Partition Iraq? Over Their Dead Bodies
Refugees during partition of India, 1947
There is one thing you must never do if you want to be considered a Serious Foreign Policy Thinker in Washington: Don't stop to consider the lessons of history before proposing massive redesigns to another part of the world. Michael O'Hanlon and other Iraq war backers were wildly incorrect in their last set of predictions, but that hasn't stopped them from promoting still more grand schemes. Now O'Hanlon wants to partition Iraq.
Is the government listening? They've already tried to build the Wall.
On first listening, dividing Iraq into three separate nations based on ethnicity might seem to be a good idea. Joe Biden's been pushing the idea for a while now. So what's wrong with the concept? O'Hanlon's track record of error isn't enough reason to reject it, so here are a couple of others.
For one thing, the partitioning of nations has been a human tragedy in the past. Best estimates suggest that half a million people died during the partition of India - it could have been closer to a million - and 12 million were displaced. One observer recounted what he saw as a 14-year-old on board a train taking him from his childhood home:
Thousands of Muslims, men, women and children, all waiting to take a train in the opposite direction, savagely slaughtered before his eyes, killed, stabbed and beheaded.Whatever the wisdom of dividing India, a thoughtful analyst might at least think twice before recommending the imposing the same solution in Iraq. But cautionary tales like these aren't enough to stop plucky "scholars" like Michael O'Hanlon from offering their proposals to a friendly audience of the powerful.
Three or four trains full of Muslims were due to leave for Pakistan that day. None did."I saw Muslims being burnt alive, thrown onto bonfires, I saw bodies, I saw blood, I saw many things," he said. "The madness that very first day could have finished everybody."
That's not to say that O'Hanlon and Edward P. Joseph, who co-authored a paper on the topic, haven't anticipated some of the objections to their plan. In fact, they do more than simply cite those objections, which they do -- with the suggestion that most Iraqi protests are either ill-informed or totalitarian.
They also do what Washington planners do best these days: They use a catchphrase. They say they're advocating something called "soft partition," which they never precisely define. (Apparently it involves the sharing of oil revenues across all three regions, although its other characteristics remain unclear.)
"Surge" instead of "troop increase." "De-Baathification" instead of "firing everybody with qualifications." "Soft partition" instead of "partition." And people say there's no creativity in Washington!
The administration's already been thinking along these lines for some time. In fact, earlier this year they tried to build a three-mile long wall in Baghdad to separate Shi'ite and Sunni neighborhoods. They didn't ask Iraqis in either group what they wanted, though, and they only halted the project after both Sunni leaders and the Iraqi Prime Minister objected to it.
Which gets us to the next problem with partition, whether "soft" or "hard": The Iraqis are against it. They don't want their country broken up into pieces, whatever the texture. Shouldn't that be enough to kill the plan, since we're supposedly "exporting democracy"? Think again. In the effervescent words of Joe Biden: "Like heck we can't tell the Iraqis what to do!"
History now records that Biden was as wrong about the Iraq war as O'Hanlon, while for his part O'Hanlon acknowledges an "intellectual debt" to Biden in his paper. That's like acknowledging a debt to Tom Tancredo for furthering the cause of international brotherhood.
For a reality check, Siun links to the work of Reinar Visser, a scholar with genuine expertise in the region who has dissected the partition idea before. (Fortunately Visser is based in Norway, so he's safely insulated from the treatment Juan Cole and others faced for actually being right about Iraq.)
Hold on, the astute reader will say. O'Hanlon's paper was published in June, but the administration tried to build the wall in April. How can there be a connection between the two?
Answer: There is, but you're reversing cause and effect. The role of the "public intellectual" in Washington is no longer to generate new ideas. That's "pre-9/11 thinking." Today, the foreign policy scholar's job is to provide intellectual cover for decisions that have already been made by the powerful. That's how you get good jobs and generous grants nowadays.
Nice work, if you can get it -- and if you don't worry too much about the consequences of your actions.
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My comments are not in reference to the policy based issues of the partition of Iraq. Rather, I am disappointed by the writer's portrayal of the partition of India in 1947. It would appear to the average reader, one who is not familiar with the partition of the subcontinent, that ONLY MUSLIM men, women and children were killed, burnt alive etc. during those dark days of 1947. For the sake of historical accuracy and intellectual integrity, you should utilize objective sources, rather than biased ones, to describe such emotionally charged episodes of our recent history. To those readers who are not familiar with the post-British period of India, please note the following: AN EQUAL NUMBER, IF NOT MORE, OF SIKHS AND HINDUS, were at the receiving end of brutal and innovative savagery and butchery at the hands of the "other" community in their eastward migration to India.
