Federal State                                                                                                                                 

Iraq

Imam Ali bin Abi Talib

“O’ people of Iraq, I have hated you and you have hated me. I have loathed you and you have loathed me. May Allah give me a better people, and may He give you a worst ruler.” – Imam Ali bin Abi Talib, addressing Iraqis.

 “I have won, by the God of the Kaaba!” – Ali bin Abi Talib, when he was stabbed to death in the Kufa Mosque, Iraq.

“May ugliness and grief befall you. You have become objects. You are invaded, but you do not invade. You are plundered, but you do not plunder. Allah is disobeyed, yet you are content. If I order you to deploy against them during the days of heat, you say, ‘This is the worst of the heat. Give us time until it is over.’ And if I order you to deploy against them in the winter, you say, ‘This is the season of bitter cold. Give us time until the cold has been shed.’ All of this to flee from heat and cold. If you flee from heat and cold, then, by Allah, you will flee even more from the sword. O’ you semblance of men - not men - with the intelligence of children and the wits of anklet bearers, I wish I had not seen you nor known you. By Allah, knowing you has brought about shame and resulted in repentance. May Allah fight you. You have filled my heart with pus and loaded my chest with rage. You have made me drink one mouthful of grief after another. You have corrupted my counsel with your disobedience and abandonment.” – Imam Ali bin Abi Talib, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, and founder of Shi’ite Islam, addressing Iraqis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday, 11 August 2007
THE FEDERAL STATE OF IRAQ

 

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           Sanger Jamal Sulaimaniyah     beauticians in demand     July 19, 2006



Without no Islamic militants to threaten them, beauty salons in the Kurdish north are attracting droves of customers.

By Sanger Jamal in Sulaimaniyah

Fahima Sleman left her job as a beauty salon manager in Baghdad eight months ago, after six similar shops in the same al-Adil neighbourhood were bombed out by insurgents.

The 37-year-old hairdresser relocated to the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, known as the safest in Iraq, where she found work at a hairdresser's shop.

Although her family is moving to Syria to escape the sectarian violence now commonplace in other parts of Iraq, Sleman is planning to stay in Sulaimaniyah, where she reckons she can survive on her wage of 350 US dollars a month.

Security and economic growth have created a boom in the beauty business in Sulaimaniyah, in contrast to the rest of the country where Islamic extremists see such shops as dens of iniquity to be attacked. There are now close to 450 salons operating, which industry observers say represents a big increase on 2003, although there are no comparative figures.

The industry has also been fuelled by the increased earning power of women, who hold many of the civil service jobs in a public sector that is the largest employer in Iraqi Kurdistan.

While the salaries are miniscule, women are willing to shell out cash to have their hair, make-up and nails done.

Lanja Ibrahim, a 25-year-old civil servant, makes only 164,000 dinar (about 110 dollars) a month but goes to the salon twice monthly to have her hair cut, dyed or styled. She hates the fact that she has to wait, even when she has made an appointment.

"Visiting the salon feels like going to a medical clinic," she said. "I have to wait at least an hour every time."

Ibrahim also doesn't like the price. She pays about 13,500 dinar (nine dollars) to have her hair cut and dyed black - but she said that she and other women are more willing to invest in "taking care of ourselves, as well as following the latest fashions".

Women are in fact more likely to complain about prices than they are to express concerns about salons being attacked in Sulaimaniyah, even though hairdressers here have faced threats in the past.

In 1993, Nashmeel Mohammad received an anonymous threatening letter against the hairdressing business she ran in her home. Then her house was hit by a hand-grenade. Mohammad, who has worked in the business for over two decades, accused Islamists of being behind the attack and refused to quit her work.

Osman said that since 2000, there have been three cases of attacks against salons. In the 1990s, she said, the rate of attacks was much higher. Radical Islamists tried to gain control of Sulaimaniyah and surrounding areas then but have little presence now.

One of the most modern hair and beauty salons is Style Centre, which is run by beauticians and hairdressers from the rest of the country. Dhiya' abdul-Sattar, a manager at the centre, said it has about 50 customers a day and charges upwards of 125,000 dinar (about 85 dollars) for brides getting their hair and make-up done.

The centre is also one of many salons that have men doing hair and make-up. This was a taboo just a few years ago in Sulaimaniyah and is rarely seen in many parts of the country, according to Osman.

