Diplomatic Malpractice: Sectarian Violence In Iraq – OpEd
Eurasia Review
Baghdad, at one time, was
the most beautiful city in the world. That was 762 AD. Located where the Garden of Eden is believed to have been.
However today, Baghdad and much of Iraq is in tumult.
According to “statista,” as
of June 16, 2012, there have been 1,879 civilian deaths in Iraq this year
resulting from sectarian violence. On July 23rd alone, 111 people
were killed and nearly 200 wounded. Attacks during the month of June have
killed at least 237 people, with many more wounded. Right about now someone is
thinking – yes, yes, we know Iraq is a violent place, but what’s your point.
The point is it did not
have to be.
Nothing comes more
instinctively to the region than sectarian violence. The difference would seem
to be less of kind, since most warring parties are Arabic except for the case of
the Kurds, than political and religious (Shi’a v. Sunni). This is comparable to
the former Yugoslavia where Serbs, Croats, and Muslim Slavs, all southern Slavs,
were segregated by religious identity, and fought to determine what each
believed to be their birthright.
One of the great failing of
the Bush Administration, and specifically its National Security Advisor and
later Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is that they did not recognize this
division. And, therefore, did not have an intelligent plan of what to do in
Iraq after Saddam Hussein was removed. In fact, Ms. Rice’s preferred option for Iraq was “to have Iraqis kill
one another for a while before they get the point.” The violence we are seeing
today, in my view, is a direct result of that failure.
The inability to fashion a
sensible accord between Iraq’s three sectarian groups, resulted in the
immediate and ongoing warfare. There was no intelligent design, there was no
historical perspective, and there was no applied dynamics. Therefore, there has
been no peace. Again, it did not have to be this way, but both the Bush and
Obama Administrations, and their principle foreign policy chiefs, Condoleezza Rice
and Hilary Clinton, simple did not understand the complexities and nuances of
the region’s history.
The best strategy for Iraq would
have been to partition the country into three parts: the Kurds (Mosul); Sunni
(Baghdad); and Shi’a (Basra). Here’s why.
The demise of Iraq will cause
consternation to some. The whole Middle East has skin in the game, none more so
than Turkey and Iran. In the case of Turkey, they have had every opportunity
for partnership and constructive intervention in the region and have never
failed to miss an opportunity. No matter what they wish to think - Kurds are
not Turks and Mosul does not belong to Turkey. A Nation of Kurdistan will not be
the death of Turkey. It will be however, a stable force in an unstable region.
Turkey should have figured it out by now, that an accommodation to the Kurds would
work toward balancing and even mitigating Iran’s position in Iraq, especially under
Nouri al – Maliki, the Shi’a Prime Minister.
With al – Maliki and his
Shi’a control of Iraq’s central government, Iran will continue to exert
untoward influence. Reducing Shi’a dominance to southern Iraq will
correspondingly reduce Iran’s influence in the region. It is Iran who is
attempting to steer policy in Iraq. Mr. al - Maliki is simply the puppet.
A stable “Mesopotamia” is important to Middle East stability; particularly
with the growing probability Syria could collapse, leaving no effective central
government, much like Lebanon. It is not too difficult to predict that Iran
stands poised to fill the resulting power vacuum in Syria through their
surrogate Hezbollah. The new road to perdition will run from Tehran, through
Basra, Damascus, ending in Beirut. The partition of Iraq would at least provide
two buffer zones against this menacing tide.
Hence, the partition of
Iraq is not only a pragmatic solution to help end the violence in Iraq, it is a
historical imperative and strategic initiative.
In sum, Iraq is an
artificial state. To believe that Kurds, Sunni, and Shi’a can live peacefully
together contradicts realty. Just as Bosnia became a failed state when Muslims,
Serbs, and Croatians, were provided with the means to choose the conditions
under which they wished to live - similarly the Kurds, Sunni, and Shi’a, are
doing so in Iraq today.
A
solution to Iraqi violence is to construct a new compact. That new compact will
be the partition of Iraq into three distinct states.
Lawrence S. Schneiderman is an International Consultant and Dr. of Public Policy,
Vanderbilt University. The views expressed are the author’s own.
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