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Omnia Iraqi En Tres Partes Divisia Est
Last week, Jim Henley posted what could, with fairness though not complete accuracy, be called "A Non-Interventionist's Manifesto", outlining his vision of pulling back US military intervention worldwide. It's an interesting piece, and deserves reflection. I think that Jim overestimates the degree to which we can withdraw from the Mideast without causing vastly more chaos and suffering than we're causing now by our presence, chaos and suffering which would inspire more of the hatred and terror he's trying to quell--but it's not an issue that he's neglecting, he's just reaching a different conclusion than I do.
Jim pointed today to a post inspired by his post on a blog I have not previously encountered, Jay Currie's One Damn Thing After Another. The post, "One Way out of Iraq", is also worth reading, and outlines the case for splitting Iraq into three constituent nations. I wrote this as a comment to that post, but there's a limit on comment length there, so I'm posting it here instead.
There are three big problems with partitioning Iraq. None of them is necessarily a reason not to do it, but they're all real concerns.
The first two are external: Turkey and Iran.
Turkey really strongly opposes the idea of an autonomous Kurdish republic, and might actually go to war to destroy an independent Kurdish state. I'm not sure how much the US should care about alienating Turkey--I mean, what are they going to do to us, stop taking our massive foreign aid package? (Can anyone explain to me the importance of Turkey as a military ally in the post Cold War world? We've demonstrated the ability to deploy absolutely staggering amount of military power in the Mideast without Turkey's cooperation.) But the potential humanitarian consequences to the Kurds are not insignificant if Turkey were to invade.
Iran would love to have a Shi'ite ally on its western border. I don't think that it would become a complete Iranian sock-puppet, but it does strike me as a matter of concern to have a belligerent Shi'ite alliance directly on the eastern edge of the Saudi oil fields. Apparently the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia are, themselves, Shi'ite-dominated. One thing which would be significantly worse than having the world's largest oil reserves controlled by the Saudis, Saddam Hussein, and the Ayatollahs would be having all of them controlled by the Ayatollahs.
The third problem is internal. While Iraq does split roughly into three areas, there is a lot of interpentration--Shi'ites in Baghdad, Sunnis in Basra, Arabs (and Turkomen) in Mosul. I fear that a partition would lead to retaliatory violence within each of the provinces, and then to violence among them. Also, I am reluctant to see the secular minority of southern Iraq forced to choose between living in a Shi'ite theocracy or fleeing. and it's clear that would be the extent of their choice. Shi'ite reactionaries have been pushing secularists into hiding already, including destroying liquor shops and forcing Iraqi women--formerly among the most liberated in the Muslim world--into veils and other concealments.
All that said, I am not sure that continued US presence will make things better. Iraq is a Frankenstein country, and the choices do seem to fall broadly into "force the three parts to stay together, by whatever means necessary" and "allow them to split apart". Both have downsides, both to the people there and to the people in nearby (and even far-away) lands, and I can't see far enough into the future to tell which approach is most likely to produce a better world.
So there's my ambivalent manifesto for the day.
Jim pointed today to a post inspired by his post on a blog I have not previously encountered, Jay Currie's One Damn Thing After Another. The post, "One Way out of Iraq", is also worth reading, and outlines the case for splitting Iraq into three constituent nations. I wrote this as a comment to that post, but there's a limit on comment length there, so I'm posting it here instead.
There are three big problems with partitioning Iraq. None of them is necessarily a reason not to do it, but they're all real concerns.
The first two are external: Turkey and Iran.
Turkey really strongly opposes the idea of an autonomous Kurdish republic, and might actually go to war to destroy an independent Kurdish state. I'm not sure how much the US should care about alienating Turkey--I mean, what are they going to do to us, stop taking our massive foreign aid package? (Can anyone explain to me the importance of Turkey as a military ally in the post Cold War world? We've demonstrated the ability to deploy absolutely staggering amount of military power in the Mideast without Turkey's cooperation.) But the potential humanitarian consequences to the Kurds are not insignificant if Turkey were to invade.
Iran would love to have a Shi'ite ally on its western border. I don't think that it would become a complete Iranian sock-puppet, but it does strike me as a matter of concern to have a belligerent Shi'ite alliance directly on the eastern edge of the Saudi oil fields. Apparently the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia are, themselves, Shi'ite-dominated. One thing which would be significantly worse than having the world's largest oil reserves controlled by the Saudis, Saddam Hussein, and the Ayatollahs would be having all of them controlled by the Ayatollahs.
The third problem is internal. While Iraq does split roughly into three areas, there is a lot of interpentration--Shi'ites in Baghdad, Sunnis in Basra, Arabs (and Turkomen) in Mosul. I fear that a partition would lead to retaliatory violence within each of the provinces, and then to violence among them. Also, I am reluctant to see the secular minority of southern Iraq forced to choose between living in a Shi'ite theocracy or fleeing. and it's clear that would be the extent of their choice. Shi'ite reactionaries have been pushing secularists into hiding already, including destroying liquor shops and forcing Iraqi women--formerly among the most liberated in the Muslim world--into veils and other concealments.
All that said, I am not sure that continued US presence will make things better. Iraq is a Frankenstein country, and the choices do seem to fall broadly into "force the three parts to stay together, by whatever means necessary" and "allow them to split apart". Both have downsides, both to the people there and to the people in nearby (and even far-away) lands, and I can't see far enough into the future to tell which approach is most likely to produce a better world.
So there's my ambivalent manifesto for the day.
no subject
Note that Sistani, apparently, does not support the Iranian system, in which clerics have a veto over legislation. (al-Sadr does.) If Sistani could prevail in a Shiite state, it might be more democratic than Iran. Such an example might move Islamicist politics in a more democratic and pro-American direction. (I wouldn't bet the farm on it, though.)
Unfortunately, your comment about "internal problems" is spot-on.
no subject
As that essay notes, it promotes ethnic government, which is bad, and, as you also note, there are no pure ethnic states, so you will always end up with a minority who gets the shaft.