Partitioning                                                                                                                                      

Turn the channel. Except for the final score, the war in Iraq is over.

We played hard and did many good things. But we had a lousy game plan and really bad coaches. We lost.

After three years, the grand illusions the Bush administration foolishly took us to war for -- to free Iraq, to defeat the terrorists in their own backyard, to seed democracy in the Middle East, whatever -- are less attainable than ever.

The bloody sectarian and ethnic violence of the last few weeks may or may not signal the start of the oft-predicted civil war between the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites. But some experts say the violent unraveling of Iraq -- plus the inability or unwillingness of its new leaders to create a working central government -- are signs that the nation of Iraq is breaking apart.

That's the last thing the Bush administration wants. It's still stubbornly wedded to its original, unrealistic idea of re-creating a strong national government in Baghdad that can keep the three factions happy and from cutting each others' throats every other holy day.

But Peter Galbraith, a former ambassador to Croatia, and Ivan Eland, a senior fellow at the libertarian Independent Institute, have a better idea: They both think the best way to "rebuild" a better post-Saddam Iraq always was, and still is, to partition it.

Galbraith, betraying his Democrat genes, calls his plan "a managed breakup." But he and Eland both advocate decentralizing government power in Iraq, an artificial country whose borders and Sunni-dominated power structure were created after World War I by British diplomats.

The more you know about Iraq's history, people and geography, and the more you talk to Galbraith and Eland, the more sense partition makes.

Iraq is similar to the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union, which Galbraith says were both "killed by democracy." Partitioning Iraq -- i.e., allowing its major ethnic and religious groups to set up and rule their own turf -- would create many messy political, economic and security problems. Who gets how much oil revenue is the big one.

The U.S.-leaning Kurds up north and the Iran-leaning Shia down south favor a breakup, Eland says. The Sunnis (Saddam's home tribe, centered around Baghdad) are against it. But if the Sunni get a cut of the oil wealth, Eland suspects they'll play along. Meanwhile, what all three groups fear equally, he says, is a central government with a strong military that can be seized by a future Saddam and used to oppress them.

A breakup of Iraq is inevitable, Galbraith and Eland both agree, so why fight it? As Galbraith says, "If we seek to maintain an unitary Iraq, we will commit ourselves to an endless occupation of the country and we're not likely to succeed."

Unfortunately, neither Galbraith nor Eland sees any interest for a partition inside the Bush administration. Eland thinks Washington is still pushing a unified Iraq in part because of the president's unwillingness to give up the idea of having permanent military bases there.

What the Bush administration wants or hopes for in Iraq has been moot for a long time, however. Partition will happen eventually anyway -- violently or peacefully. The best thing for us to do now to salvage our blunder in Iraq, Eland says, is help the breakup process and work for a peaceful and stable Iraq, not thwart it.

Then, Eland says, we could tell the Iraqis: "We've toppled Saddam. We've helped you mediate this settlement. We've provided incentives for various groups to do things. And now we're saying goodbye."

The Interview

Ivan Eland: It's time to partition Iraq
By Bill Steigerwald
27/03/2006

Why does Iraq -- an artificial country invented by British diplomats after World War I and composed of three religious and ethnic groups that pretty much hate each other -- have to have a unified national government? Why not let Iraq do what Czechoslovakia and most of the Soviet Union did in the 1990s -- carefully and peacefully partition itself? Why can't the Kurds have their own democracy, the Shiites their own religious theocracy, and the Sunnis their own strongman, if that's what they choose?

Ivan Eland is author of "The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed" and director of the libertarian Independent Institute's Center on Peace & Liberty. A longtime advocate of partitioning Iraq, he argues it's the best and probably only way to avert the bloody civil war he says is just getting started. I talked to him Wednesday by phone from his offices in Washington.

Q: How do you define a partition of Iraq?

A: My observation is that Iraq is already partitioned. You have all these militias running around with guns and the U.S. hasn't disarmed many of them because they are helping with local security. But the problem is that this thing has turned into "sectarian violence," as the president likes to call it, or "civil war," as other people like to call it. What they need to do is have a conclave and manage the partition of the country. Iraq is going to break up because it already is broken up, and it can either be done on a peaceful basis or one that is very nasty and violent. I think a "managed partition" is the best way.

Q: Are we talking about breaking Iraq into three parts -- for Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis?

A: Not necessarily. I don't think it's going to be that easy. What's going to happen is that they are probably going to have a bloody civil war. It'll be wherever the armies are. If one beats up on the other one, then the boundaries will be changed. When you have a war, it's hard to determine what will happen. A peaceful partition would probably be three or more parts.

Q: Can this partition be imposed on Iraq by the United States?

A: No, I don't think so. You have to let them sort it out. They should have done this before. It may be too late now, but it's still the best hope for the place. The Kurds and the Shia don't really want to be a part of Iraq. When you have 80 percent of the population that doesn't want to be in the country, that's a problem. The Sunnis are the only ones who don't want to break up the country. The main reason is that they think they will be a rump state with no oil. If the Shia and the Kurds give the Sunnis some oil, they will be willing to go their own way, too.

Q: What's the principle behind the partition -- decentralizing power and local autonomy?

A: Yes. Decentralization. The main fear of each group, the reason the Kurds and Shia want their autonomy and the reason the Sunni are fighting an insurgency, is that each group fears that the central government will be used to oppress the other group. So they either want control of the central government, or if they can't get that, they want to be removed from it.

Q: What are the upsides of a partition for the U.S.?

A: If every group were confined to its local areas and they all knew what the boundaries were, and they would police people of their own ethnic or religious group, then it might reduce the chances of civil war. And of course then the al-Qaida terrorists would be the outcasts. If they were still bombing, even in the Sunni areas, the Sunni militias would turn against them because they are outsiders. I think you could actually reduce Iraq as a haven for al-Qaida, as well, because the security would be increased. This also provides the Bush administration with a way of saying, "Well, we toppled Saddam Hussein and we gave the Iraqis the best change for peace and prosperity." If there is peace in Iraq, people aren't going to care if there's one Iraq or three or four Iraqs.

Q: Would we, the United States, play a role in the partition?

A: I think we can mediate it, but I think it must be done fairly quickly. We see these negotiations dragging on now because nobody has an incentive. Negotiations can happen real fast if there's an urgent need. If the U.S. declares it's going to pull out, I think you will see the Kurds and the Shia become very receptive to negotiating a settlement.

Q: Is there any interest in the Bush administration for a partition?

A: I don't know. I think they would do this only as a desperation move. The problem is, if they wait too long, even a partition isn't going to work because the civil war is already started. Unless they stop it, it's going to get worse.

Q: Why is the Bush administration wedded to re-creating a strong central government?

A: The president is still holding on to the idea that we're still going to have military bases there. They want them on the Gulf, but the Shia areas are not going to allow that, and they're the ones closest to the Gulf, and that's where the significant amounts of oil are. I think that's one reason the administration is still clinging to the idea of a unified Iraq. The other is just probably bureaucratic inertia.

Q: What's Iraq going to look like in 2008? President Bush said our troops will still be there.

A: I liken it to the pilot with two engines on fire who does not look for an alternate landing strip but tries to continue on his course to his original destination. He's probably going to crash and burn, and I think that's what's going to happen in Iraq. I don't think we're going to make it for another three years there. I think there's going to be a civil war in Iraq if the president doesn't change course. The public won't stand for U.S. forces being caught in a civil war. If all hell breaks loose in Iraq, those forces will be coming home much, much sooner -- to the electoral peril of Republicans. I don't think they have another three years to wait.

Bill Steigerwald is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune- Review.