[magician]

Possible Outlines of an Iraqi Nightmare.

We have to be cautious where the Kurds are concerned, I believe, as using them as convenient proxies will not best serve their long term interests. They do make pretty damned good guards in the meantime, and it can be very useful to have a Kurdish protection detail in your hip pocket, as they intimidate the hell out of the Shia and Sunni, and particularly the Sunni. Memories are long in Iraq.

But we have to be cautious about unleashing the Kurds, as it is in no one's best interest to let the Kurdish genie out of the bottle. A scenario where Kurds engage in wholesale retribution against Sunni remnants would quickly turn nightmarish.

Maybe it would be a good idea, at this point, to extrapolate a worst-case end state for Iraq.

Perhaps some form of partition along ethnic and religious lines is inevitable, with a central state too weak to enforce greater political integrity. If that is so, then we need to start planning for relationships with a Shia state in the South, and its likely alignment with elements in Iran.

One apparent tenet of US regional policy is that significant strata in Iran desire closer ties to the West, for both social and economic reasons. There is some belief among US analysts that the reign of the Imams will not endure. Whether this is true or not is a question for future history to decide. In the meantime, we had best get serious about border security and border interdiction, and dust off our target folders. Not so we can hit Iranian targets. So Iraqi proxies, or even Israeli forces, can do it for us. If we are not prepared to take off the gloves where Iran is concerned, then we need to ask ourselves whether a Southern Iraq which is for all intents and purposes annexed by Iran is unacceptable to our greater goals in the region. Particularly if Iran continues along its current nuclear path.

We already have longstanding ties to the Kurds in the North. In fact, US SF were there long before the invasion, and have been there since the last Gulf war. We do need to keep our finger on the pulse of the ultimate Kurdish desire for a homeland, a de facto Greater Kurdistan, as concrete Kurdish steps towards this goal could bring US forces into open conflict with Syrian forces, and could complicate relations with Turkey, a NATO ally.

In fact, Turkey has a lot to gain, and a lot to lose, with its bid to join the EC at stake. It would be best, in the long run, to continue nudging Turkey in this direction, and to seek to incorporate Turkey into the broader family of European nations. The last thing that anyone needs is a Turkey more beset with internal contradictions, or worse, a Turkey which feels compelled to intervene in Northern Iraq against Kurdish elements more or less aligned with the US.

While it is possible that conflict with Syria is a foregone inevitability, at least in broader regional terms, it would be better for the US if we engage Syria in a quiet war for those reasons, because of their perennial support for Hezbollah and Hamas, because of their emnity towards Israel, than because we are precipitously forced to support Kurdish allies who we need to buttress an artificial Pax Americana in post-Saddam Iraq.

It is tempting to conclude that the Iraqi Sunni, the inevitable losers in the emerging Iraqi state, regardless of how you slice and dice it, may end up like the Palestinians: subjected to a disaspora, remnants encircled and embattled, in conflict with diminishing coalition forces, Kurd and Shia alike, dependent on the largess of Sunni populations in other countries, which Guy's data suggests could be considerable.

I do not know anyone who thinks that Allawi can endure in power after elections, as he is widely viewed as a creature of the Americans. This is unfortunate, but Iraq is, after all, for Iraqis to ultimately save or demolish.

Personally, I do not consider a Sunni boycott of the elections to be a problem. If they do not want to participate, fine. They can marginalize themselves, and watch from refugee camps as Shia and Kurds bicker over their land, their homes, and their businesses. It is, in the end analysis, their choice.

I do not think that Shia and Kurds will long tolerate Sunni insurgent misbehavior, if the forthcoming elections feature majority Shia and Kurdish participation, and consequent majority Shia and Kurd domination of a new constituent assembly. It will be interesting to see what sort of constitution emerges from a provisional government comprised primarily of Kurds and Shia. It will be even more interesting to see if such a constitution has any relevance to actual events on the ground.

It is clear to me that the Sunni are the past, in Iraq. It would be in their best interest to make the best deal that they can make now, before Shia and Kurd are invested in a new Iraq, as a result of popular elections--and assuming that Iraq, as a contiguous political entity, even endures after the Shia and the Kurds divide the country between themselves.

The Sunni need to snuggle up to the UN, as no one else is going to champion their cause. If the UN, as seems the case at this time, declines to midwife a new Iraqi state, it will only consolidate its increasing irrelevance. The UN has accomplished nothing, really, for the Palestinians. The UN cannot stop genocide in Africa. The UN cannot even quench the inferno in Haiti.

What is more of a threat for American aims in Iraq, I think, is the possibility of Shia on Kurd violence, as the Kurds are very rich, in comparison to the Shia, and Northern Iraq is much richer than Southern Iraq. If the Kurds simply isolate themselves, it would not surprise me to see Shia fighters migrating North. And Iranian support for this would certainly broaden the ambit of warfare in the region.

The best that we could hope for in this worst-case scenario is a relatively stable Balkanization of Iraq, with a relatively reliable Kurdish ally in the North, a nervous, watchful Shia South with Iranian sponsors, and a central region increasingly devastated by warfare, with its primarily Sunni population moving to other countries, and subject to legendary discrimination and payback for decades of repression under Saddam.

If you think that a lot of Islamic insurgents came out of Afghanistan, watch what happens with military age males from the Sunni Triangle in Iraq. Not only will they cut their teeth against the armed forces of the sole global superpower, they will be able to draw on support from significant Sunni populations elsewhere in the region.

We will be lucky if they focus their immediate ire on Shia and Kurdish usurpers.