A two-state solution for Iraq?
THE WORLD DOES not suffer from a short supply of new ideas for Iraq -- but Iraqis are getting little opportunity to evaluate them. The military situation in Iraq has become so intractable that it, quite literally, cries out for political experimentation. This may be what top Pentagon generals mean when they say the only solutions for Iraq are political as opposed to military ones.
About the only political alternative other than moving toward direct talks with Iran and Syria under debate has been a three-way ethnic partition of Iraq. The problems of that approach, however, are glaring. Either Kurds or Sunnis would go without the support of oil revenues, depending on which group won the struggle for the major oil fields near Kirkuk in the north of Iraq. Turkey would probably feel compelled to invade a purely Kurdish state at some point if only because its domestic Kurdish rebels would at some point probably provoke a military reaction and try to use Kurdish Iraq as a refuge.
And a Shi'ite state could well be unstable, with the traditional, largely agrarian majority in the south pitted against the angry and desperately poor urban core of Moqtada al-Sadr's followers from the slums of east Baghdad. Signs of an internecine Shi'ite civil war have already emerged in fighting outside of Basra.
Finally, a three-way partition would make all the neighbors unhappy, not just Turkey. Saudi Arabia would be unsettled by a Shi'ite state on its border that included a populist movement like al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. And Iran would be unhappy about an unapologetic Sunni state near its borders whose leadership helped Saddam prosecute his withering 10-year war against the Islamic Republic.
Amazingly, no one has talked much about a two-way partition. On the surface, the idea seems unpromising. After all, at least one part of a two-way partition of Iraq would have to mix ethnic groups, so it would not purchase the peace of ethnic homogeneity. In addition, creating two new states is potentially troublesome, with all the unsettling ramifications of a proliferation of new sovereigns in the least stable part of the world.
Still, the idea deserves a closer look. To date, the United States has tried lots of military alternatives, most recently redeploying troops to Baghdad. But it has not proposed many political alternatives to Iraqi leaders.
It is time for the United States to embrace the same kind of trial-and-error approach in its political efforts that it has used to avoid catastrophe in its thinly manned military efforts. In full recognition that such a proposal is useful only to the extent that it gets people thinking about better options, here is an outline of a two-state solution for Iraq.
The new border would run from southwest to northeast roughly through Baghdad's airport. The state to the northwest -- let's call it New Babylon, just to keep track -- would include all 5 million Kurds and nearly all 5 million Sunni.
It would include all of Baghdad and all the 2 million to 3 million urban and suburban Shi'a in its vicinity. It would also include all of the northern oil fields.
In contrast, the state to the southeast would be a purely Shi'ite state, including all the Shi'a of the rural south and Basra and all of the major Shi'ite holy sites. Naturally, it would also include the southern oilfields. But it would include no part of metropolitan Baghdad with the exception of access to the airport.
Let's call this southeastern state Sistanistan, for the moment. Of course, there is no way that the revered Shi'ite scholar and cleric Sistani would condescend to play a political role in any state, but we may as well be clear about whose influence would dominate this one.
It would be reasonable to expect a state like Sistanistan, which draws together the most-traditional elements of Iraq's Shi'ite community and none of Iraq's least-traditional, Baghdad-based Shi'a, to observe a mild version of sharia law.
It would maintain cordial if not intimate relations with Iran, would become very rich from oil, and would function as a sort of Saudi-style guardian of the world's most important Shi'ite holy sites.
On the other hand, a polyglot state such as New Babylon, centered in the major metropolitan area of Baghdad, would probably focus on industrializing its agricultural and refining sectors and becoming a trade center for the Middle East.
The reasons for such a partition have little to do with expectations, however and much to do with the way it manages the incentives and fears of each of Iraq's major population groups today.
Let's turn this outline on its head -- and ask how a two-state solution would serve the needs of all the major communities living in today's Iraq. Primarily, there are four groups -- the southern Shi'a, the Sunni community, the Kurdish community and the metropolitan Shi'a most closely associated with al-Sadr.
The most traditional people in Iraq are probably the Shi'a who live south and east of Baghdad, perhaps reflecting their proximity to the Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. These are the people who arguably suffered the greatest hardship under Saddam. A homogeneous state of their own would seem to provide them the widest scope to adjust their government's jurisdiction over religious as well as civil life. It would also seem to provide them the greatest protection from any hostile coalition of less-traditional groups from the north.
For Iraq's Sunni community, the establishment of a northern state immediately solves two problems. Instead of being a 20 percent minority dominated by a Shi'ite population simmering with understandable resentment toward Sunni rule under Saddam, Iraq's Sunni would find themselves a 40 percent plurality in New Babylon.
And instead of questionable access to oil in Shi'ite and Kurdish states under one possible three-way partition, the Sunni community would enjoy shared but uncompromised access to all the reserves of northern Iraq.
For Iraq's Kurdish community, New Babylon would solve two big problems. Like the Sunni, Kurds would enjoy shared but uncompromised access to all the oil reserves near Kirkuk in the north. More important, however, is the fact that their state would be largely free from unreasonable threats from Turkey.
It is true that Kurds would represent a 40 percent plurality of the new state. Sixty percent of that state, however, would be Arab, which simultaneously eliminates the danger of a purely Kurdish border state from the Turkish perspective -- and ensures political support from other Arab states.
Perhaps the most important reason to consider a two-state partition, however, derives from the needs of the urban Shi'a of Baghdad -- and perhaps even the ambitions of al-Sadr himself. A two-state partition arguably offers the best possible development solution for the inhabitants of places such as Sadr City.
These Shi'a would comprise 20 percent of the population of the northern state. They would inevitably be the kingmakers of New Babylon supporting Kurdish and Sunni political parties depending on the attention those parties paid to the development needs of Baghdad's urban poor.
More immediately, they would no longer represent the vanguard -- and an easily attacked one, at that -- of a community of 15 million Shi'a threatening the livelihood of Iraq's Sunnis. As a minority of 2 million to 3 million Shi'a in the northern state, they would instead be a potential political ally for both Kurds and Sunnis, and might well play a role similar to the minority Shi'ite population of Syria. The reasons insurgents attack them today would be gone.
Al-Sadr has repeatedly shown interest in working across sectarian lines, perhaps because he fears a purely Shi'ite state would marginalize him and ignore his poorer followers. He and his successors could well find themselves frequent compromise candidates for the northern state's presidency. And, in such a state, the needs of Baghdad's Shi'a would rarely go unheard.
Nobody would claim that a two-state solution is a perfect solution. But all that is left on the table is to figure out what the least-bad option is for moving forward and ask Iraqis what they think of them. And in that context, the two-state solution deserves a solid hearing.
David Apgar is a contributing editor to The Globalist. He is the author of "Risk Intelligence: Learning to Manage What We Don't Know." 
