I agree with Noz that dividing Iraq in three would not stop the fighting and would cause at least as many problems as it could solve, at least in the short term. However, this is no longer about just Iraq. It’s about a regional sectarian war that has ethnic implications as well. Insofar as any outside parties can be helpful in putting an end to the violence, it probably isn’t a good idea to try to put everything back together inside the Iraq and Syria nation-state boxes.
The problem, as I see it, is that getting consensus on new dividing lines would probably be just as difficult as trying to put Iraq and Syria back together. The advantage isn’t that it would be easier to do, but that the end result would have the promise for a more rational sorting of populations.
Either way, I don’t expect the fighting to stop for the foreseeable future. This kind of sectarian fighting coming on top of a fortune in fossil fuels in lands with countless shrines and holy places just isn’t likely to burn itself out until a generation lies in ruins.
That doesn’t mean that the international community should resign itself to this fate for the region. But it shouldn’t waste time and energy trying to put all these shards of eggshell back together again.
If politics was about sorting populations, racial segregation and reservations in the US, reserves in Australia and Canada, and the apartheid of the occupied territories that Israel administers would be resounding successes.
Nationalism, sectarianism, ideology are all emotional appeals to divide and conquer in a political struggle. In the end, wars and violence end when normal politics re-emerge. Outside dictates of what should be done in the the Middle East that Dick Cheney broke are not going to bring about and end to this conflict.
The best thing the US can do to assist in restoration of civil life in the Middle East is to (1) bust Israel for its years of human rights abuses, (2) round up the Bush-Cheney gang and associated neo-cons for a human rights and war crimes prosecution preparatory to an ICC tribunal, and (3) stop acting like the buttinsky “indispensable” nation (we really aren’t).
It would seem to be somewhat of a policy problem that each of your (almost unarguably correct) prescriptions for aiding ME stability are not just politically impossible, they are beyond the bounds of public discourse in the US, ha-ha!
Jeebus, what would the coaches of Team Conservative do if some nationwide teevee guest were to make these points, even on the unwatched PBS NewsHour?
The grassroots conservative policy prescription for the Middle East for some time (even before 9/11) been “Turn the region to glass.” And some conservatives have made that proposal on national TV. Almost mainstreamed the idea after 9/11.
Sanity is politically impossible in the US right now between the grifting crazy GOP and the duck-and-cover Democrats.
Yeah, drive those damn Jews into the sea!
It seems to me that the Israeli-Palestinian situation only has an impact on Palestinians. The idea that Israel’s behavior is creating chaos in Syria, Egypt and Iraq doesn’t hold water for me. All it does is provide a distraction for the “Arab Street” so the dictators can keep robbing everyone blind.
If anything, the crises in the Middle East are a product of immediate problems trumping the Israeli boogeyman.
Presumably an envisioned partition is only undertaken with the the consent of the disputing parties or there would be no basis to think that the magic of division (and by whom?) would solve anything.
So what’s going to be the global mechanism for altering national boundaries via some sort of application of “reason”? Boundaries tend to be changed by war, not debate. War is how the present boundaries were established, a decree of the victors, as we all know. And the UN was basically set up to enshrine national borders after WWII.
Do the “Syrians” want Syria divided somehow? Do the “Iraqis”? If the Kurds and the Arab sunnis want to divide Iraq and impose some division on the shi’a militarily, they probably can get a conversation going. But they’re fighting each other instead. And inconveniently for them, the shi’a are sitting on (in the sense of living above) most of the oil. Another huge fly in the crude…
I am sure that the US has no meaningful answers and has done absolutely nothing to aid stability in the region. It also has utterly lost whatever credibility it ever had for giving such advice. And any person, group or country that wants more American intervention over there certainly does not have our interests in mind—American “conservative” politicians most definitely included!
Well, what we’re seeing is a many-leveled war right now. And, except for the folks who are hoping to simply annihilate the other side, there should be war aims that are somewhat limited in scope. If one side hope to utterly dominate either Iraq or Syria, then this will never end, but if the various parties can settle for something less, then negotiations could be productive, especially after the fighting has gone on for some time and the factions are worn out.
My pessimism on the recent developments knows no limits, as the Syrian Sunni rebellion has spread to Anbar province. In Iraq the former Baathists and the Sunni population have accepted the ISIS militants to regain territory from the central government of Baghdad. This truly is a blitzkrieg. The new situation offers a risk to further attacks on Baghdad where the Sunni suburbs will offer support. The ISIS army may turn westward and become a threat to the Kingdom of Jordan which has a large segment of the Muslim Brotherhood in opposition. The article below shows the true intent to conquer the Levant, establish a caliphate and lay siege to Al Quds (Jerusalem). It is not by chance that Israel has started a war on Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza. The IDF soldiers have shot dead five Palestinians and taken over 300 persons to Israel’s prisons. The attacks have made the position of PA president Abbas very difficult. The White House is numb on the Israel incursions in Palestinian territory.
● The Islamic Front (IF) backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar
○ Anbar Province – Iron Fist replaces Operation Restoring Rights
○ Balad 3-car bombs 85 killed & 110 wounded ● Tal Afar : Bomber Kills 8 :: Iraq in 2005
I expect President Obama’s statement of “no US boots on the ground in Iraq” is not a red line. I expect the situation to worsen with respect to Jordan, partner in Middle East peace with Israel. US does have troops on the ground in Jordan. Before the elections this fall, Obama will be forced to make a major decision on sending military into combat.
○ Iraq’s Sunni ‘war of liberation’
○ Iraq crisis: How struggle in the heartland of Islam may redraw borders
○ The Saudi-Qatari Clash Over Syria
○ Middle-East politics where Qatar was ousted and the Saudi influence increased (Prince Bandar)
Check out Juan Cole’s blast from the past (1000AD) on the borders.
Neo-Zangid State erases Syria-Iraq Border, cuts Hizbullah off from Iran
Yep!
I guess I disagree.
I think stable politics are only possible with stable polities. Dictatorships create stable polities by fear. Democracies create them by some form of pluralism.
The idea that pluralism can take hold in the Middle East is laughable right now. So you either empower more dictatorships or you try and reduce the demands on pluralism by creating states more along sectarian and ethnic lines.
As for the Turkomen and Chaldeans and all the other minor ethnic groups, they are probably more secure under a Kurdish or Sunni Arab majority state than in a free flowing ethnic war zone. Most ethnic minorities are reasonably safe in Iran, for instance, including a Jewish population in Teheran. It’s not the Upper West Side, but it’s not Mosul, either.
If you carved out a Sunni Arab state from Tikrit to the middle of Syria and allowed the Iraqi Kurds their inevitable independence, then the struggle goes from gaining power to exercising it. I have doubts that a group like ISIL can really govern. While the new state of Ninevah (or whatever) will likely be chaotic and corrupt, it should lead to more security in Iraq and Kurdistan (and maybe even Syria).
Basically, the states created by the League of Nations “protectorates” have always been fictions. Why must we continue to kill and die over preserving them?