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The Case for Soft Partition in Iraq

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THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION 1775 MASSACHUSEttS AVE., NW WASHINGTON, D.C. 20036-2103 ANALYSIS PAPER www.brookings.edu Number 12, June 2007 THE CASE FOR SOFT PARTITION IN IRAQ EDWARD P. JOSEPH MICHAEL E. O’HANLON ANALYSIS PAPER Number 12, June 2007 THE CASE FOR SOFT PARTITION IN IRAQ EDWARD P. JOSEPH MICHAEL E. O’HANLON TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. V ABBREVIATIONS. VII EXECUTIVE SUMMARY . IX THE AUTHORS. .XIII THE CASE FOR SOFT PARTITION. 1 IMPLEMENTING SOFT PARTITION . 15 CONCLUSION. 31 APPENDIX. 33 MAPS. 37 T HE S ABAN C EN T ER A T T HE B ROOKING S I N st I T U T ION I I I ACKNOWLEDGMENTS he authors are grateful to a wide range of scholars the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Prof. Chaim Tand political leaders in the United States and Kaufmann of Lehigh University and Jonathan Morrow, Iraq. Most of the political leaders cannot be named, formerly of the United States Institute of Peace. At the although the authors owe a special intellectual debt Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, the to Senator Joseph Biden and Leslie Gelb, a former assistance of Bruce Riedel, and most of all Martin Indyk President of the Council on Foreign Relations, who and Kenneth Pollack, has been extremely important. In first articulated the basic contours of a plan similar to Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution we the soft partition concept developed here. The authors are very grateful to Molly Browning, Jason Campbell, also wish to thank Antony Blinken, Staff Director of Roberta Cohen, Elizabeth Ferris and Carlos Pascual. T HE S ABAN C EN T ER A T T HE B ROOKING S I N st I T U T ION V ABBREVIATIONS IDP INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSON IOM INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR MIGRATION METT MISSION-ENEMY-TERRAIN-TACTICS NIE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE SIIC SUPREME ISLAMIC IRAQI COUNCIL (FORMERLY THE SUPREME COUNCIL FOR THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION IN IRAQ) UNHCR UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES UNPROFOR UNITED NATIONS PROTECTION FORCE T HE S ABAN C EN T ER A T T HE B ROOKING S I N st I T U T ION V I I EXECUTIVE SUmmARY he time may be approaching when the only hope dad. It would require new negotiations, the formation Tfor a more stable Iraq is a soft partition of the of a revised legal framework for the country, the cre- country. Soft partition would involve the Iraqis, with ation of new institutions at the regional level, and the the assistance of the international community, dividing organized but voluntary movement of populations. their country into three main regions. Each would For these reasons, we refer to it as a “Plan B” for Iraq. assume primary responsibility for its own security and It would require acquiescence from most major Iraqi governance, as Iraqi Kurdistan already does. Creating political factors (though not necessarily all, which is such a structure could prove difficult and risky. an unrealistic standard in any event). It might best be However, when measured against the alternatives— negotiated outside the current Iraqi political process, continuing to police an ethno-sectarian war, or perhaps under the auspices of a special representative withdrawing and allowing the conflict to escalate— of the United Nations as suggested by Carlos Pascual of the risks of soft partition appear more acceptable. the Brookings Institution. Indeed, soft partition in many ways simply responds to current realities on the ground, particularly since International mediation could succeed where the the February 2006 bombing of the Samarra mosque, current, U.S.-led effort to pry concessions out of al- a major Shi’i shrine, dramatically escalated inter- Maliki’s government has failed. Indeed, Kurds and sectarian violence. If the U.S. troop surge, and the Shi’i Arabs would have far more incentive to cede on related effort to broker political accommodation the fundamental issue of oil production and revenue- through the existing coalition government of Prime sharing if they knew that their core strategic objec- Minister Nuri al-Maliki fail, soft partition may be the tives would be realized through secure, empowered only means of avoiding an intensification of the civil regions. Although it would surely play a facilitat- war and growing threat of a regional conflagration. ing role along with the United Nations, the United While most would regret the loss of a multi-ethnic, States need not bear the burden, nor the stigma, of diverse Iraq, the country has become so violent and leading Iraqis towards soft partition. At the outset, so divided along ethno-sectarian lines that such a it would suffice for the United States simply to cease goal may no longer be achievable. its insistence