Iraq War: Juan Cole on why partitioning Iraq is a bad idea

"I think we are winning. Okay? I think we're definitely winning. I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

Juan Cole warns us of the serious problems involved with the idea of Breaking Iraq Apart San Jose Mercury News 11/05/06, i.e., partitioning the country into Shi'a, Arab Sunni, and Kurdish mini-states:

The vagueness and, frankly, incoherence of some of the comments made about splitting up Iraq by politicians on the stump suggests that they are using the idea merely as an election-season mantra. They are putting it forward as an exit strategy. Divide the place up and get out, they say, hoping that if the Iraqis could not live with one another peacefully inside one country, they will be able to do so once they are separated.

Historically, partition has not always brought peace. The partition of Germany by the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II provoked a nuclear standoff and nail-biting tensions for 40 years. The British Empire in its waning days agreed in 1947 to partition colonial India into the nations of India and Pakistan, which went on to fight several wars and now brandish nuclear weapons at one another. The partition of Palestine in 1948 set the stage for six Arab-Israeli wars.

As he notes, the Cheney-Bush administration is formally opposed to this idea. Given the closeness of the Bush dynasty to the Saudi royal family, that's not a surprise:

The neighbors of Iraq fear that the aftermath of an Iraq partition will be a regional conflagration. Partition is strongly rejected by U.S. allies in the region, such as Turkey (a NATO member) and Saudi Arabia. Riyadh's ambassador in Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, warned last week that dividing Iraq into three parts ``is to envision sectarian killing on a massive scale and the uprooting of families.'' He added emphatically that Iraqis were too intermingled to be neatly divided up, and that ``Those who call for a partition of Iraq are calling for a three-fold increase in the problems.''

Some of the Saudi uneasiness about a breakup of Iraq derives from fear that a Shiite super-province or new country in southern Iraq will fall under the influence of the ayatollahs in Tehran. The royal family is also anxious about what it will mean for the loyalties of the kingdom's own Shiites, who make up 10 percent of Saudis.

"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05

Tags: iraq war, partition, partioning iraq