Reblogged - Redrawing Iraq's Borders Can Iraq be successfully partioned?

In response to a news piece at Port McClellan on Jordanian reaction to the Zarqawi terrorist attack in Amman, I dug up the ol' ghost of partitioning Iraq along cultural lines:

I am always hopeful that in the end, democracy will prevail, and in a united Iraq.

But, ever the realist, I have not much confidence in that. Not so much in a failing of Iraqi democracy, but in a failing of the Iraqi nation. Because, as a nation, it really isn't. Just some lines drawn on a map at the convenience of European (British?) rulers.

Ever the optimist, I also don't believe the Mesopotamian people really want anarchy, and I respect their intelligence enough to not believe they want a country of feudal, or even tribal, duchies.

People congregate on ethnic, cultural, even ideological lines. We like living in a community of kindred spirits.

So, maybe what we need, or maybe what will simply happen, is another redrawing of boundaries. Since the toppling of Saddam began to be considered in earnest, the three nations of Iraq have been an ever present reality. Kurds, Shiite, Sunni.

What would really be wrong with an independent Kurdish state in the north, a Shiite nation to the south, possibly, probably in some political relationship with Iran, though the line between Arab and Persian may be stronger than believed, and a nation in the east of Iraqi, Jordanian and Syrian Sunnis?

An Iraqi Sunni nation would be poor, destitute, landlocked; a base of continued foment and strife. United with their religious and ethnic and tribal cousins in Jordan and Syria just might balance all the necessary equations.

And to think, I've always objected to be called a Utopian Dreamer...