History on Partition: Bad, But Is Un-Partition Worse?

Over at the Atlantic Monthly one Zaina Arafat has posted a review of past articles on the outcomes of various partitions of territories in the last century. Her conclusion is that partitions in India, Afghanistan, and Palestine have led to ongoing conflicts. Hence, partition in Iraq is not a good idea.

We find this overly simplistic. Our differently simplistic version is that in each of these areas, particularly India/Pakistan, partition dampened rampant violence and confined the ongoing conflict to a smaller region with fewer deleterious effects on the population as a whole.

Hence, we will challenge the parallel posting by Atlantic senior editor James Fallows. Fallows, who has been an unrelenting critic of the war in contrast to other Atlantic staffers like Robert Kaplan, essentially proclaims that all that is left to do in Iraq is for America to withdraw with as much face-saving public-relations management as possible, followed by a lingering consciousness of how much the war has screwed up the world.

We continue to disagree with Fallows, for reasons noted before. First, the danger posed by a dictator with Saddam’s demonstrable ambitions, means and ruthlessness was considerable, and the fact that he was not an overtly active danger in 2003 doesn’t change that calculation. Second, the Iraqi Kurds are notably well on their way to establishing a better life for themselves. Third, whatever future mischief occurs in what is now Iraq will be considerably less than it might have been had the country remained under a single strongman capable of marshaling its resources, overtly or surreptitiously, against other parts of the world, especially our part.

Hence the value of partition. It preserves the Kurdish progress, formally divides resources among factions that will remain at odds with each other more than with the West, and potentially confines genuine hostility to the West to one segment of the country.

The danger is realignment of one third of the country with Iran and another with Syria. However, that threat appears to be less than it might seem. There remains considerable animosity between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites, and it’s not at all clear that Syria plus the Iraqi Sunni minority constitutes a big enough sum to increase the threat of Syrian terrorism or military aggression.

So to Fallows and Arafat, we say that partition remains an excellent consideration. It’s not ideal, but nothing in this world, not least that part of it, ever is.