on the alternative of an Iraq ruled from Baghdad that at once fails to serve Sunni Arabs while Soft partition would represent a substantial departure serving as a symbolic threat to Shi’i Arabs—an Iraq from the current approach of the Bush Administration that has encouraged the Shi’i Arabs to cement their and that proposed by the Iraq Study Group, both of dominance of the country’s power center against any which envision a unitary Iraq ruled largely from Bagh- potential Sunni Arab revival. T HE S ABAN C EN T ER A T T HE B ROOKING S I N st I T U T ION I X Soft partition has a number of advantages over other sectarian identities are hardening as ethno-sectar- “Plan B” proposals currently under discussion. Most ian separation is increasing. In short, Iraq today in- others focus on a U.S. troop withdrawal or on the creasingly resembles Bosnia-Herzegovina (hereafter containment of civil war spillover to other countries, Bosnia) in the early 1990s, where one of us worked rather than the prevention of a substantial worsening extensively. While Iraq may not yet resemble Bosnia of Iraq’s civil war. Soft partition could allow the United in 1995 in which ethnic separation had progressed to States and its partners to preserve their core strategic the point where fairly clear regional borders could be goals: an Iraq that lives in peace with its neighbors, op- established, it is well beyond the Bosnia of 1992 when poses terrorism, and gradually progresses towards a the separation was just beginning. Moreover, while more stable future. It would further allow for the pos- Bosnia eventually wound up as a reasonably stable sibility over time for the reestablishment of an Iraq in- federation, as many as 200,000 may have lost their creasingly integrated across sectarian lines rather than lives before that settlement. A comparable per capita permanently segregated. If carefully implemented, it casualty toll in Iraq would imply one million dead. would help end the war and the enormous loss of life It should be the goal of policymakers to avoid such on all sides. a calamity by trying to manage the ethnic relocation process, if it becomes unstoppable, rather than allow Such a plan for soft partition (as opposed to hard- terrorists and militias to use violence to drive this pro- partition which involves the outright division of Iraq) cess to its grim, logical conclusion. is consistent with the plan of Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del) and Leslie Gelb, a former President of the To make soft partition viable, several imposing practi- Council on Foreign Relations. Our plan builds upon cal challenges must be addressed. These include shar- their proposal, setting out the full rationale for such ing oil revenue among the regions, creating reasonably an approach as well as the means by which this new secure boundaries between them, and restructuring regionalized political system would be implemented the international troop presence. Helping minority through soft partition. Those means include creating populations relocate if they wish requires a plan for processes to help people voluntarily relocate to parts providing security to those who are moving as well as of Iraq where they would no longer be in the minor- those left behind. That means the international troop ity, and hence where they should be safer. This is not presence will not decline immediately, although we an appealing prospect to put it mildly. However, if the estimate that it could be reduced substantially within choice becomes sustaining a failing U.S. troop surge or eighteen months or so. Population movements also abandoning Iraq altogether, with all the risks that en- necessitate housing swaps and job creation programs. tails in terms of intensified violence and regional tur- moil, then soft partition might soon become the least Soft partition cannot be imposed from the outside. In- bad option. The question will then be less whether it is deed, it need not be. Iraq’s new constitution, approved morally and strategically acceptable, and more whether by plebiscite in October 2005, already permits the cre- it is achievable. Accordingly, the latter portion of this ation of “regions.” Still, a framework for soft partition paper focuses on the mechanisms for implementing a would go much further than Iraq has to date. Among viable soft partition of Iraq. other things, it would involve the organized movement of two million to five million Iraqis, which could only Sunni and Shi’i Arabs have traditionally opposed par- happen safely if influential leaders encouraged their tition, whether hard or soft. However, with 50,000 to supporters to cooperate, and if there were a modicum 100,000 persons being displaced from their homes of agreement on where to draw borders and how to and several thousand losing their lives every month, share oil revenue. X T HE C A S E FOR S OF T P AR T I T ION IN I RAQ As noted, unless the U.S.
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