Dividing Iraq Will Spark Series of Mini-Civil Wars

We all support reconciliation, even if only with the crumbling walls of our homes. But who can guarantee that the tribal elders meeting on this subject, the journalists, the educated people, the politicians, the public or even the violent elements will accept this project of reconciliation? Who can ensure the approval of all forces who don’t recognize the clan elders, and who are willing to execute any clan chieftain, regardless of family name or social and political history?

Those forces don’t recognize the politicians, and consider them traitors and agents for America, or for neighboring countries, or for themselves and their official positions. Neither do they believe in the Iraqi homeland or its citizens. They are concerned only with control according to their ideological temperament.

These groups receive strong support from other powers interested in dividing Iraq into smaller countries. Those violent elements have made up their minds, and their interests (which they consider religiously approved) converge with the desire of the great powers, which want to get rid of Iraq in its present and historical form. In other words, they want to end the Iraq which comprises all ethnic and religious parties and whose capital is Baghdad. Those powers will not accept an end to the strife until the confrontation and killing make the partition of Iraq an inescapable reality on the ground.

Given the present circumstances, we can say this: reconciliation is the only thing that can prevent the final confrontation in our wounded and bleeding homeland. But as noble a purpose as reconcilation may be, it isn’t a goal that motivates those with closed minds, and who are forcing thousands of Shiite and Sunni families out of their neighborhoods.

Forcing the Shiites out of their neighborhoods pushes them into the southern areas, which are rich in oil and destined to become similar to the Gulf States. Those areas are in need of labor and population growth. So forcing the Shiites out is only the prelude to creating a State in the south. By forcing the Sunnis out of their neighborhoods to areas where the Sunnis are in the majority will lead to the establishment of a Sunni entity in the Western areas.

After the civil war and the displacement of people that comes with it, there will be secondary civil conflicts within these newly established states. We know that political factions “don’t eat honey and cream together,” and that conflicts of interest might evolve between them, precisely because they will be confined to a state with a specific religious orientation and ethnicity.

Therefore, there seems little likelihood that three separate Iraqi States would succeed. Peaceful development would seem impossible. This would be a catastrophe.

So beyond the first civil war and the plight of Iraq’s division into three separate entities, these entities would not be able to provide normal living conditions and will have to grapple with internal forces confronting one another, struggling to control and manage the new state.

I hope this painful scene never come to pass.