Is it time to partition Iraq? Contributed by Bill Faith
Divided We Stand By Pejman Yousefzadeh
The current reconstruction effort in Iraq seeks to keep the current boundaries of Iraq whole. But by keeping Iraq whole, the United States may in fact be hindering a successful reconstruction effort and needlessly delaying the achievement of an honorable peace and the successful withdrawal of American troops.
It may be that Iraqis want to keep their country whole. If so, that choice ought to be respected. But in the event that keeping Iraq whole is not a sine qua non of the reconstruction effort according to the Iraqi people, the partition of Iraq into natural boundaries is a way to bring the reconstruction to a successful end while at the same time establishing successor states to Iraq that may be more coherent and easier to keep together than Iraq itself was.
The Original Creation of Iraq
Iraq was created through and its current boundaries are the construction of Western powers. This has caused Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds to be lumped together into a single state.
Because of the sectarian tensions that have existed between these groups, their forced cohabitation into a single state has always been a dicey affair. ...
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Contributed by Bill Faith on August 3, 2006 at 06:02 PM in , |