The Case For Dividing Iraq

With the country descending into civil war, a noted diplomat and author argues why partition may be the U.S.'s only exit strategy

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So what can be done? The most realistic option is for the U.S. to abandon the idea of creating a new, united Iraq and instead allow the country to break apart, enabling each of the country's three groups to choose its own government and provide for its own security. It is possible that Sunni and Shi'ite regions would remain together in a loose confederation, but Kurdistan's full independence is almost certainly a matter of time.

Partition is an Iraqi solution. The U.S. could help make it go more smoothly, but it mostly needs to get out of the way. The Kurds already have their region. Last month Iraq's parliament approved a law to allow the Shi'ites to merge Iraq's nine southern provinces into a single state. The one group that resists dividing Iraq is the Sunnis, some out of nostalgia for the days when they ran the country and others because they reject all that has happened since Saddam's overthrow. But with the Kurds and Shi'ites having their regions, partition becomes an accomplished fact. It is hard to see any alternative for the Sunnis except to do the same.

In fact, the Sunnis may have the most to gain from partition. The Sunni insurgency feeds on popular hostility not just to the Americans but to a Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government. Most Sunnis don't support al-Qaeda and its imitators, but they often prefer them to Iraqi security forces, which are seen as complicit in the killings of Sunnis. If the Sunnis were to establish their own region, they could have an army and provide for their own security. Since Iraq's known oil fields are in the Shi'ite south and the Kurdish north, the Sunnis do have reason to fear being stuck in the middle with no resources of their own. So, for partition to work, the Kurds and Shi'ites would have to guarantee the Sunnis a proportionate share of Iraq's oil revenues for a period of time, as they have already agreed to do. Over the long term, exploration for oil in the largely unexplored Sunni areas provides the region its best prospect for revenues.

We should have no illusions: partitioning Iraq would not be easy. Some groups would resist bloodily. But the adverse consequences of partition have already occurred. There's no reason to believe that formalizing Iraq's breakup would make anything worse--in fact, it might even help contain the violence. It's useful to outline the three main arguments raised against partition and explain why none are as convincing as their proponents portray them to be:

The sectarian bloodbath will get worse. Iraq's Sunni-Shi'ite civil war has already claimed tens of thousands of lives and forced Sunnis and Shi'ites to abandon coexistence. This is tragic and certainly not what most Iraqi Shi'ites or Sunnis want. But once under way, civil wars tend to empower the most extreme elements. Civil wars do not end because the parties get tired of fighting. Rather, they end because of outside intervention or, more often, because one side wins. Partition will not stop the sectarian cleansing in mixed areas, but by giving Shi'ites and Sunnis their own regions, it can avoid an outcome in which Iraq's more numerous Shi'ites completely crush the Sunnis.

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