Abdul-Sattar employs four men and one woman in his salon and said it hasn't caused any problems.

"It's normal to have men do our customers' make-up," he said. "Many [female customers] even demand that the male employees do their make-up and cut their hair."

Sanger Jamal
 

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Gertrude Bell and the Birth of Iraq

Chris Calder  2004

America has its Founding Fathers; the modern nation of Iraq has a peculiar kind of Founding Mother.

Or maybe she was a national nanny. For Iraq's Founding ... Someone ... was not Iraqi, but a red-haired, Oxford-educated mountaineer, an honored poet and opponent to suffragettes, an Arabist and proud British imperialist named Gertrude Bell.

Gertrude Bell designed — literally drew onto the map — the country that America is now trying to (perfectly Orwellian term) "rebuild." She did so via her mastery of Arabic, Persian and Turkish; her deep knowledge of the Arab tribes and friendships with their sheiks; through the immense influence she carried with the leadership of the British Empire.

She was one of the world's most powerful women at the beginning of the 20th century, a key shaper of the version of the Middle East over which our soldiers are killing and dying, for us, right now.

Even that brief, incomplete resume hints at why Bell's name rarely makes the feminist pantheon. But why the mention of Gertrude Bell or of the West's first invasion of Iraq is so rare these days is harder to understand.

Though maybe, in this age of the Memory Hole, not.

* * *

Gertrude Bell crossed Arabia when that land was largely a blank patch on Europe's maps. She traveled alone, it's said, but that's not counting the train of servants, from cooks to armed guards to muleteers, all Arab, who followed her across the desert over more than a decade. Miss Bell, as she was known formally for her 58 years, dined on china even when she traveled by camel. And she always sent for the latest fashions from London even after she had lived as Khatun, a particular kind of great lady, in Baghdad for many years.

Bell very genuinely fell in love with the people of Arabia. (When she first visited the area, the land was a set of vilayets, or provinces of the Ottoman Empire). Bell's fascination and affection were returned, and she received a warm welcome from people who might have shot a lone male British explorer.

Bell's biographer, Janet Wallach, recounts the first journey Bell took from Jerusalem to Damascus in 1900: "In the heart of the mountains called the Jebel Druze, she rode through one tiny village after another, causing a stir as she passed the white-turbaned, black-robed men. At Miyemir she stopped to water her horse. The veiled women, dressed in their long blue and red robes, were filling their earthenware jugs, dipping them into the pool. Gertrude dismounted, and a young man about 19 approached; like all the Druze men and women, he had outlined his enormous eyes in black kohl. The beautiful boy took her hands, and, to her surprise, kissed her on both her cheeks. Other men followed, shaking her hand, eager to inspect the stranger."

Bell was hooked, it was clear, when she wrote at the end of her trip from Damascus, "with the desert almost up to its gates, and the breath of it blowing in with every wind, and the spirit of it passing in through the city gates with every Arab camel driver. That is the heart of the whole matter."

Six times over the next 12 years, Bell rode across Arabia, until she knew the doings of the sheiks better than those of British society. She became a renowned figure among the tribes, a Person, she liked to say. She got to know the intricacies of their alliances and rivalries:

"For the moment, at least, the Beni Shakr were her friends. Five years earlier they had called her a "daughter of the desert." Now, as she lunched in her tent, enjoying a meal of curry served on fine china, washing it down with a glass of wine, one of the Beni Shakr joined her, and they sat together, drinking coffee, smoking her Egyptian cigarettes, and talking of the bloodthirsty Druze. At nightfall the desert turned cold and wet; she wrapped herself in her fur, slipped a hot water bottle between her sheets, and went to bed."

A few days later Bell visits the very same Druze at their desert castle and finds them readying for battle against the Beni Shakr, whose tents she has just left.

"One (Druze fighter) noticed Gertrude. He strode up and raised his sword above his head. 'Lady!,' he cried, 'the English and the Druze are one'."

"'Thank God!,' she answered, 'We too are a fighting race'."

* * *

In 1914, the British indeed brought war to Mesopotamia. From their long-held (since the 17th century) base in Basra, they sent an army north along the Euphrates River toward Baghdad. But here's where things stop looking like an old Imperial expedition and more like the nightmare battlefield of the 20th century. Over three months, the British lost 25,000 men during a siege at Kut. It was, at the height of British power, the nation's biggest military disaster to that time.

