Why a partitioned Iraq is a bad idea

In May 2006, months into a rapidly deteriorating sectarian war in Iraq, then–Democratic Sen. Joe Biden wrote in The New York Times that the country’s partition was already underway.

“The Sunnis, who until recently believed they would retake power in Iraq, are beginning to recognize they won’t and don’t want to live in a Shiite-controlled, highly centralized state with laws enforced by sectarian militias,” he wrote in an op-ed jointly penned by Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The Shiites know they can dominate the government, but they can't defeat a Sunni insurrection. The Kurds will not give up their 15-year-old autonomy.”

Today, as large swaths of Iraq’s north are controlled by radical fighters largely loyal to the Islamic State (IS) extremist movement, Sunnis in Anbar’s west are in open rebellion against the heavily Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, and the Kurds are unlikely to hand back the newly acquired oil-rich city of Kirkuk, Biden and the Obama administration are cautioning against any breakup of the country, arguing that to do so would give space to IS and its ambitions to establish an Islamic caliphate across parts of Syria and Iraq.

Iraq’s constitution already allows for a federalist state and the ability for the provinces to form regional governments. That, says Michael Knights of the Washington Institute, is what the White House is aiming for now.

“Soft partition might be possible based on full implementation of the provincial powers law and greater revenue-sharing and power-sharing with the Kurds,” Knights says. “In this scenario Baghdad has a much looser relationship with the Sunni provinces and the Kurdish region.”

Last week Deputy Assistant Secretary Brett McGurk, having spent the past seven weeks in Iraq, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he listed “functioning federalism” as a way forward for Iraq — something that was “never fully and effectively implemented.”

“In our view, a functioning federalism would empower local populations to secure their own areas with the full resources of the state in terms of benefits, salaries and equipment,” McGurk said in his testimony. “The national army, under this concept, would focus on securing international borders and providing over-watch support where necessary to combat hardened terrorist networks.”

McGurk added that other “critical” reforms the central government would have to make to ensure federalism’s success included amnesties, changes to criminal procedure laws, “and addressing other legitimate grievances from the Iraqi people including those related to de-Baathification,” the Iraqi government policy that sought out and punished Iraqis who once belonged to Saddam Hussein’s ruling Baath Party.

But in essence, all those conditions for political stability — and the means to combat the Islamic State fighters — have been longstanding deal breakers for the Shia-dominated government, which has failed repeatedly to properly embrace the sort of political reconciliation the U.S. has urged it to pursue for years. The U.S. military surge of 2007 was created in large part to still the violence and push fractious politicians together to form a cohesive and truly representative government.

Even in times of greater stability, the prospects of the outer provinces being able to sustain a viable relationship with a central authority in Baghdad were never good. Now, with the current turmoil, those prospects are practically negligible.

As the opposing sides toughen their positions, the talk of “hard partition” has begun to gain more traction. But that, said Daniel Serwer of the Middle East Institute, would only make things worse.

“It is easy to talk about separating people along sectarian and ethnic lines, but getting agreement on where those lines should be drawn is not only difficult, it is a reason to go to war,” said Serwer, who served as executive director of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group.

“That will certainly be the case in Iraq, where the Sunnis will not want the Shia to take Baghdad, and neither Sunnis nor Shia will want the Kurds to take Kirkuk. Foreign “partners” would definitely support the various fragments, intensifying the power struggle among Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey.”

The winners, says Serwer, would likely be Iran and the Islamic State fighters.

“Hard partition is a nightmare to think through,” says Michael Knights, arguing that due to the country’s interconnectedness, and the provinces’ reliance on each other and Baghdad at the core, such a move would lead to a complete breakdown of Iraq’s economic systems.

“Baghdad might not be able to draw feedstock for power stations and refineries from the north,” Knights says. “Breakaway areas will experience all the problems of being stateless — no civil aviation authority to receive outside flights, no access to sovereign borrowing, no one willing to sell them weapons due to lack of end-user certificates, and on and on.”

Even the Kurdish north — the most capable of autonomous and independent rule – would struggle without Baghdad and without the oil money coming out of Basra in the south.

And beyond redrawing boundary lines on maps for a country that didn’t even exist before World War I is the reality that many Iraqis themselves come from intertwined heritages and sects. Intermarriage between Sunnis and Shias is common, and that is something geographic divisions cannot address.

Most Iraqis agree that while Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki remains the head of a fractured country, the fissures will only deepen. Outside of the scores of Shia who voted for him and his coalition to remain in power during the April national elections, many of Iraq’s Sunnis and Kurds do not consider him to be their advocate. But he too has stood firm against the possibility of the country breaking up in the face of this latest security crisis, and his allies in Tehran are standing behind him.

Earlier this month Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said separatism in Iraq was “in nobody’s interest.”

“Making a new state is hard,” says Knights. “Making three or five — a federal Iraq, a Kurdish autonomous region and maybe three Sunni regions — is a monstrous idea.”