America plans to give Southern Iraq to Iran

By Abid Mustafa

Over the past few months talk about the division of Iraq has gained currency
amongst America’s political establishment. Most notable is the plan
advocated by Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden purports to decentralise Iraq and
give the country’s three major sectarian groups, the Kurds, Shiites and
Sunnis, their own regions, distributing oil revenue to all. Another US
official Peter Galbraith, a former State Department employee who’s advised
Iraqi Kurdish leaders on political issues and is the author of “The End of
Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War without End”  , said in an
interview, “The country has already broken up. And actually, I’m opposed to
using U.S. resources to try to put it back together again. Kurdistan in the
north is already a de facto independent state. It has its own elected
government. It has its own army. It flies its own flag. The Iraqi army is
not allowed to go to Kurdistan. The Iraqi flag is banned there. The Shiite
south is governed by the Shiite religious parties who enforce an
Iranian-style Islamic law with militias. It’s also not governed from
Baghdad. Baghdad itself is the front line of a civil war divided between a
Shiite east and a Sunni west, and the Sunni center is a battleground between
the coalition and Sunni insurgents. So the country has already broken up,
and this result is actually incorporated into the Iraqi constitution. The
constitution creates a virtually powerless center…”

Others like the former secretary of State James Baker who is currently the
Republican co-chairman of a bipartisan panel that is reassessing Iraq
strategy for President George W. Bush is critical of Biden’s plan, but is
open to the prospect of dividing Iraq between Syria and Iran. In an
interview to ABC News television Baker said, “I believe in talking to your
enemies.”

The debate amongst America’s political establishment to partition Iraq has
caused consternation amongst some Arab states who are avid supporters of the
old British policy to preserve Iraq’s integrity. Saudi Arabia’s ambassador
to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal in a speech delivered in
Washington on 30/10/06 said,” To envision that you can divide Iraq into
three parts is to envision ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, sectarian
killing on a massive scale and uprooting of families and even the divorce
rate in Iraq will shoot up 300 percent.”
King Abdullah long ago forewarned that the partition of Iraq would create a
Shiite Crescent stretching from Iran to Lebanon.  In an article entitled’
Iraq, Jordan See Threat To Election From Iran’ published by the Washington
Post on 8/11/04, King Abdullah warned that If pro-Iran parties or
politicians dominate the new Iraqi government a new “crescent” of dominant
Shiite movements or governments stretching from Iran into Iraq, Syria and
Lebanon could emerge, alter the traditional balance of power between the two
main Islamic sects and pose new challenges to U.S. interests and allies. He
further went to state that Iran was the main beneficiary from the chaos in
Iraq. He said that Iranians are paying salaries and providing welfare to
unemployed Iraqis to build pro-Iranian public sentiment. Some Iranians, he
added, have been trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and are members of
militias that could fuel trouble in Iraq after the election. “It is in
Iran’s vested interest to have an Islamic republic of Iraq . . . and
therefore the involvement you’re getting by the Iranians is to achieve a
government that is very pro-Iran.”, he said. Ever since the Shiite rose to
power in Iraq, King Abdullah has often repeated that American policy is
bolstering Shiite power across the region.
Hitherto Washington has not officially endorsed the plan to divide Iraq and
give Southern Iraq to Iran, but the facts on the ground speak volumes about
America’s intentions.
Since the first gulf war, America has worked tirelessly to isolate Baghdad
from the Kurdish areas to the North of Iraq and Shiite dominated areas to
the South of Iraq. America instigated the infamous Operation Northern Watch
to enforce the no-fly zone north of the 36th parallel in Iraq and monitor
Iraqi compliance with UN Security Council resolutions 678, 687, and 688. 
Operation Southern Watch was enforced to protect the no-fly zone south of
the 33rd parallel in Iraq and monitor compliance with United Nations
Security Council Resolutions 687, 688, and 949.
After the fall of Saddam, America has become the chief perpetrator in
fostering sectarian violence through employing military operations and
promoting defunct political processes that by their very nature engender
sectarian strife.
In the aftermath of Baath regime’s sudden collapse, America sure of Kurdish
support for autonomous rule began to garner support amongst the Shias for a
pseudo federalist state. To accomplish this feat, America enlisted the help
of Ayatollah Sistani and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim the leader of the Supreme
Council for Islamic Revolution. Both Ayatollahs’ have close ties with Iran;
the only difference between the two is that the latter has 10,000 soldiers
at his disposal. The Badr army as they are known is tolerated by the
Americans and conduct operations under American tutelage. Hakim has
aggressively pushed for federalism for the southern regions, calling for
nine provinces to merge.
In October 2006, the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution after a
controversial vote, agreeing to revisit how to create a federalist state in
18 months. Sunni parliamentarians boycotted the vote, saying it would divide
the country, and the measure passed 140-to-0 by the largely Shiite and
Kurdish members still present. Shortly after the parliament vote, Hakim said
in a news conference that dividing Iraq into three regions would stop the
violence, citing the relatively peaceful Kurdish regions. “There is a clear
point of view gleaned from our Kurdish brothers, and that is, the Iraq
problem can only be solved with regions,” Hakim said.
Hakim’s declaration for greater Shiite autonomy coincides with Bush’s
abandonment of promoting democracy in the region, drawing Iraq—Vietnam
parallels and signaling US troop withdrawal to start as early as 2007.
Unsurprisingly then that Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq,
recently said that the unity government of Nouri al-Maliki, had only two
months left to get a grip on the situation. It appears that the option of
cut and run will be replaced by cut Iraq and watch Iran take southern Iraq.
But Washington has three major problems with this scheme. Firstly, Europe
led by Britain has considerable influence over the various Kurdish, Sunni
and Shiite factions- So any partitioning of Iraq may not result in oil rich
regions falling completely under America’s hegemony. Secondly, Ahmadinejad
is proving to be a real nuisance towards American policy in the region,
despite US attempts to curb his ambitions through the likes of Khatami and
Rafsanjani. Thirdly, the most worrisome matter for Washington— is what if
the division of Iraq fails and leaves a vacuum only to be filled in by the
Caliphate- something which Bush and his acolytes have profusely warned
about.

Abid Mustafa is a political commentator who specializes in Muslim affairs