball by trusting the proven incompetence of the Neocons, or forfeit by throwing up our hands in defeat and premature withdrawal, or we can go for a field goal by opening up talks to separate the three communities from each other.
The cultural, ethnic, religious and political borders are already set. We need to allow those borders to manifest in government reality.
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* Granted, the Kurds are behaving themselves better than their Arab neighbors.
