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Talk of partitioning Iraq between the major Iraqi populations--Shi'ite Arabs in the south, Sunni Arabs in the centre, Kurds in the north--has received quite a lot of attention. As Phil Hunt has noted,
There are problems with this: the reaction of Iraqis to the partition; the reaction of Iraq's neighbours; questions of economic viability and geographical frontiers; the place for minorities like the Turkmen in the new arrangement; and so on. The primary problem, however, is that these ethnic and religious divisions don't correspond that tightly with divisions on the ground.
For instance, the Library of Congress' country guide for Iraq notes that during the Iran-Iraq War, Iraqi Shi'ites aligned not with their fellow Shi'ites in Iran but rather with their Iraqi co-nationals. More,
Besides, the Shi'ite majority was produced in the 18th century by Persian missionaries active in southern Iraq--Iran itself only became a Shi'ite country in the early modern era.
This says nothing at all about the very complicated and inseparable relationship between Iraqi Kurds and Iraqi Arabs, and the problematic frontier between the two populations, in Kirkuk, in Mosul, and elsewhere. There hasn't ever been a state frontier separating Kurdish-majority areas in Iraq from Arab-majority areas, after all--the Ottoman-era political frontier between Mosul and Baghdad vilayets wasn't a frontier between sovereign component territories like Yugoslavia's republican frontiers. If anything, ethnic frontiers have become muddier still, thanks to normal processes of migration and Saddam's arabization of much of Kurdistan.
The Czech Socialist Republic within Czechoslovakia and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union had clearly defined territorial frontiers, and were largely populated by ethnic groups which were relatively confined within these (generally non-disputed) geographical frontiers--only a fifth as many ethnic Russians lived outside the RSFSR as inside, and proportionally and absolutely far fewer Czechs lived in Slovakia. The bifurcation of post-Communist Czechoslovakia, and the fission of the Soviet Union, was possible because of these clear lines.
In the case of Iraq, par contre, a trifurcation along proposed lines would override existing ethnic and religious boundaries, force the creation of geographical frontiers with little likelihood of being uncontested or any chance of providing the successor states with viable economies and societies (what will you do with the Sunnis, for instance?), and generally contradict the whole stated American goal in Iraq of rebuilding Iraqi society.
It seems to me that Iraq has the potential to go the same way [as Yugoslavia]. Or maybe there won't actually be a civil war, perhaps the Arab Shi'ite, Arab Sunni and Kurdish parts of the country will agree to peacefully go their separate ways, as Slovakia and the Czech Republic did, or as happened in the USSR.
[. . .]
Shi'ites are 60% of Iraq's population. In anything like a democratic state, they will be in charge. So they'll want to keep Iraq together? Perhaps. On the other hand, if they get tired of fractiousness in other parts of the country, they might decide they're better off alone - as Russia and the Czech Republic did.
There are problems with this: the reaction of Iraqis to the partition; the reaction of Iraq's neighbours; questions of economic viability and geographical frontiers; the place for minorities like the Turkmen in the new arrangement; and so on. The primary problem, however, is that these ethnic and religious divisions don't correspond that tightly with divisions on the ground.
For instance, the Library of Congress' country guide for Iraq notes that during the Iran-Iraq War, Iraqi Shi'ites aligned not with their fellow Shi'ites in Iran but rather with their Iraqi co-nationals. More,
[t]he real tension in Iraq in the latter 1980s was between the majority of the population, Sunnis as well as Shias, for whom religious belief and practice were significant values, and the secular Baathists, rather than between Sunnis and Shias. Although the Shias had been underrepresented in government posts in the period of the monarchy, they made substantial progress in the educational, business, and legal fields. Their advancement in other areas, such as the opposition parties, was such that in the years from 1952 to 1963, before the Baath Party came to power, Shias held the majority of party leadership posts. Observers believed that in the late 1980s Shias were represented at all levels of the party roughly in proportion to government estimates of their numbers in the population. For example, of the eight top Iraqi leaders who in early 1988 sat with Husayn on the Revolutionary Command Council--Iraq's highest governing body-- three were Arab Shias (of whom one had served as Minister of Interior), three were Arab Sunnis, one was an Arab Christian, and one a Kurd. On the Regional Command Council--the ruling body of the party--Shias actually predominated (see The Baath Party , ch. 4). During the war, a number of highly competent Shia officers have been promoted to corps commanders. The general who turned back the initial Iranian invasions of Iraq in 1982 was a Shia.
The Shias continued to make good progress in the economic field as well during the 1980s. Although the government does not publish statistics that give breakdowns by religious affiliation, qualified observers noted that many Shias migrated from rural areas, particularly in the south, to the cities, so that not only Basra but other cities including Baghdad acquired a Shia majority. Many of these Shias prospered in business and the professions as well as in industry and the service sector. Even those living in the poorer areas of the cities were generally better off than they had been in the countryside. In the rural areas as well, the educational level of Shias came to approximate that of their Sunni counterparts.
Besides, the Shi'ite majority was produced in the 18th century by Persian missionaries active in southern Iraq--Iran itself only became a Shi'ite country in the early modern era.
This says nothing at all about the very complicated and inseparable relationship between Iraqi Kurds and Iraqi Arabs, and the problematic frontier between the two populations, in Kirkuk, in Mosul, and elsewhere. There hasn't ever been a state frontier separating Kurdish-majority areas in Iraq from Arab-majority areas, after all--the Ottoman-era political frontier between Mosul and Baghdad vilayets wasn't a frontier between sovereign component territories like Yugoslavia's republican frontiers. If anything, ethnic frontiers have become muddier still, thanks to normal processes of migration and Saddam's arabization of much of Kurdistan.
The Czech Socialist Republic within Czechoslovakia and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union had clearly defined territorial frontiers, and were largely populated by ethnic groups which were relatively confined within these (generally non-disputed) geographical frontiers--only a fifth as many ethnic Russians lived outside the RSFSR as inside, and proportionally and absolutely far fewer Czechs lived in Slovakia. The bifurcation of post-Communist Czechoslovakia, and the fission of the Soviet Union, was possible because of these clear lines.
In the case of Iraq, par contre, a trifurcation along proposed lines would override existing ethnic and religious boundaries, force the creation of geographical frontiers with little likelihood of being uncontested or any chance of providing the successor states with viable economies and societies (what will you do with the Sunnis, for instance?), and generally contradict the whole stated American goal in Iraq of rebuilding Iraqi society.