RJ Eskow -
I've not done it until now, and that is to click on the link, "I'M A FAN OF THIS BLOGGER." I don't know what will happen, but it can't be all bad.
The reason is that you are responding to commenters on your BLOG. Nope, you can't respond to every single one, but at least it demonstrates that the author takes an interest in how they are received. And, you admit to having your horizon broadened by some posts.
I am going to have to read you regularly, the comments to your posts, and the responses to them.
Z
RJ,
Oil is the only reason we are in Iraq.
Dear Brother RJ,
This is a complex subject, it is well beyond the abilities of many to reason it out well, and human insight even among the best critical thinkers is likely to fall short on the end game of their prognostications, because of the chaos, making rational though processes quite irrelevant, as it may be that irrationalism will rule the day. Which is exactly where I draw my conclusion on a scale, by weight, one being more likely than not, knowing the psychological make-up of human beings well.
That being said, I agree with your eloquent essay/post.
I would like to add, that in the ABC Democratic debate this past Sunday, the candidate that I agreed with, that has the best grasp of this subject was clearly, leaving *No* room for doubt, Governor Bill Richardson, he expressed eloquently the best course of action which should be taken. The others fell far short with regard to their knowledge on the subject as a whole. Agape.
You really think the Governor knows what the heck he's talking about?
He says he would get ALL US forces out of Iraq before he did anything else but he doesn't tell us what he would do to stop the ensuing chaos - and chaos there would surely be - other than to say that he would start the diplomatic process. It's just hard to see that happening in a state of chaos.
Of course, he borrows just enough of the Biden plan to make his plan sound good.
RJ,
Just two points if I may...number one...Joe Biden is NOT advocating three separate nations based on ethnicity. On the contrary, Senator Biden is advocating a plan based on federalism that would keep Iraq UNITED through a devolution of power from the central government to the regions and his plan is completely CONSISTENT WITH THE IRAQI CONSTITUTION.
You might find it useful to read about Senator Biden’s strategy for Iraq and the Iraqi Constitution before posting so that you are more apt to get the facts straight. I realize that these are complicated matters, but you do your readers a great disservice by trying to oversimplify complex concepts.
Secondly, I would suggest that Senator Biden didn’t get anything wrong about the invasion of Iraq. Everything he predicted before the war began has come to pass and there was no one, in or out of the US Senate, who understood with more breadth and depth what would happen in Iraq if President Bush did not properly use the authority he was given to avoid war.
I hope you don’t count yourself among those who believe that a vote for the Iraq Resolution (2002) was the equivalent of being in favor of war because that couldn’t be further from the truth, as far as Senator Biden and many of his Senate colleagues were concerned. I would strongly urge you to read Senator Biden’s remarks on the Senate floor in the days before that vote was held.
As for your use of Biden’s quote about telling the Iraqis what to do - well, that was just laughable! You are either trying very hard to be disingenuous or you really don’t understand the first thing about what Senator Biden is proposing.
I'm glad Joe Biden has a friend in you - and there are many things I respect about him. But don't assume my lack of enthusiasm for his proposal is because I don't understand it.
Regarding the war resolution, 23 United States Senators voted against it because they understood it was a mistake to give this President that kind of unrestrained authority. Biden did not. That reflects on his judgment, in my opinion.
As for his proposal, it is exactly what I said it was - HIS proposal, not the Iraqis'. There are variations on the theme of Federalism and decentralization that might work. But Step One is to either persuade the Iraqis to adopt it, or leave them to manage their country as they see fit.
Biden's proposal and O'Hanlon's may not identical, but one has created the political climate for the other. If the Senator wants to state a position that is separate and distinct from O'Hanlon's, that would be interesting.
I do not support the imposition by force of "soft partition," "hard Federalism," or anything else. It's very easy to sit in Washington and throw ideas around that drastically affect the lives of others.
If Sen. Biden is willing to state unequivocally that he opposes using military force to impose a "solution" on the Iraqis, and can be clearer about how he expects to avoid bloodshed under his plan, the rest of us may become more open to the rest of his proposals.
Hey RJ,
Words matter. How often have we heard that phrase in the last six and a half years!? ...one of the many legacies of the Bush-Cheney administration, I suppose.
So, when you say that Biden supports the idea of “dividing Iraq into three separate nations based on ethnicity” and you display a picture of refugees during the partition of India, how am I to conclude anything other than a complete misunderstanding of the strategy for Iraq that Senator Biden has been advocating for the better part of two years? A picture showing the relative success of a similar strategy in the Balkans might have been a more appropriate comparison.
