Iraqing My Brain for a Good Solution

Count me among those who have occasionally advocated breaking up Iraq into three ethnically distinct countries rather than try to force the various populations to get along. Iraq was, after all, an artificial creation of the western powers (Britain and France) following WWI. The territory that is now Iraq had previously been part of the Ottoman Empire which was on the losing side of the war to end all wars. Like much of the nation building in the colonial era, national borders were drawn with little consideration for ethnic and cultural realities. Certainly Iraq was one of those creations. However, over time the situation on the ground has grown a little more complex and, as Juan Cole argues, breaking-up Iraq would likely have dire consequences:

There are a million Kurds in Baghdad, a million Sunnis in the Shiite deep
south, and lots of mixed provinces (Ta'mim, Ninevah, Diyalah, Babil, Baghdad,
etc.). There is a lot of intermarriage among various Iraqi groups.

Then, how do you split up the resources? If the Sunni Arabs don't get
Kirkuk, then they will be poorer than Jordan. Don't you think they will fight
for it? The Kurds would fight to the last man for the oil-rich city of Kirkuk if
it was a matter of determining in which country it ended up.

If the Kurds got Kirkuk and the Sunni Arabs became a poor cousin to Jordan,
the Sunni Arabs would almost certainly turn to al-Qaeda in large numbers. Some
Iraqi guerrillas are already talking about hitting back at the US mainland. And,
Fallujah is not that far from Saudi Arabia, which Bin Laden wants to hit, as
well, especially at the oil. Fallujah Salafis would hook up with those in Jordan
and Gaza to establish a radical Sunni arc that would destabilize the entire
region.

Divorced from the Sunnis, the Shiites of the south would no longer have any
counterweight to religious currents like al-Dawa, the Supreme Council for
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and the Sadrists. The rump Shiite state would be
rich, with the Rumayla and other fields, and might well declare a Shiite Islamic
republic. It is being coupled with the Sunnis that mainly keeps them from going
down that road. A Shiite South Iraq might make a claim on Shiite Eastern Arabia
in Saudi Arabia, or stir up trouble there.

As always, Cole provides valuable insights not available in any US corporate media. Read him daily and learn.