Three into One Makes Iraq?

Gareth Stansfield is reader in Middle East politics at the University of Exeter and associate fellow of the Middle East programme at Chatham House.

In the current issue of Prospect magazine, in a piece entitled "Divide and Heal", Stansfield says:

"Sometime in the next few days or weeks, a government of national unity will finally be formed in Iraq. This rare piece of good news will briefly rekindle some of the optimism about the political future of a unified Iraq that followed last December's election. But the reality on the ground is that Iraq is breaking up. The Kurdish north is largely independent and Basra, capital of the Shia south, is increasingly falling out of Baghdad's orbit. Moreover, there is anecdotal evidence of significant population movement—with Shias leaving Sunni areas, Sunnis leaving Shia areas, and Kurds (and many professionals of all identities) moving north to the relative sanctuary of Kurdistan.

The partitioning, or rather radical decentralisation, of Iraq is under way. This should not necessarily be seen as a problem. Historical Iraq was a place of three semi-independent parts—Kurdish north, Sunni centre and Shia south—within the loose framework of the Ottoman empire. It is the centralised Iraq—starting with Britain's creation of the modern state in 1921-23 and reaching its nadir in nearly three decades of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship—that has failed and should be allowed to die".

Whatever Bush, Blair and Howard may say, the reality in Iraq is an ongoing disaster. Just watching tonight's SBS TV news and seeing how even the Iraqis in Basra now despise the British forces - they were previously prepared to reasonably tolerate them - make it clear that seeking a solution to the ongoing violence and dislocation in Iraq is a priority.

Read the complete Stansfield piece here.

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