Iraq partition proposal based on several false premises

World View: Senator Joseph Biden, senior Democrat on the US Foreign Relations Committee, recently added his influential voice to those calling for the pacification of Iraq through partition.

In a plan entitled "Unity through Autonomy in Iraq", Biden and Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the influential Council on Foreign Relations, propose the division of Iraq into three autonomous regions - Kurdish, Sunni and Shia - held together by a central government based in Baghdad.

The regions would take charge of internal security, administration and domestic legislation, while Baghdad would become a federal zone and exert control over foreign relations, national defence and oil revenues. Minority rights could be guaranteed by threats to withdraw foreign funding. Biden and Gelb call for the withdrawal of US troops by 2008 and a regional conference at which Iraq's neighbours would agree to respect Iraq's sovereignty and federal system.

The plan, a reworking of a partition proposal put forward by Gelb in 2003, is based on several false premises. The first is that Iraqis are prepared to accept the dictation of the US or any other foreign power. Iraqis are the proud inhabitants of the ancient Land between the Two Rivers and heirs to the golden era of Arab civilisation. In modern times Iraq has been regarded by Arabs as the hard core of the eastern Arab world and a leading pan-Arab power.

Most Iraqis identify themselves as Iraqis rather than members of one community or another. They recall that the 1920 nationalist revolt against Britain was mounted by Shia tribesmen and that the majority of soldiers who fought Iran in the 1980-88 war were Shias.

Iraqis claim communal politics was imposed by ethnic and sectarian separatists, who returned to Iraq in 2003 on the backs of US tanks. Iraqis consider regionalism as a means to divide and rule.

The second false premise is that Iraq's ethno-sectarian communities can be easily and painlessly gathered in three regions. In a study released at the same time as the Biden-Gelb plan, Anthony Cordesman of the Washington Centre for Strategic and International Studies dismisses regionalism. He argues that "Iraq does not have a neat set of ethnic dividing lines" and points out that there is no reliable census showing where different communities live.

Provinces which have clear Shia and Sunni majorities also have sizeable minorities of Arab Shias, Sunnis, Christians, and Kurds. Separation would result in mass population movements rivalling the sectarian transfers which accompanied the partition of India.

Tribes, clans and families would be sundered. Major tribes have both Shia and Sunni members and there are tens of thousands of intermarriages among Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and Turkomen at all levels of society. Mixed couples have millions of children.

Just over half the Kurds live in the three Kurdish provinces in the north, the rest elsewhere. While the Kurds demand that the mixed city of Kirkuk should be annexed by the Kurdish autonomous region, this would be violently resisted by the 1.5 million Turkomen and Arabs who live there. They are already protesting the settlement of Kurds in the area. External elements would intervene. Turkey considers itself the protector of the Turkomen and the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has recently deployed units of his Mahdi Army militia in Kirkuk to defend Shia Arabs against Kurdish ethnic cleansers.

The third false premise is that the majority of Iraqis would acquiesce.

The creation of autonomous regions is advocated only by the Kurds, with 58 seats in parliament, and the Shia Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq with 30 seats. Regionalism is contested by Sunnis, secularists, Turkomen, the Shia Dawa party of premier-designate Nuri Maliki, and the followers of Moqtada al-Sadr. The Sadrists have 32 seats, Dawa 30, Sunni fundamentalists 44, and secularists 36. This would give the opponents of regionalism a firm majority of 142.

Sadr's militia, estimated to be 10,000 strong, and the insurgents fighting the US occupation, another 10,000, could be expected to take up arms against any effort to divide the country.

The fourth false premise is that Iraq's neighbours could be persuaded not to interfere and to join in a regional non-aggression pact. Iraq's neighbours already feel threatened by its existing divisions.

Turkey recently massed 30,000 troops on its border to counter raids backed by militant Turkish Kurds based in northern Iraq who have, once again, taken up arms to fight for self-determination.

Iran, which also faces separatist minorities, has shelled the Kurdish area. Saudi Arabia is certain to oppose a super-Shia region because it would encourage demands for autonomy from own Shia minority, located in the oil-producing Eastern Province.

Regionalism in Iraq could produce regional meltdown. Just about the only realistic stand the Bush administration has taken since it decided to invade Iraq has been to oppose partitionist proposals.