Iraq was a battleground in the First World War for one reason.

As Wallach describes the British position at the beginning of the war, their "unrivaled navy delivered goods around the world and brought home three-quarters of (the country's) food supply. To maintain its superiority, in 1911 the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, had ordered a major change, switching the nation's battleships from coal-burning engines to oil. Far superior to the traditional ships, these new oil-burning vessels could travel faster, cover a greater range, and be refueled at sea; what's more, their crews would not be exhausted by having to refuel, and would require less manpower."

Wallach continues, "Britain had been the world's leading provider of coal, but she had no oil of her own. In 1912, Churchill signed an agreement for a major share in the Anglo-Persian oil company, with its oil wells in southern Persia and refineries at Abadan, close to Basra. It was essential for Britain to protect that vital area..."

* * *

Unlike the American invasion 90 years later, the British drive to Baghdad was slow and excruciating. But after three months they captured the city and for a while things were calm, especially when compared to Baghdad today. Gertrude Bell, for instance, was given the title "Oriental Secretary" to the British government three months after the invasion ended. She rode her horse alone along the banks of the Euphrates River each morning at 6am before dressing for work.

At the office, she met with an endless stream of sheiks and religious leaders. Relying on her decade-plus experience in the desert, she discovered from these men, always men, their views about the future of the country, their needs, the needs of their people, and reported all to the British High Commissioner.

But the British either wouldn't or couldn't put together an Iraqi government. In truth, they weren't totally convinced they wanted to sponsor an Iraqi state at all. Churchill favored letting most of Iraq go, fortifying only the oil fields near Basra.

A year and a half went by under British military rule before the tribes along the Euphrates rebelled. In a town called Dair, British soldiers arrested the mayor. The townspeople, Wallach writes, "blew up the oil dump, wounding 90 people, released all the prisoners from the jail and attacked the British army barracks. When the Political Officer tried to make peace in the town, the sheiks attacked him in a fury. Just as they were about to kill him, two British airplanes flew overhead, spraying the town with machine-gun fire."

Iraq was Britain's testing ground for the use of aircraft against guerrilla fighters and their villages (another of Churchill's pet ideas). The British spent the 1920s, 30s, 40s and most of the 50s bombing and strafing desert outposts in Iraq. What does it say about the nature of progress that Britain and the US spent the 1990s doing essentially the same thing?

* * *

Examining Britain's occupation of Iraq for clues to the future of America's is a murky prospect. One interesting detail, though, is that a couple of years after Britain's occupation began, the British public rebelled against the cost of the war. Officials started looking for ways to cut costs quickly. Churchill (again Churchill) called a conference in Cairo, inviting 40 experts on Mesopotamia: 39 men and Gertrude Bell.

Many officials wanted to pull out of Mesopotamia altogether, except for the Persian Gulf. Bell and a few others, like T.E. Lawrence, argued for making and backing an Arab kingdom in Iraq. Bell's party eventually persuaded Churchill that Arab monarchies with British power behind them would make for a more stable region, cheaper in the long run as a provider of oil.

After the Cairo Conference, according to Wallach, "almost everything (Bell) had wished for now had a chance of coming true. The country would consist of all three vilayets — Baghdad, Basra and Mosul; the Sunnis, Shiites, Jews, Christians and Kurds would be united under a Sharifian king; and Iraq, rich, prosperous and led by Faisal, would be a loyal protégé of Britain. If Gertrude could bring it all off, it would be more than interesting, it would be a model for the entire Middle East."

* * *

Back in Iraq, "model for the entire Middle East," British soldiers were putting down the rebellion, killing an estimated 10,000 Iraqis. Most towns went again under British control; those which didn't were razed with explosives. But the Iraqi resistance would not die, until the British were driven out more than 30 years later.

Furthering its plan to establish Arab kingdoms, Britain chose the sons of Sharif Hussein, Faisal and Abdullah, to be its native allies in the Middle East. Faisal was put on a throne in Damascus and crowned ruler of "Greater Syria." Abdullah was crowned king of Transjordan.

The Arab government in Damascus lasted just under two years. (Jordan exists to this day, with Abdullah's great grandson on the throne.) But in 1921, the French kicked out Faisal's administration. Presented with an out-of-work king (Faisal) and a country dangerously adrift (Iraq), the British decided to put the two together. They organized a long, public processional for Faisal from Basra to Baghdad, hoping that by the time the tour was completed, Faisal would generate enough excitement among the public to allow the British to crown him "by acclamation" and get away with it.

