Why partition in Iraq is a terrible idea

ALEX WONG/Getty Images News Yesterday, Sen. Joe Biden’s plan to split Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions received overwhelming bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate. The non-binding resolution that passed is doubtless part criticism of Bush and part criticism of Maliki, and really just an effort to show that at least someone has a plan for ...

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ALEX WONG/Getty Images News

ALEX WONG/Getty Images News

Yesterday, Sen. Joe Biden’s plan to split Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions received overwhelming bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate. The non-binding resolution that passed is doubtless part criticism of Bush and part criticism of Maliki, and really just an effort to show that at least someone has a plan for the future of the war.

But Toby Dodge, one of the foremost experts on modern-day Iraq, thinks partition is perhaps the most dangerous and historically ignorant solution for the country yet. He sat down with FP recently and had this to say about the Biden plan:

People are struggling to explain failure, to apportion blame, and to try to develop a policy that gets them out of the country. The most damaging outcome would be along the lines of the proposals that recommend partition, like the Gelb-Biden plan. I think those fundamentally misunderstand Iraq.

If you look at the three communities that are allegedly going to be partitioned, go down to the supposed Shiistan in the south. What we have in the south is a low-level civil war between the two main Shiite parties led by members of the Badr Brigade and al-Sadr. So, are we going to partition the south into a Badristan and a Sadristan? When we come up to supposed Sunnistan, we have a fight between al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely indigenous organization with foreign leadership, and the so-called sheikhs of Anbar— that is an intra-Sunni fight. Then we have Kurdistan. The Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan fought a vicious civil war in the 1990s, where the KDP actually asked Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard to come in and help them. The idea that we have three neat communities is sociologically and politically illiterate. It has deliberately ignored the sociological complexities of Iraq in order to get a neat policy prescription that allows America to get out of Iraq. That is dangerous and reckless, and it isn’t the solution. 

Carolyn O'Hara is a senior editor at Foreign Policy.

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