Mere Anarchy

In response to my post on the twin forces of fragmentation and cohesion that act upon the Iraqi state, reader Robin Varghese queries:

At 1:50 PM, Robin Varghese said...
I understand that there are good arguments against certain types of governments--e.g., a theocracy. But why is a separate Kurdish state necessarily a terrible thing. I'm aware of the security dangers posed by Turkish reaction to such a state, and I personally think that people should generally try to live together, but why is fragmentation in principle a terrible thing?


I’m going to shy away from laying out whether “in principle” fragmentation is good or bad, because the specific variables become far too complex depending on context and country, making the question too large and abstract to grapple with on a mere blog. Instead, I’ll briefly focus on the viability of the “fragments” of Iraq should it dissolve. I think there is a good chance of dissolution, and I’ll call that chance a danger. The primary being that Kurdistan is not likely to be the only piece of Iraq that secedes. Juan Cole elaborates on the many downsides of partitioning Iraq, and I think some of his scenarios are compelling:

It is because it would cause a great deal of trouble to us all, not least Iraqis. Iraq is not divided neatly into three ethnic enclaves. It is all mixed up. There are a million Kurds in Baghdad, a million Sunnis in the Shiite deep south, and lots of mixed provinces (Ta'mim, Ninevah, Diyalah, Babil, Baghdad, etc.). There is a lot of intermarriage among various Iraqi groups. . . . .

Then, how do you split up the resources? If the Sunni Arabs don't get Kirkuk, then they will be poorer than Jordan. Don't you think they will fight for it? The Kurds would fight to the last man for the oil-rich city of Kirkuk if it was a matter of determining in which country it ended up.If the Kurds got Kirkuk and the Sunni Arabs became a poor cousin to Jordan, the Sunni Arabs would almost certainly turn to al-Qaeda in large numbers. Some Iraqi guerrillas are already talking about hitting back at the US mainland. And, Fallujah is not that far from Saudi Arabia, which Bin Laden wants to hit, as well, especially at the oil. Fallujah Salafis would hook up with those in Jordan and Gaza to establish a radical Sunni arc that would destabilize the entire region.

Divorced from the Sunnis, the Shiites of the south would no longer have any counterweight to religious currents like al-Dawa, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and the Sadrists. The rump Shiite state would be rich, with the Rumayla and other fields, and might well declare a Shiite Islamic republic. It is being coupled with the Sunnis that mainly keeps them from going down that road.

We can see some of the traffic that might go “down that road” in this grim dispatch of the Shiite “mini-theocracy” already being established in Basra, a tendency that federalist guarantees of minority rights could stop, provided the state coheres. The scenario of minority refugees fleeing from a state in which they are no longer safe, a smaller (hopefully) repeat of the “Midnight” partition between India and Pakistan, is a frightening one, and would be repeated all across Iraq should the state truly dissolve. Questions as to who shares the profits of the oil rich region of Southern Iraq, which contains 80-90% of Iraqi oil (and has its own secessionist movement), become increasingly sticky in the face of disunion. Why should the autonomous province of the Shiite south want to share their resources with the backwater Anbar province with an autonomy of its own? What has Anbar ever done for them beside produce Tirkitis, Husseins, and suicide bombers? What would the land locked and oil deprived “Anbar Republic” rely on economically?

What sort of terrorism and insurgency would find a home in the more Sunni dominated provinces? Lacking a federal authority with a strong national army, what would keep them from becoming an anarchic Waziristan? Conceded, Kurdistan just might be viable as an independent state: the Kurds would have to win Kirkuk, which would be bloody, and establish a pipeline with their traditional enemies in Turkey or Syria -- since they lack a port -- but both of these goals are not impossible. The first cut is the deepest, however, and after Kurdistan is sliced free, what is to keep the rest of the state together? Secession might be inevitable, and it is impossible to know whether partition could possibly turn out less bloody than the present violence, but history has not been kind by example. I’ve wrestled a long time with this subject, and vacillate between my instincts (disintegration) and what I feel comfortable advocating for as the best possible option (the small chance of a successful federal state). Ultimately, I think that though there ought to be much preparation and planning for disunion (massive humanitarian aid and UN involvement), the unity of the current state must be given its best possible shot at preservation.