IRAQ: Shia Muslims are pushing a radical plan to separate warring sects by dividing up the country, but critics warn such a move would only make things worse, writes Borzou Daragahi in Baghdad
They have a new constitution, a new government and a new military. But faced with incessant sectarian bloodshed, Iraqis for the first time have begun openly discussing whether the only way to stop the violence is to remake the country they have just built.
Leaders of Iraq's powerful Shia Muslim political bloc have begun aggressively promoting a radical plan to partition the country as a way of separating the warring sects. Some Iraqis are even talking about dividing the capital, with the Tigris River as a kind of Berlin Wall.
Shias have long advocated some sort of autonomy in the south on par with the Kurds' 15-year-old enclave in the north, with its own defence forces and control over oil exploration. And the new constitution does allow provinces to team up into federal regions. But the latest effort, promulgated by cabinet ministers, clerics and columnists, marks the first time they've advocated regional partition as a way of stemming violence.
"Federalism will cut off all parts of the country that are incubating terrorism from those that are upgrading and improving," said Khudair Khuzaie, the Shia education minister. "We will do it just like Kurdistan. We will put soldiers along the frontiers."
The growing clamour for partition illustrates how dire Iraq's security, economic and political problems have come to seem to many Iraqis; until recently, Iraqis shunned the idea of redrawing the 8½-decade-old map of Iraq as seditious.
Some of the advocates of partitioning the country are circumspect, arguing that federalism is only one of the tools under consideration for reducing violence.
But others push a plan by Abdel Aziz Hakim, head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a political party. Hakim advocates the creation of a nine-province district in the largely peaceful south, with 60 per cent of the country's proven oil reserves.
Sunni leaders see nothing but greed in the new push - the Shias, they say, are taking advantage of the escalating violence to make an oil grab.
Iraq's oil is concentrated in the north and south, with much of the Sunni west and northwest desolate desert tundra, devoid of oil and gas.
"Controlling these areas will create a grand fortune that they can exploit," said Adnan Dulaymi, a leading Sunni Arab politician. "Their motive is that they are thirsty for control and power."
Still, even nationalists who favour a united Iraq acknowledge that sectarian warfare is so out of hand that even the possibility of splitting the capital along the Tigris, which roughly divides the city between a mostly Shia east and a mostly Sunni west, is being openly discussed.
"Sunnis and Shias are both starting to feel that dividing Baghdad will be the solution," despaired Ammar Wajuih, a Sunni politician.
Critics scoff at the idea that any geographical partitioning of Sunni and Shias will make the country any safer than it is now.
Although growing numbers of Iraqis acknowledge that their country is in the throes of an undeclared civil war, a partition would "actually lead to increasing violence and sectarian displacement", said Hussein Athab, a political scientist and former lawmaker in Basra.
Critics of partitioning note that rival Shia militias with ties to political parties in government not only appear to be responsible for as much of Iraq's violence as Sunni insurgents, but have been known to turn their guns on each other.
One western diplomat suggested that the Shias were using the prospect of a southern mini-state to gain other political concessions from Sunnis, "a threat that they wouldn't want to have to exercise" because tearing the country asunder would be so traumatic.
US policymakers have also begun to warm to the idea. Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, one of the Democratic Party's leading voices on foreign policy, began openly advocating such a move this year.
The Kurdish experiment has inspired many Shia leaders, especially Hakim. Clerics loyal to him have already begun using street demonstrations as well as the Friday prayer pulpit to advance to desperate and war-weary Shia masses that an autonomous southern region will stem the bloodshed and bring prosperity.
"Those afraid of federalism in the south and middle are afraid that we will get our rights back," Sheik Sadraldin Qabanchi told the faithful gathered for Friday prayers in Najaf last month.
Hakim's advisers have already begun drawing up proposals for what rights and territory such a region would encompass, said Haithem Hussein, one of his deputies.
In the halls of parliament, Sunni politicians say their Shia colleagues try to strong-arm them to go along with their plan.
"They try to convince you that federalism is the only solution, whether you like it or not," said Salim Abdullah Jabouri, a former law professor now serving in parliament as a member of the main Sunni coalition.
Most agree that a partitioning of Iraq along geographical lines would be agonising and traumatic. Almost all of Iraq's major tribes include both Shia and Sunni branches, and cross-sectarian marriages abound, especially among cosmopolitan residents of large cities.
Sheik Diyadhin Fayadh, a Shia politician and cleric, offered up another solution to resolve Iraq's sectarian patchwork once the country has been partitioned: "If people don't like the system in one region," he said, "they can go to another region."