Once again, Gertrude Bell was in the thick of the plans. She attached herself as advisor to Faisal and oversaw everything from the daily round of appointments to the furnishings of the new royal palace in Baghdad.

* * *

The wrench in Britain's plans was named Ibn Saud. A powerful chieftain who had also been in the pay of the British for decades, he refused to submit to Faisal's rule. The lands that his tribes and flocks roamed were not Iraq, he claimed, but Arabia, and his own.

All other methods failing, the British decided to carve a kingdom for Ibn Saud out of Transjordan and Iraq. The following passage describing how the deal was made is worth quoting at length. It is Wallach's description of the birth of the modern Middle East, with hints of how things could have been:

"Ibn Saud's slaves prepared for (Cox's) arrival. Lavish white tents of various sizes were pitched in the sand for sleeping, bathing, dining and entertaining; thick carpets were laid, luxurious furnishings installed and ample supplies of fresh fruits, Perrier water, Cuban cigars and Johnny Walker Scotch were stocked for (Cox.)

"The negotiations over the boundary lines went on for five days and nights while Cox, dressed in his suit, bow tie and felt fedora, served as a mediator between the robed representatives of Iraq, Kuwait and Arabia. Ibn Saud demanded that the borders be based on tribes, not territory, and according to his scheme, two groups — Fahad Bey's Anazeh and part of the Shammar — would belong to Arabia, regardless of how far north they traveled. The two tribes would become a movable border, expanding and contracting, adjusting as they searched for grazing grounds; the border would change according to their nomadic needs. "East is East and West is West," Kipling had written, and the two were never farther apart. To Cox and the British, the notion of property revolved around territory, but for Ibn Saud and the Bedouin, the idea of property was tied to people.

"No progress could possibly be made, and by the sixth day Sir Percy lost his temper. With only Major Dixon at the meeting, he berated Ibn Saud as if he were a schoolboy. At the rate both sides were going, he told the perfumed Arabian ruler, nothing would be settled for a year. Ibn Saud was on the verge of tears; Sir Percy Cox was his father and mother, he cried, the one who had made him and raised him from nothing to the position he held. He would surrender "half his kingdom, nay the whole, if Sir Percy ordered."

With that, Sir Percy took hold of the map. Carefully drawing a red line across the face of it, he assigned a chunk of the Nejd to Iraq; then to placate Ibn Saud, he took almost two thirds of the territory of Kuwait and gave it to Arabia. Last, drawing two zones, and declaring that they should be neutral, he called one the Kuwait neutral zone and the other the Iraq neutral zone. When a representative of Ibn Saud pressed Cox not to make a Kuwait neutral zone, Sir Percy asked him why. "Quite candidly," the man answered, "because we think oil exists there." "That," replied the High Commissioner, "is exactly why I have made it a neutral zone. Each side shall have a half-share." The agreement, signed by all three sides at the beginning of December 1922, confirmed the boundary lines drawn so carefully by Gertrude Bell. But for seventy years, up until and including the 1990 Gulf War involving Iraq and Kuwait, the dispute over the borders would continue."

* * *

With the creation of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq, the map of the modern Middle East was complete. The British managed to keep their royal surrogates in Iraq until 1958, when military officers shot the young king (Faisal's grandson), his regent and prime minister.

Gertrude Bell stayed on in Iraq, though her influence waned. Faisal, once he settled into power, needed his motherly British advisor less. Gertrude Bell's main project became the archeological collection that formed the core of the Baghdad Museum. She also took an interest in women's schooling and, before the sanctions and war of the past two decades, Iraqi women indeed had relatively great power and independence within the Muslim world, based largely on education. Of course now, under America's reign of light, both the museum and women's economic position are trashed.

Gertrude Bell died in May of 1924 at the age of 58. Her achievements were already, literally, written in stone. But she died outside the glow of power, using an extra dose of sleeping pills, Wallach writes, "to wipe away the dreary future."

One thing the British were never able to do is to inspire in the mass of Iraqis the vision of a western style democracy for their country. Now America seems to be failing at the same thing, and many Americans ask why.

Perhaps for an answer we should look homeward.

