Gone To Pieces

Published in New York Daily News on August 22, 2006

Yesterday, President Bush told reporters that, though he is "concerned" about talk of civil war in Iraq, "We're not going to leave before the mission is complete" - meaning, until a stable and unified Iraq can defend itself.

But it is time for the administration to face an uncomfortable reality: There is no longer any such thing as a single nation called Iraq. In the north, Kurdistan has its own government, army and flag, and it does not allow the Iraqi flag or army on its territory. The Shiite south is ruled by religious parties and militias. The Sunni Arab center is a battleground between Sunni insurgents and the U.S. military operating in alliance with mostly Shiite Iraqi troops. In Baghdad, Al Qaeda offshoots dominate many of the Sunni neighborhoods in the city's west while the pro-Hezbollah Mahdi Army controls the Shiite east.

Iraq's supposed "government of national unity" is not very united, and governs almost nothing. In fact, while insisting he wants a unified Iraq, Bush's administration has helped divide the country. During the 14 months of the formal American occupation that began in April 2003, the U.S. permitted Shiite militias to grow from a few thousand fighters to the more than 100,000 that exist today. And in August 2005, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad brokered a constitution that is a road map to partition. It allows each Iraqi region to have its own government, army and substantial control over its oil. The central government lacks even the power to impose taxes.

Iraq has the constitution it does because its people - who ratified it overwhelmingly - do not want to live in a unified nation. For a Kurd, being Iraqi has meant repression, poison gas and genocide. That's why 98% of the Kurds voting in a nonbinding referendum last year backed independence. Previous Iraqi regimes also repressed Iraq's Shiite majority. Those Shiites are now, thanks to the democratic elections held in 2005, entitled to rule all of Arab Iraq - but seem content with running only the Shiite parts. In fact, their politicians are moving forward with plans to create a Shiite state with its own army guarding the borders with the Sunni areas.

Only the Sunni Arabs - 20% of the population - seem to want a truly unified Iraq. And they want it on their terms, which is why Sunni insurgents started Iraq's civil war.

So the real question is not "How do we hold Iraq together?" but "What would it take to put it back together?"

At a minimum, the U.S. would have to disarm the Shiite militias and end the Sunni-Shiite civil war. Disarming the militias means taking on well-armed fighters supported by Iran. To end the civil war, U.S. troops would have to become Baghdad's police force. These missions would require many more troops than we have in Iraq today and would lead to greater U.S. casualties.

But even if we could put Iraq together, is that a worthy goal? Iraq's Kurds have created a Western-oriented aspiring democracy in the north. What U.S. interest is served by forcing them to live in an Iraq that is theocratic and allied with Iran? And if Iraq's Shiites want their own state, as apparently they do, why should we commit our military to stopping them?

Iraq is already partitioned. The question now is whether America should pay a higher price in blood and treasure to reassemble a country that a sizable proportion of its people do not want.