Senator Biden understands better than most of us what a divided Iraq would mean to its neighbors and what the dire consequences of that would be for the US. That is why he has been promoting a plan to keep Iraq united, as a decentralized federal state.
A vote in favour of the Iraq Resolution, giving the President authorization for the use of force, has often been misrepresented as an automatic show of general support for the war in Iraq as well as for the strategy and policies implemented by the Bush administration to prosecute it.
Wouldn't you agree that such an analysis is a gross oversimplification of what that vote was all about? As far as Senator Joe Biden and many of his colleagues were concerned, interpreting a vote in support of this resolution as being equivalent to support for an Iraq invasion betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the context within which that vote took place.
This resolution was seen by Senator Biden, essentially, as a tool to give the President more leverage to force the UN to act and to keep inspectors on the ground in Iraq. He believed that a vote in support of giving the President the authorization was not a rush to war, but a march to peace. Of course, it didn’t take long to realize he was dead wrong about this and that the President had no intention of ever avoiding war.
I couldn’t agree with you more about being opposed to the imposition of any political strategy upon Iraq or the Iraqi people. That is definitely NOT what Senator Biden is advocating. His strategy for ending the war in Iraq is not about imposition, or dictating, or even an effort to conduct an imperial foreign policy! It is about presidential LEADERSHIP, plain and simple.
Implicit in his strategy is a process by which the parties involved in this mess and affected by it - all warring Iraqi factions, regional and major powers - would work together in the mother of all diplomatic efforts to achieve a political accommodation. However, without US leadership, none of this will be possible. And there is the proverbial fly in the ointment - US leadership has been missing in action for the last six years and may well remain so, well into the next decade.
By the way, Senator Biden has not only been stating that he opposes using military force to impose a solution on the Iraqis but he has also been working tirelessly to put the US Senate on record as being opposed both to permanent US military bases in Iraq and to any US control over that country’s natural resources.
Senator Biden has not suggested that his plan will be successful or that it will avoid any bloodshed. What he has been making clear is that his strategy for Iraq offers the best and only hope - not guarantee - for ending the war in Iraq responsibly, allowing for the withdrawal of US troops without leaving chaos behind and the need to return at a later date. The problem is not that Senator Biden hasn’t been clear about all of this, but that not enough of us are bothering to listen.
It would sure appear, Liz, that Biden and others are doing what's second nature to political tacticians: co-opt the observable, call it your own and burnish your "prescient" credentials.
No matter what Biden, Pollack or Svengali may posit as a way forward in Iraq, the Shia have already stated their intentions - and are acting aggressively to implement them. While scant lip service is payed to their Sunni Arab "brothers",regional autonomy is the S.C.I.R.I. objective, and "Unity" exists only as a euphemism in the illusory narrative offered to the world. Reconcilliation for Baath Party technocrats has been explicitly rejected (Hakim), a predictable, if not inconsequential outcome for an emerging 'Shiastan'.
To deduce that this "devolution" of centralized power will be attended by "Iraqi Unity" is more intellectually dishonest than naive.
Excellent post, though there seems to be some semantic confusion between the notion of partition(physical barriers) and regional autonomy (Federalism) at play here.
In 9/06, Abdul Asizz al-Hakim, against vehement Sunni-bloc protest, led a simple majority in parliament(138 seats) in enacting the legal framework for regional autonomous control in 9 southern governates, effectively heralding the birth of a southern 'Shiastan'.
Ackward as this was for the Bush Adminstration, who were still singing the "Iraqi Unity Government Ballad", Dubya still hosted al-Hakim at the White House several months later, referring to the autonomy architect as " a leader committed to Iraqi Unity".
A quick cruise over to Juan Cole's blog, whom you mentioned, details fresh codifying of the Federalism imperative, delivered to S.C.I.R.I. members by al-Hakim's son.
It would appear that the inexorable slide towards regional autonomy, with the accompanying cleansing and atrocity, is being embraced more fully by Iraq's Shia majority, leaving the sidelined Sadrist bloc as Bush's duet partner for further performances of 'Unity Government'- a spectre not unnoticed by the administration's tacticians.
Hence, it would seem, O Hanlon, Pollack and more soon to come; newly minted Federalism enthusiasts, testing the ideological waters for their bosses as the Shia cement their control in Iraq.
As I understood Biden's position:
http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2007/08/09/1/a-conversation-with-senator-joseph-biden
...he was in favor of a federal system in Iraq with a central government with limited powers and "state or regional" governments that would better address tribal/sectarian issues and police their own.
