Capture the Flag: the Bush Administration sends mixed signals on partitioning Iraq

By Sebastian Sosman

The last time I checked, White House policy is still advocating a unified Iraq. But an October 8 article in the Times of London reported that the influential Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James Baker III and Congressman Lee Hamilton, has been quietly examining the idea of partitioning the country. “The minute you say you're going to do that you're likely to kick off a big civil war,” Baker said on ABC's This Week. “But we haven't rejected the idea.” Then, on Newshour with Jim Lehrer , Hamilton said that partition was “on the table” but that “any report in the press which says that we have agreed upon any recommendation is flat-out wrong.”

Nonetheless, there are signs—slightly cryptic, but still worth noting—that the Bush Administration may be leaning towards partitioning Iraq. The main exhibit is an October 6 AP photograph of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President of Iraqi Kurdistan Massoud Barzani meeting in Irbil, the provincial seat. Rice and Barzani stood at a podium, flanked by a red, white, and green Kurdish tricolor flag. Neither the Iraqi flag, nor any other indication that the Secretary of State was in Iraq, was in view.

Rice was meeting with Barzani to gain assurances from the Kurds that they will share Kirkuk's oil revenue with the central government in Baghdad. The Associated Press reported the story under the headline, “Rice Appeals to Oil-Rich Kurdish North.” But Kurdistan is only oil-rich if you include the city of Kirkuk, and while U.S. media often describe Kirkuk as Kurdish, that's a little like saying that Belfast is Catholic, or that San Diego is Mexican. Kirkuk's “Kurdishness” is controversial, particularly if you're a member of the city's large Christian, Turkmen, or Arab populations. And it's Iraq's democratically elected central government—not the Kurds—that controls Kirkuk's oil fields. “Under the Iraqi constitution,” said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, “the management of oil from current fields, such as Kirkuk's, is shared.”

Given that in September, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a declaration that the Iraqi flag must be flown in all regions (Kurdish nationalists call the Iraqi flag “the flag of Ba'ath”), it's hard to believe that Rice's protocol people could let this one slip by accidentally. Imagine a foreign prime minister visiting America in 1861 and giving a speech while standing in front of a confederate flag—it's hard to imagine a Secretary of State could have missed such symbolism—and the Kurdish press certainly didn't. The official newspapers of the two main Kurdish ruling parties, Kurdiwtani Nuwe (of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) and Khabat (of the Kurdish Democratic Party), both read Rice's visit as a signal that the United States was moving towards a divided Iraq. Soon after Rice left, the Iraqi Parliament passed a law that allows Iraqi provinces to form autonomous regions starting in 2008. The law passed 141-0, with 134 parliamentarians protesting by walking out.

After the parliament passed the Autonomous Regions Law, a declaration of secession by a Sunni umbrella group resulted in a string of bombings in Kirkuk and a major flare-up of sectarian violence north of Baghdad. That may have been just a taste of things to come.

“If we lose sight of a multiethnic solution inside of a clearly defined state of Iraq,” said one well-placed source who spoke off the record, “if the idea of partition continues to gain traction, you could be looking at a major blowup. This is the not the solution favored by a majority of Iraqis, so it throws the concept of democratic rule out the window. And if it goes off, it won't be like now, with death squads and car bombs in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle, but from North to South. Or worse, you bring in the neighbors, countries with strong, overlapping interest in Iraq. You put the Iraqi rump states at the center of a massive shitstorm.”

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