Joe Biden is running for president, once again, on a “common sense” platform. His solution for Iraq? Split it up. Three separate powers sharing oil revenue in a peaceful and fair manner. Kurds to the North, Sunni in the West and Shi’a to the East. The sane politician need only look at NATO’s efforts in the former Yugoslavia to see the simplicity of it all: tear down imperially formed mutt-countries and re-form them along cultural and ethnic lines. Simple.
But this area of the world does not mirror the Slavic conflict of the nineties. True, there is an ethnic divide fanned by powerful leaders who drive minor wedges so deep into society that the only way to excise them seems to be letting it bleed out of your neighbor. And it’s also true that greed over lucrative natural resources (the Kurdish oil fields can’t help but remind us of the Kosovar coal mines) seems to be behind the bloodshed. Just this past week in his new memoir, Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, said the war was all about oil, both for the U.S. and powers in the Middle East. But in Iraq the fight on the ground is about more than dwindling resources.
The Set Up
As Mark Lilla said in a recent New York Times article, the sectarian divide is more typical of the religious wars in the West during the Middle Ages. “In the Wars of Religion... doctrinal differences fueled political ambitions and vice versa, in a deadly, vicious cycle that lasted a century and a half” (The Politics of God, August 19,2007). The religious rift at the root of conflict in Iraq is deeper than the comparably short history of ethnocentric atrocities found in the Balkans. While Russia may still be salting old wounds in Kosovo, the outside influences driving the in-fighting in Iraq are fed by deeper aspirations. The Kurds in the North,
the largest ethnic group without a country, see persecution on every side and will need support no matter what the final solution is, as owning the richest oil fields in the area will make them a prime target. The Shi’a in the East are backed by their Iranian neighbors, the only other Shi’ite government in the world, with plenty of reason for helping their comrades including a militant anti-American agenda. Saudi Arabia to the South is a Sunni theocracy and directly borders the Western, Sunni dominated sector of Iraq. Both sides are fighting for dominance of the Middle East and the Muslim world.
the largest ethnic group without a country, see persecution on every side and will need support no matter what the final solution is, as owning the richest oil fields in the area will make them a prime target. The Shi’a in the East are backed by their Iranian neighbors, the only other Shi’ite government in the world, with plenty of reason for helping their comrades including a militant anti-American agenda. Saudi Arabia to the South is a Sunni theocracy and directly borders the Western, Sunni dominated sector of Iraq. Both sides are fighting for dominance of the Middle East and the Muslim world.The Problems
On the surface the continued conflict seems to be one of politically based grudges and retaliation. With a Shi’a led government, the Sunni factions feel left out and suppressed. In the heavily Sunni areas of Baghdad leaders have emerged who preach violence as a means of social protest. At the same time, Shi’a clerics like Moqtada al-Sadr urge their militias to respond in kind and defend the Shi’ite government, causing more animosity and bloodshed.
So, back to common sense: Split them up and let each faction rule itself; no one steps on anyone’s toes. But the sectarian divide is not a recent development. After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s secular Ba’athist government an ancient ideological struggle began anew in the streets of Baghdad.
Political progress in Iraq is necessary, but, as Lilla points out, not inevitable. In the West politics was made possible only after religion had agreed to a secondary position in society. We cannot assume that the liberalization religion went through in the West will happen to the same degree in the Middle East. Especially because the two factions are fighting to keep their traditional views of religious politics in tact, views which historically have been at odds with democracy.
A Moral Choice
With the scene fully in view the outlook becomes bleak. Can America be expected to referee a religious war in which they represent the very diaspora between God and Politics that both sides are determined to eliminate? It seems like an impossible task. The future will be a weighing of the costs of war against the likelihood of forcing peace in a region of impassioned fervor. America must now decide if that kind of battle can be won at all.
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