Plenty Coup was a Crow Indian chief. His people, like Iraqis today, were impoverished in their own land and ravaged by war because they stood between Western expansion and the prime resources of the day. Plenty Coup talked about a different war, in a different time. Yet his words resonate. In many ways it has been the same war for all these years:

The Americans, he said, "spoke very loudly when they said their laws were made for everybody, but we soon learned that although they expected us to keep them, they thought nothing of breaking them themselves. They told us not to drink whisky, yet they made it themselves and traded it to us for furs and robes until both were nearly gone. Their Wise Ones said we might have their religion, but when we tried to understand it we found that there were too many kinds of religion to understand, and that scarcely any two white men agreed which was the right one to learn. This bothered us a good deal until we saw that the white man did not take his religion any more seriously than he did his laws, and that he kept both of them just behind him, like Helpers, to use when they might do him good in his dealings with strangers. These were not our ways. We kept the laws we made and lived our religion. We have never been able to understand the white man, who fools nobody but himself."

(This article is based almost completely on Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell, Adventurer, Advisor to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia, by Janet Wallach, Random House, 1996.)

U.S. 2002 Pre-invasion Plan to Divide Iraq Into Three Separate States

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

ProFutures - By Gary D. Halbert

U.S. Considers Dividing Iraq Into Three Separate States After Saddam Is Gone October 1, 2002 1. Stratfor's Latest Intelligence On Iraq. 2. Iraq Is Too Big For One New Government. 3. US Would Divide Into Three Separate States. 4. Central Iraq (Sunnis) Would Join With Jordan 5. The Shia Region Would Join With Kuwait. 6. The Kurds Get Their Own State In The North. 7. Iraq Ceases To Exist; Baghdad No Longer Capital. 8. Investment Market Implications. A US war against Iraq appears to be only a matter of when, not if, despite the latest rumblings from a few high-level Democrats who oppose the idea. The latest Zogby poll shows that 70% of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein is a legitimate threat to the safety and security of the United States, compared to 25% who believe Hussein is just another ruler whose policies are anti-American. Most Americans also have little doubt that we will win a war with Iraq handily, complete with the removal of Saddam Hussein. But the question I have been most interested in is whether there is any group in Iraq that can successfully manage and govern that country after Saddam and his thugs are removed from power. It would be a terrible mistake for the US to clean out Saddam & Company, only to see the country fall back into the hands of tyrants, especially religious extremists who are sympathetic to al Qaeda, in another year or two. Most observers agree that there is no one group in Iraq who could successfully govern and manage it in the post-Saddam era, given its diverse population and different religions. Given that, what are the US and our allies to do? Well, my good friends at STRATFOR.COM released a fascinating report last Friday. Stratfor.com is one of the most respected geopolitical intelligence services in the world. Stratfor's high-level sources tell them that one of the leading long-term strategies being considered by US war planners is one that will DIVIDE Iraq into three separate regions. Under this plan Iraq would CEASE TO EXIST. Stratfor believes the plan would divide Iraq as follows: The central and largest part of Iraq that is populated by the Sunni Arabs would be joined with JORDAN to form one "United Hashemite Kingdom," which would be ruled by Jordan's King Abdullah. This area would include Baghdad, which would no longer be the capital. The Kurdish region of northern and northwestern Iraq, including Mosul and the vast Kirkuk oilfields, would become its own autonomous state. The Shia Region in southwestern Iraq, including Basra, would make up the third state, or more likely it would be joined with Kuwait. Stratfor's sources indicate that the plan to divide (and thus eliminate) Iraq as described above is not the only plan under consideration, and it is also not finalized. However, such a plan makes a lot of sense to me. Stratfor says that such a plan reportedly was discussed at an unusual meeting between Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan and pro-US Iraqi Sunni opposition members in London in July. Further, they say that in September, the Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, stated that the US goal in Iraq was to create a United Hashemite Kingdom that would encompass Jordan and Iraq's Sunni areas. Also, Israeli terrorism expert Ehud Sprinzak recently echoed this sentiment on Russian television on September 24. So whose idea is this? According to Stratfor, Sprinzak stated that the authors of the "Hashemite" plan are Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, both considered the most hawkish of Bush administration officials. That is not surprising. Why Such A Plan Might Make Sense As noted above, the Bush administration may be considering the proposal because the current goal of replacing Saddam Hussein with a pro-US Iraqi government still would not guarantee long-term democratic stability over the territory and its oil. It may become too hard for a new