Related Resources

Creation of three nation states from Iraq would be impractical for the people of that country and harmful to US interests in both Iraq and the region. Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations is the latest voice suggesting a three state solution to the security and political problems we face in Iraq. But Iraq bears only superficial resemblance to the former Yugoslavia created and sustained by a single dominant political figure. By contrast, the twentieth century history of Iraq created a real nation state; it was the tyranny and misrule of Saddam Hussein which almost destroyed it. However artificial it may have been at the outset, Iraqi nationalism has developed to an impressive level. This happened despite the brutal rule and miserable performance of many of Iraq's political leaders.

By the beginning of a new century, Iraq had become a nation state in which the vast majority of the educated elites of its Shi'ite population, despite pervasive discrimination and under representation in many institutions, had chosen non-sectarian political identities. Many Shi'ites had positions of great prominence, and the community as a whole had proven its loyalty to the Iraqi nation during the eight-year war with Iran.

Iraq is also a nation state in which various minorities, especially Kurds and Sunni Arabs, can have representation in the government that exceeds their numerical weight in the overall population. This could take place as the result of federal arrangements within the context of Iraq's geographic unity. (While I always hesitate to suggest American political formulas for other countries, the successful example of our constitutional deference to states with small populations is worth considering in the Iraqi context.) Beginning in the spring of 1991, I worked closely with Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, as well as other Iraqi Kurdish leaders. Their views developed into pragmatic decisions to seek a destiny for Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as political power for themselves, within the context of a unified Iraq.

Over time, the representation of minority groups in the Iraqi political system will likely flourish due to the country's growing urbanization, secular education system and increasingly frequent inter-marriage. Greater Baghdad has for some time been the home of the largest populations of Shi'ites, Kurds and Arab Sunnis in the country, something that may well be true for the Christian minorities as well.

The nation state which the British, the Hashemite dynasty and various Iraqi political leaders put together early in the twentieth century was not as artificial as some contend. It was an effort to recreate in the twentieth century a Mesopotamian-centered state that had waxed and waned over thousands of years of history. Iraq has emerged with lots of bruises, but it has not broken into pieces. Instead, it is woven together by a complex web of interests, personal relationships and shared history. During the past thirty-five years, the shared experience includes suffering through three wars, harsh sanctions and a brutal dictatorship. The historians of the twenty-first century and the Iraqi people themselves will judge the US and the international community badly if we were to encourage the shattering of a unity that developed despite these traumas.