Iraqi parliament votes to stop pretending it's going to be a unitary state
Friday, October 13, 2006 at 2:51PM Joe Biden's not looking so stupid all of a sudden. James Baker may say it's too hard to split up big cities, but the Shiites are getting their way in Iraq, and they deserve to, say I--along with the Kurds.ARTICLE: "In Victory for Shiite Leader, Iraqi Parliament Approves Creating Autonomous Regions," by Kirk Semple, New York Times, 12 October 2006, p. A12.
With the insurgency largely based in Sunni lands, the Shiites and Kurds are voting to leave any attempt at a unitary state behind.
That's not saying there can't be an Iraq in the meantime. It'll just be made up of three mini-states with a lot of hatred and mistrust between them. When that goes away, Iraq can be something more coherent again--but not before.
The sooner this process proceeds, the sooner the violence can be segregated and the serious reconstruction begin. Yes, it will go most slowly in the Sunni provinces, but the power of precedence elsewhere is the best weapon we've got--including against Iran and Syria.
Reader Comments (8)
my question to Tom is: if Iraq is partitioned into three mini-states, how do we prevent the Kurds from seeking total separation and from expanding along their cultural lines into Turkey, Iran,and Azerbajian?
My question to Mr. Wisiewski; why would we want to prevent the Kurds from seeking a cultural and national unified democratic state?
"...why would we want to prevent the Kurds from seeking a cultural and national unified democratic state?"
So the Turks and Iranians don't form an alliance and invade the Kurdish area of Iraq, for one example.
""...why would we want to prevent the Kurds from seeking a cultural and national unified democratic state?"
So the Turks and Iranians don't form an alliance and invade the Kurdish area of Iraq, for one example."
No need to use euphemisms. We're all grownups here. The proper name for what would happen is a campaign of racial extermination against the Kurds, by the Turks.
Its not like it hasn't happened before. The Turks will resort to that, before they will allow an independent Kurdistan to serve as a magnet for Turkey's Kurdish minority.
What power does the Kurdish authorities have over the PRK? If they could make sure Kurdish separatists in other countries couldn't operate out of Iraq, they have something to bargain with.
RKKA: not denying you, just asking the question: would they really? wouldn't it kill their entry into the EU?
If the Turks decide that their entry into the EU is already dead, then they wouldn't have anything to lose.
A more humane solution from Turkish history might be the sort of solution that was reached with Greece in the 1920s. All the Christian ethnic Greeks in Anatolia were deported even though they had been there for thousands of years. All the Turks in Greece moved to Turkey.
I can easily see the Turks offering to take in all the Turkomen in Iraq while loading the populations of Kurdish villiages onto trucks and dumping them over the border into Kurdistan. Without a sympathetic Kurdish population in Turkey, the PKK would have a tough time doing that Mao Tse Tung fish in the ocean of the people thing.
As Kurdistan gets more autonomy, everyone is forced toward some inevitable multilateral dialogue that settles this issue and many others.
Or you continue the dream that this region's current approach to pol-mil issues is working.
A Turkey and an Iran forced to deal with this issue are probably better off in ten years than if left to their usual devices.
Letting sleeping dogs lie in the Middle East got us 9/11 and the Long War.