The big new buzz on Capitol Hill is partitioning Iraq into three ethnic enclaves, the thesis of a new book by Peter Galbraith who participated in carving up the Balkans a decade ago and who is an official consultant to the Kurdish community seeking independence from Iraq.
So far presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Biden and, surprisingly, Rep. Maxine Waters, leader of the House Out of Iraq Caucus, are publicly seeking support for carving Iraq into a northern Kurdistan, a southern Shiite autonomous zone, and a western Sunni region. [Rep. Waters appears to be withdrawing her support from the plan.]
So captivated are our decision-makers with proposals to carve up iraq that the issue of bringing our troops home is all but disappearing from official discourse.
Perhaps it is only an accident, but the partition proposal has diverted attention to the Democratic Party's recent consensus in favor of setting deadlines either for withdrawal [Feingold, Kerry] or beginning to withdraw [Reid, Levin, Clinton]. It has given Republican consgressman Christopher Shays, a Democratic target in the November elections, the opportunity to chair C-SPAN forums on how the West should split up Iraq instead of whether he really favors withdrawing American troops.
Galbraith, Les Gelb, and other partitionists have a substantive case in addition to the political subtext. Galbraith claims, with considerable evidence, that Iraq is already divided by civil war, and that it cannot be put back together. He is less clear as to whether this results from a deliberate neo-conservative strategy or merely the accidental outcome of a failed occupation.
The partition discussion downplays the fact that it is a menu for continued US war against the Iraq insurgency which spans Sunni nationalists and many Shiite Arabs, like the followers of Moktada al-Sadr, among the most popular leaders in Iraq today. As in Northern Ireland, the occupiers are saying they cannot leave because the natives will kill each other, the perfect formula for permanent American deaths.
[Just this week, the LA Times reported that Bush's hope for troop reduction was "dashed" by the sectarian violence, saying that the violence prevented the American generals from recommending troop cuts. LAT, Sept. 16].
The appeal of Galbraith's viewpoint is that it avoids the "cut and run" label while still calling for partial US troop withdrawals and redeployment to Kurdistan - "over the hill", but able in league with the Kurdish peshmerga to re-invade Anbar province with greater troop numbers and force. A retreat but also a repositioning for the US in a pro-Western Kurdistan.
Galbraith must assume, however, that the US army and Shiite death squads can bludgeon the Sunnis into settling for a Sunni enclave under Sunni leadership. There is no sign so far that this military strategy is succeeding, however. Not only has Anbar province slipped under greater insurgent Sunni control, but it is unlikely that the majority Shiite bloc will ever guarantee enforceable revenue-sharing over oil revenues to the Sunni, or accept the restoration of ex-Baathists in the Sunni region. Galbraith says the US should "encourage" the formation of a Sunni Arab region, only then pulling our troops out. Such "encouragement" would take aggressive military "persuasion", not polite diplomatic discussions.
There is the inevitability of ethnic cleansing in this scenario, especially of Sunnis all over the country. One million Sunnis live in Basra, which is perceived as a Shiite region. Where will they go? Worse, the Sunnis of Baghdad will have to be forced to uproot themselves and move behind a north-south wall partitioning the whole capital. Termed "mass migrations", the uprooting process already is underway according to an April 2, 2006 NYT account. "The migrations are partly caused by the fear of partisan Iraqi security forces, many of them trained by the Americans", the Times reported. Nearly one million Iraqis have left the country altogether, refugees in Jordan or Syria.
Michael O'Hanlon at the Democratic-oriented Brookings Institution favors such dislocation, calling it "voluntary ethnic relocation" and "segregation." [op-ed, LAT, Aug. 27, 2006] The Israelis also support the notion; Shlomo Avineri, former director of Israel's foreign ministry, says "an Iraq split into three semi-autonomous mini-states, or an Iraq in civil war, means that the kind of threat posed by [Saddam] Hussein...is unlikely to rise again." [op-ed, LAT, Dec. 4, 2005].
Let me be clear. The time may come when the Sunnis are forced militarily to agree to a US offer for a cease-fire in exchange for an autonomous ethnic enclave, guaranteed oil revenues, represented by nationalists including Baathists and secured by their own armed forces. But not without a longer war against the US occupiers and their Shiite and Kurdish allies. There is no light at the end of this tunnel so far. This means American troops will be killed and wounded for purposes that are less and less understood by their families, friends and the American people. Since the Iraqi security forces are unreliable, American troops would have to undertake high-risk policing functions in urban areas, only increasing US casualties.
If the withdrawal of American troops is contingent on Iraqis accepting partition, this might give new oxygen to arguments for the American presence. The current Congressional debate would shift away from bringing the troops home and turn toward the imperial game of how to arrange the ethnic chess board.
What is the alternative? The best strategy is for the US to declare a plan to withdraw and simultaneously transfer authorization for security and economic reconstruction to a United Nations-appointed body. The US would have to end the occupation and allow the Iraqis decide whether they prefer one, two or three Iraqs. That is exactly what Iraqi parliamentarians had in mind last week, when 104 of them proposed a timetable for American withdrawal. The initiative would have been binding as law if supported by one half the parliamentarians present on the floor. Instead of facing the truth, that a majority of the parliament wants a timetable for withdrawal, not partition at American hands, the resolution was sent to committee for further study. [AP, Sept. 12, 2006]#