Senator Biden Calls for Three Autonomous Regions in Iraq

Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), a once and possibly future presidential candidate, wrote in Monday’s New York Times that Iraq needs a much weaker central government than its new constitution provides, and it needs to be divided into three autonomous regions. The White House, naturally, screamed at him for not being a team player. Frankly, the good senator may not have gone far enough.

This journal suggested shortly before President Bush declared all major combat actions had ended (three years ago, now) that “a confederation of subnations” offered Iraq the best chance at tranquility. A substantial portion of the violence that has followed “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq stems from the efforts by the US and its allies to put Humpty Dumpty together again. The Kurds, the Shi’ites and the Sunni would all be better off if the stakes in controlling the Baghdad were smaller. Like Gaul, Iraq is divided into three parts, even if Washington refuses to see it that way.

Kurdistan, according to the US authorities, is largely peaceful. Last month, an internal staff report by the US military and US embassy in Baghdad showed the three Kurdish provinces as the only ones of the 18 in Iraq that were described as “stable.” Since the “no-fly zones” of the early 1990s, the Kurds have run their own affairs since the Saddamites couldn’t do much to them without aircraft. Outright independence might upset some of Kurdistan’s neighbors (such as Turkey and Iran, which have large Kurdish minorities), but the case cannot be made that Kurdistan would be better off not running its own affairs.

The Shi’ites, of course, may want to run the whole show since they make up a majority of Iraq’s population (around 60%). By the same token, though, it may be possible to sell them on the idea of Shi’ite autonomy, which would allow them to have nothing to do with the Sunnis who view them as heretics. The Shi’ites get the oil, and the Saddamite Sunnis can have the sand.

This does, of course, deprive the Sunni community of the oil wealth that is under the feet of the Kurds and the Shi’ites – to which they have grown accustomed even if justice suggests they are not entitled to it. The chief argument three years ago against a confederation (or partition) was that the nation would sink into civil war and become a breeding ground for terrorists. Since that has now come to pass anyway (Mission Accomplished?), the downside to confederation is lessened. Indeed, talk of partition is not unreasonable since the elections of December 15, 2005 still haven’t produced a functioning government in Baghdad.

The government that is trying to form was elected under a constitution that provided a reasonable degree of centralization, and the test has yet to come. Will Iraqis stand up and fight for this government (when it finally takes office) and this constitution? The jury is out, but it might be appropriate to have a Plan B, something the Busheviks didn’t have three years ago.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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