It would appear that if a strong central government evolves - it will be predominantly shia and will still need regional cooperation to keep order - or another oppressive central government will evolve.
.
I hope RJ will at least take a look at the video link you provided. Thanks for that!
Whether partitioning Iraq is the answer, I don't know. I do know that too many people on BOTH sides of the question are far too detached from experience and knowledge to responsibly take part in foreign policy. Sadly, our governing institutions -- government itself and the "think tanks" -- are peopled with individuals so privileged, so removed from life's difficulties that they haven't even experienced the indignity of the scramble for seats on a Southwest Airlines flight, let alone suffered the chaos involved in splitting a nation.
P.S. Why is Iraq always divided into three in these plans? What about the moderate, secular, modern Iraqis who intermarried? Where are they supposed to go? In our simple solutions, we again betray our closest allies. Then again, reality is "faith-based" now...
Two cents more -
I'd like to see the 'exiles' return and fight for their country. I'd like to see expatriates return to Iraq to fight for the country. Was it something like 40,000 Iraqis, not living there, voted in each of the various elections. Even if a small percentage of these people returned it could form the nucleus of what will take Iraq forward in a positive manner.
There has to be an area 10 to 20 miles outside of Baghdad that could be built up into a 'green zone' that these people can live and slowly influence the evolution that would be required to place Iraq on a smoother path. Some place to sit down, chill, not think about dying, be secure, and plan for the future.
Some place the size of the District of Columbia that can be guarded, protected and offer a level of stability. Forget Baghdad (for the time being), it is too complex and has too much history and pain. A new clean sheet of paper is needed.
Like I said, just my two cents.
I am not sold on the idea of partition, but I am a little suspicious of any argument which points to the harms of some way of going forward without giving any sense of how that compares to the harms of the other choices.
Would a joint India/Pakistan really have been a peaceful entity that never broke down along religious and ethnic lines? It is possible, but doesn't seem overly likely since it was joined only by the might of the British Military.
If the US simply pulls out of Iraq in the next year, my favored approach, and leaves the Iraqis to work out a balance of power that works, there will be bloodshed. I hope that there will be less bloodshed in the long run than if we stay, or if we somehow work a partition. But the Republican argument against "cutting and running" is, like the argument above against imperial partitioning, just that there will be bloodshed.
But one doesn't really advance the argument until one gets to comparing the bloodshed likely to follow the existing options. Bush and his neo-cons created a disaster with the idiotic invasion of Iraq. Whatever we do will involve some of that disaster coming to fruition.
It does not advance the debate to simply point to the way that the disaster will emerge from following one course, because the alternative is not no disaster, but a different disaster. So the real debate now is all in disaster comparison.
Thoughtful comments - but I'm most suspicious of any argument that minimizes its own cost in lives by disregarding any inconvenient historical examples. (Cyprus is another.) Especially so if it's being offered by people who aren't region experts and have been spectacularly wrong in the past.
Given the unknowns about either option, I'm in favor of what the people there apparently want to do - a thought that doesn't seem to have occurred to the partition advocates.
(And to the guy whose post I accidentally deleted, sorry! Try again!)
A nod to RJ, but what's needed here is a real look at great partitions of the past, most especially India/Pakistan, more than tiny Cyprus. The million-dead estimate for I/P is likely true, with the number traumatized far greater. Great egos drove I/P; are there such power junkies within the imminent fragments of Iraq? I/P also coincided with the end of the British Raj, so no reasonably powerful counter-radical forces were in play.
This is the consequence of withdrawal of ostensibly benevolent dictatorship after centuries of its application.
Czechoslovakia was counter-Stalinist, with a home grown strongman, but obviously never had unity. Still, its breakup was fairly gentle.
Turkey is one remnant of the long Ottoman hegemony; even this beat-up hulk suppresses restless minorities (Armenia, Kurdistan, etc.), sometimes brutally, in an effort to prevent dissolution.
The USSR model is horrible to consider.
China is a forced consolidation of desert nomads, mountain peoples, rice farmers, and centuries-old centers of commerce, with grossly different cultures. Can it survive as a single state within its present geographic boundaries, or will it break up with bloody consequences from the forced colonization of the Himalayas and the Gobi?
So let's have some real perspectives, not one-sentence snapshots or Rovian catch phrases.
"Hold on, the astute reader will say. O'Hanlon's paper was published in June, but the administration tried to build the wall in April. How can there be a connection between the two?
