Wasn't Iraq cobbled together by the British in the first place?

And also, too bad it's too late for the Assyrians.

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India and Pakistan
Israel and Jordan
Northern Ireland
The British tried to end conflict by separating combatants and it just leads to decades of strife from both sides who see themselves displaced.

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Like so many other things that have happened with this stupid war, there was a window of opportunity to split the country, or at least make it a "federation of states." And now that's lost.

However, one of the things holding us back has been Turkey's opposition to making an independent Kurdish state in Northern Iraq. Turkey's a friend (relatively) so we don't want to piss them off or destabilize them politically...

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For some reason, governments seem extremely against the idea of partitioning countries these days. But yeah, Turkey and the Kurds makes the idea of partition a non-starter.

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Three words: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh.

One more word: Ireland.

Partition has, to put it mildly, a mixed track record.

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I'm not sure these are good arguments against.

Would any of these places have been better off remaining unified?

In all cases, there is still lossage, but it is compartmentalized.

When you have a bunch of people living intermixed with each other and actively discriminating, I suspect you have a problem with no pretty solutions.

India and the Republic of Ireland are both among the more successful countries in the world. Bangladesh and Northern Ireland have sucked, and Pakistan hasn't been great, but these places probably would have sucked anyway and maybe taken the rest of their former nations with them.

I think the Israeli partitions are a fascinating experiment; will the Palestinians get it together, or will it be like those failed mini-states inside of South Africa...

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I thought Germany got split because the Soviet Union essentially annexed the eastern part, and that their tendency to take over territory their armies had passed over was one of the reasons we wanted to defeat Japan before the Soviet Union could get into the act.

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yep. the victors split the spoils.

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After WW2 we split Germany in two to make them less dangerous.

Incorrect.

At the end of WW2, there were four occupying armies in Germany: U.S., U.K., French, and Soviet. Each army administered the land it occupied, and from day one the intention was full reunification of the four zones as democratic government was established. Over the course of the next few years, the U.S., U.K., and French zones were merged by their respective governments into what became known as West Germany.

The problem was that this was the cold war. The U.S.-U.K.-France coalition would not recognize the Soviet zone as democratic; nor would the Soviets recognize the coalition zone as democratic. The Two Germanies were how the four powers extricated themselves from having to remain in occupation indefinately.

Three mini-Iraqs would be easier to manage.

Three mini-Iraqs is problematic as well unless alot of work is done to address things like Kurdistan and Greater Kurdistan; who gets control of Kirkuk; etc.

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That's closer. In fact the SovUn and the western Allies were about >< this close to going to war. Several generals on both sides wanted just to keep going but the public wanted the troops home. Recognizing a de facto partition of the country was really the only alternative to continuing war. It's roughly what happened in Korea as well.

As for Iraq, it is also de facto partitioned. There's a reason that Turkey is massing about 200,000 troops on the border and is in an open shooting war now with their internal Kurds. If the Kurds win their demands for more oil and autonomy I'm pretty sure we'll see an escalating series of "incidents" that Turkey will use to justify moving in militarily. Note that the PKK are also in a shooting war with Iran on the other border.

The population of Iraq are busily ethnic cleansing every neighborhood they can, as well as mass ejecting the populations that Saddam imported to help cement his control over non-Sunni regions.

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Two problems with the split.

1. The divisions you're probably intending (Suni, Shiite, Kurd) are not neatly set around geographic lines.

2. Some areas of Iraq are more resoource rich (ie oil) than others. Who gets the biggest piece of the pie.

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I was just about to say this. Particularly #2. You'd end up with one group getting all the land with the resources and the others getting screwed.

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If we split Iraq, the three mini-Iraqs will go to war with each other. Possibly one would take over (some of?) the others, and reunify more stably.

If we don't split Iraq, they'll have a civil war that will likely end up in a split. But maybe they'll make it a federal split under one country.

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The main issue would be the neighbour's (Turkey and Iran) reaction to effectively creating Kurdistan.

The current US government may not care much about Iran's reaction, but Turkey is even more opposed (because of its own persecuted Kurdish minority) and is supposed to be an ally. Without a shitload of bribes to keep them happy (like admission to the European Union) it'd quite possibly lead to the current Turkish government going and being replaced by an anti-American Islamist one.

But yes, it was an artificial state since the day an English woman went about marking the boundaries after the Great War.

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Making decisions about Iraq is easy. First, you reduce the number of people involved in the decision to one. Let's call him The Decider. The only possible flaw is, what happens in The Decider turns out to be an incompetent idiot?

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Like when they partitioned India, but more violent?

If you're going to split, it will be along ethnic lines. That means moving the populations all over so there wont be frightened minorities to purge. So, you've got to do that, then you basically have weak states subject to domination by regional powers.

The strongest region, Kurdistan, is already engaging in border skirmishes with Turkey, which DOES NOT WANT a Kurdish state to exist.

Iran gets to dominate the Shia and the Sunnis look to the feeble, unstable kindom of Saudi Arabia for protection. As the Iranian government struggles to retain power in the face of a young population pressing for democracy and modernity, maybe the Iranians annex the Shia part of Iraq just to distract the domestic situation.

I have never been keen on this simplistic plan.

The partition of Germany was instituted to keep the country disunified, weak, and non-threatening, and we followed that up with a strong military occupation. Germany had a fair degree of cultural and national unity. Iraq is the opposite: no uniformity, no threat that they will be a power any time soon, and a chaotic self-identity, and we DON'T HAVE THE TROOPS to occupy the place right, and NOBODY is going to volunteer.

Its a shit sandwich with no simple solution. We either need to stay and do the job right, at great expense, and with a DRAFT, because THE MILITARY HAS A SEVERE SHORTAGE OF PERSONNEL, or we need to say "oh fuck" and go home and hope for the best.

My sympathies are with bring our soldiers home and let the people of the region sort things out. The risk to going home is that we leave a failed state, de facto partition, and it goes all Taliban style and we have to go back in there all over again before long, and possibly regional warfare.

So, insha'Allah, if Uncle Sam calls my number and issues me a vest, rifle, and desert fatigues, I'll hate it but I'll go, because I understand why. Pottery Barn, indeed.

-danny

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