A car bomb in a market in the Shia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad yesterday killed 34 people and wounded a further 60 and was followed by a second bomb in the same area two hours later that left a further eight dead. Another car bomb outside a court house in Kirkuk killed a further 20 and injured 70 people.
“Iraq as a political project is finished,” a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: “The parties have moved to plan B.” He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. “There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west,” he said.
Although some people, notably among those who pushed for invading Iraq in the first place, think partition is a good idea, I don’t see how it’s going to happen without even more bloodshed.
That’s just it, it’s not really practical. Baghdad, the area to the south and Diyala provinces are incredibly mixed and trying to separate them into “pure” enclaves would probably cause something like India’s partition riots on the scale of Iraq. I was driving through Jihad neighborhood yesterday with a US patrol and in the space of ten minutes we went from a Shiite neighborhood (pro-Sistani, Mahdi militia grafitti) to a Sunni neighborhood (pro-insurgent, death to America grafitti). And this is all in “Sunni” west Beirut.
If you talk to iraqis (as a foreigner) they will continually assure you that there are no differences between Sunni and Shia and the two have been getting along forever and all the trouble comes from outside. Remarkably similar to what the Lebanese used to say, incidentally.
I think a fair amount of sentiment remains for keeping the place together — at least those mixed areas. Sunni Anbar, Shiite south and Kurdistan would be more than happy to do their own thing, but that doesn’t deal with the heart of the country, Baghdad, which after all has a quarter of the population — not even counting the mixed provinces of Diyala and Kirkuk.
Part of the problem, from what I have seen so far, is that the government security forces just aren’t up for holding these neighborhoods and providing security. They aren’t enough of a presence to stave off the depredations of the Sunni and Shiite extremists.
They huddle at their checkpoints and wait to be car bombed and don’t really conduct many patrols — can you blame them when they don’t have many armored cars. A roadside bomb makes short work of a pickup truck with a few armored plates nailed on them.
But yeah. it’s bad here these days. Though I would dispute Patrick Cockburn’s assertion that most of the country’s politicians have gone to plan B. Or maybe I’m just holding out a naive hope for that whole pluralistic ideal thing.
Paul – Radha Kumar has done some interesting comparative work on partitions in ethnic conflict, particularly as an “exit policy” in colonial power transfers – she suggests that the cure could be worse than the disease. I’d be interested in knowing how you think the lessons she draws from India-Pakistan, Kosovo, East Timor, etc apply to Iraq.
http://www.watsoninstitute.org/bjwa/archive/7.1/EthnicPartioning/Kumar.pdf