Answer: There is, but you're reversing cause and effect. The role of the "public intellectual" in Washington is no longer to generate new ideas. That's "pre-9/11 thinking." Today, the foreign policy scholar's job is to provide intellectual cover for decisions that have already been made by the powerful. That's how you get good jobs and generous grants nowadays.
Nice work, if you can get it -- and if you don't worry too much about the consequences of your actions."
RJ, this observation sums up perfectly the ideology of the NeoCons. Call it Royalism, Authoritarianism, Fascism or Daddy Knows Best, our current government cares not a whit about the poor, witless worms at the bottom.
Excellent post.
What O'Hanlon and Joseph are advocating is nothing less than the ethnic cleansing of 2-5 million Iraqis by the United States with the separation of families being addressed by "EZ Pass" systems. Now, this is akin to apartheid, or worse by implication, the current Palestinian situation, something that is certain to fuel unrest, but it is also darkly reminiscent of another era, circa 1940.
In Time Magazine, Bob Baer says an administration official told him "There will be an attack on Iran:"
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1654188,00.html
There are "War Party Wackos" calling for even crazier schemes in Iraq:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11470
And, a new "Partition" plan is the product they will try to "roll out" in August.
19 August 2007: Another Bout of Partitionism. The campaign for an Iraq divided on the basis of ethnic and sectarian identities adds some academics to its ranks, but the arguments for partition remain as unconvincing as ever. Review of Edward P. Joseph and Michael E. O’Hanlon, “The Case for Soft Partition in Iraq”, and Amitai Etzioni, “Plan Z: A Community Based Security Plan for Iraq”.
http://www.historiae.org/index.asp
Actually, Visser has done a very detailed analysis of the BBC poll of Iraqis attitudes on partition from this spring along with his ongoing work on the history of such ideas with a focus on Basra. I'd recommend reading his papers here: http://historiae.org/index.asp
We must always be wary of buying into the analysis of the Iraqi situation promoted by the administration and their friends like O'Hanlon - rather than information that reflects actual reality on the ground.
Originally, under the cover of fighting Al Queata, the US invaded Iraq with the strategic goal of returning Iraq to the status of an American client state, which it had been before the first Gulf War and Saddam decided to go off the reservation. The region of Iraq, however, has always been of a tribal nature and only the most ruthless dictator could give it the appearance of a united country. Thus the administration’s strategic goal of standing up a central government that it could easily dominate was a wrong headed fantasy from the start, making it a huge waste of money to build the worlds largest embassy to relate to a government that would never become a practical reality.
As a part of the American plan to create a strong central government, a policy was instituted to discourage local tribalism. But as soon as it became apparent to local leaders ( the ones who really have political influence over the peoples of the various regions) that the Americans had no interest in supporting them, it set off the insurgency, and then once the so called outside Al Queata fighters began filleting into Iraq, the locals quickly allied with them against collation forces.
But over the last few years two things have happened. First Al Queata began killing and harassing Iraqis almost as much as they did the collation forces, which greatly pissed off the locals. Next the administration has been slowly coming to the realization that trying to stand up a strong central government might indeed be the impossible fantasy that insiders have been trying to tell them for years. Thus when the American military began approaching local tribal leaders for help in fighting Al Queata, which in itself was a smart shift away from a dumb policy, tribal leaders were quick to reversed course and switched sides against the brutal Al Queata elements. The reality is that Al Queata could never have been effective unless local Iraqis were engaged in fighting against the collation.
History repeats itself so many times only to be ignored. What America wants doesn't matter in the case of IRAQ, and perhaps rightfully so. While I have no arguement with Sadaam was brutal and should have been removed, but it was not America's place to do it... it was the IRAQI's.
America's meddling in other countries affairs has always proven to be ill advised and resulted in the wrong outcome. During the World Wars America had good reason to be involved which is one thing, but look at Korea, Vietnam, meddling in Lebanon, IRAN and IRAQ, the list goes on. When the UN needs us to participate in places like Kosovo we should help as it is not the case of America forcing our will on others. When are we going to learn the lesson's of history?
What is going on in IRAQ today is a civil war that only the IRAQ's can produce the outcome for. Any notion of imposing our will on them is the same thing as a hypotheical turn of the table where they impose their will on us. We wouldn't stand for it so why is it even thinkable that they should submit to our empossing our style of democracy upon them.
There is no resonable arguement that Al Quaida can take over IRAQ because the IRAQ's wouldn't stand for that either as it is beginning to become apparent.
This is a simple case of civil war within IRAQ as a result of Sadaam's removal. Only they can resolve their differences and we should simply pull out and let them get on with the business of solving their problems themselves.
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Posted August 20, 2007 | 11:59 AM (EST)