government in Baghdad to effectively control the whole country, even with US troop support. An example is Afghanistan, in which the government of President Hamid Karzai still controls only the capital. Stratfor offers the following analysis: "The new government's attempts to establish control over all of Iraq may well lead to a civil war between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish ethnic groups, with US troops caught in the middle. The fiercest fighting could be expected for control over the oil facilities. But uniting Jordan and Iraq under a Hashemite government may give Washington several strategic advantages. First, the creation of a new pro-US kingdom under the half-British Abdullah [king of Jordan] would shift the balance of forces in the region heavily in the US favor. After eliminating Iraq as a sovereign state, there would be no fear that one day an anti-American government would come to power in Baghdad, as the capital would be in Amman [Jordan]. Current and potential US geopolitical foes Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria would be isolated from each other, with big chunks of land between them under control of the pro-US forces. Equally important, Washington would be able to justify its long-term and heavy military presence in the region as necessary for the defense of a young new state asking for US protection -- and to secure the stability of oil markets and supplies. That in turn would help the United States gain direct control of Iraqi oil and replace Saudi oil in case of conflict with Riyadh." Benefits To The US According to Stratfor's sources and the Israeli media, the richest oil areas would go not to the Hashemite kingdom but to the autonomous Kurdish region in the north. To make sure the new Kurdish state is not seen as a threat to Turkey, our ally, the US would deploy armed forces and build new military bases in the area, not only to prevent any hostilities along the border, but also to insure the free flow of oil from this area. As a part of this plan, it is believed that the Bush administration would also negotiate new deals to build US military bases in the Hashemite kingdom and in the Shia Region to the south. This would be a huge development in the War On Terror. With US military bases in the three new states, the US would be in an ideal position should it choose in the future to go after Iran, Saudi Arabia or other states in the region that are supporting terrorism. With Iraq divided as described above, with US aid and military assistance, and not to mention, huge oil revenues going into government coffers (as opposed to Saddam's pocketbook), this region could become very prosperous very quickly. Benefits For Israel And Jordan Stratfor suggests that the division of Iraq, as described above, will reap big benefits for both Israel and Jordan. Iraq, arguably Israel's most determined enemy, would be eliminated. The end of Saddam's regime would also deprive the Palestinians of much financial and other assistance, which could reduce the effectiveness of their attacks against the Jewish state. King Abdullah of Jordan would vastly expand his role and prominence in the region with a joint Hashemite state, becoming the second-most important US ally in the region after Israel. In addition to his huge territorial gains, he also would get a chunk of Iraqi oil. And Palestinians, who currently make up half of Jordan's population, would become a minority in the new state, with much less potential to stir up trouble. Difficult, But Not Impossible Stratfor is quick to admit that the division plan above may not be the final strategy. Others are on the table as well. Stratfor also acknowledges that the plan will be difficult to achieve, and there are obviously some risks. Certainly, it will be difficult to get the various factions in Iraq to agree to the new arrangement. Obviously, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and perhaps others in the region, will have major heartburn over such a plan. Stratfor cautions that even Turkey could have a problem with this plan. In addition, Stratfor says: "The plan may not be free of negative consequences for Washington, however. Iraq's Shia majority -- whose anti-Hussein opposition seems currently divided between the United States and Iran -- probably would not agree to become a part of the new kingdom. Iran may interfere by urging Iraqi Shias to join with Tehran. Washington might counter by agreeing to attach the Shia Iraqi region to Kuwait, Israeli media speculates. Turkey, despite a U.S. military presence in Kurdish areas, still might have reservations about the plan. Finally, it is unclear how Sunni tribal and other leaders inside Iraq would react." Conclusions As noted at the beginning, I believe a plan that involves splitting Iraq into separate entities is a very good idea. Assuming Saddam's regime is toppled, it will still be very difficult, if not impossible, for any one faction to control the entire country. If the plan includes provisions for permanent US military facilities in the new states, that will make the prosecution of the War On Terror much easier. There are certainly arguments against a permanent US military presence in the region. Some will argue that we are setting ourselves up for another Vietnam-like conflict that could last many years. And there will be plenty of other negatives voiced if this plan is actually adopted. Yet in the end, some type of plan that splits Iraq and eliminates Baghdad as the capital may be the best long-term solution, as Stratfor suggests.

 

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