Time to Partition Iraq?

Over the last few weeks Iraq has re-surfaced as a hot issue due to the success of an armed Sunni Militia called ISIL, which has overrun Iraqi government troops in Mosul, Fallujah, and Tikrit and is apparently threatening Bagdad itself.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurdistan is increasingly looking out for its own interest and has, according to Stratfor, began exporting its oil though the Turkish port of Ceyhan and has allowed 1,000 – 2,000 Turkish soldiers into its territory despite the fundamental distrust between modern Turkey and the Kurds.

The ISIL has also widely shown a picture of its fighters demolishing the border between Iraq and Syria and in fact claims that is it is fighting to bring about an islamic republic across the Sunni lands in the region and re-draw its political map.

Mark Sykes and Francois Georges Picot

To understand the modern Middle East, it really is necessary to go back to the first years of World War I, which eventually brought the Ottoman empire into the war on Germany’s side.

The history is well covered in David Fromkin’s book A Peace to End all Peace and shows how British and French diplomats agreed on dividing up the Ottoman Empire after the war despite Turkish victories in Gallipoli and on a much smaller scale in Kut al-Amara in between Basra and Bagdad.

The agreement, according to Fromkin, was the result of serious misunderstandings about the nature of the region and called for the creation of different zones of influence for France and Britain and was based on earlier work done by a British working group which drew the borders of many of its countries today.

Iraq on the brink of the abyss

In his press conference last week, President Obama said “the fate of Iraq hangs in the balance” and that “above all, Iraqi leaders must rise above their differences and come together around a political plan for Iraq’s future. Shia, Sunni, Kurds – all Iraqis…”

While I am a big fan of President Obama and agree with him that the best thing for Iraq, its neighbors, and the world would be for a group of true statesmen to emerge and bring the country back form the brink of civil war, I am sadly skeptical about their ability to do so.

Basra, Mosul, and Baghdad

The Ottoman empire was able to survive for more than 600 years and cover much of the world partly by respecting the natural political divisions of the territories it conquered such as those between Kurds, Sunnis and Shia.

The split between Sunni and Shia dates from Caliph Ali’s murder in 661 and there has been generations of cross sectarian grievance between the two groups ever since. 

The United States is trying to use its influence in Iraq to push the three sides into creating what President Obama called a “functioning multi sectarian democracy” but as he also said “old habits die hard” and after more than 1,300 years of mistrust, mistreatment, and war perhaps the wisest thing the international community could do would be to give up on a map drawn by Europeans and use its influence to create stable countries for each of Iraq’s three parts perhaps setting aside Baghdad as an open city on the lines of Dubai.

The Kurdish political leader, Nechirvan Barzani argued for such a solution in an interview with NBC News calling it federalism and defends the oil sales as being legal in the new constitution and a needed step due to budget problems with Baghdad.

The economic problem with this idea is that there is oil in the Shia south and the Kurdish north but not in the ottoman province of Baghdad or what is called the Sunni crescent.

The geopolitical problem is if Iraqi Kurdistan becomes a functioning country, what will stop it from incorporating the Kurdish territories of Iran and modern Turkey?