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As Hugh Fitzgerald has discussed here many times, Western governments should evaluate this possibility solely from the standpoint of whether or not it would help them defend their countries against the advance of the global jihad.
"Iraq’s break-up will lead to ‘100 Years War,’" from Today's Zaman:
The idea of splitting Iraq into three -- Kurdish, Sunni and Shia -- has been circulating for a while in the US and Israel. Do you think it could be a remedy?The definition of Sunni and Shia is an erroneous one, because after all many of the Kurds are Sunni and if we add Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds, then we are talking a majority in numerical terms.
Secondly, the sectarian realties of Iraq were contained between 1925 and 1958 by the constitution of the monarchy that was established by my late great uncle King Faisal I on the basis of power-sharing arrangements whereby the central budget was shared in terms of returns equitably by all Iraqis. I want to remind you that since the invasion of Iraq … returns in oil have not been financed in an equitable manner as to be shared by all Iraqis.
Much of the fight continues on the basis of serious mistakes recognized today, but too late, by the Americans, i.e., dissolving the armed forces providing the resistance with such a large number of well-trained fighters, and indeed not securing the weapons stocks, arms arsenals or the opening the Iranian border and then closing it after Iranians had clearly taken advantage of this open border policy. I think as far as the destruction of Iraq, the breakup of the country is not preordained and I don't think it should be self-realizing.
At this point I want to cite the Clean Break paper of 1996 attributed to the conservatives in the US. It seems to me that the concept of pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism, supra-national identity was actually taken to pieces by this paper, arguing somehow that fragmentation was taking place in that part of the world, so let us take full advantage of this. Muslims and Arabs do not need enemies as they are doing an excellent job of destroying each other. Of course this plays into the hands of Israeli extremists that believe Israel should emerge as the dominating minority in a region of minorities or a mosaic of minorities.
I understand you are vehemently against the idea?
I think it would be a disaster; fragmentation of Iraq, fragmentation of Sudan, fragmentation of Lebanon would be the beginning of the end and we are already on a runaway train.
What you mean by the 'end'?
End of the Westphalian system, the end of the Middle Eastern community of states, the beginning of a Balkanization that could lead, in the words of the former Iraqi Defense Minister Ali Allawi, to a new 100 years of war.
Posted by Robert at March 26, 2007 10:09 AM
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Is that a bad prospect?
Posted by: FreeSpeech![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 26, 2007 10:24 AM
Im good with that.
Posted by: KAOSKTRL at March 26, 2007 10:35 AM
So many of these countries will break up-big deal. Many of them were pieced together willy-nilly anyway. Besides, as Hugh and others have noted what exactly is so bad about these states battling one another? I'll bet it's terrible in the eyes of the prince and other Muslims but it just proves how little faith these people actually have in Islam being a "religion" of peace, doesn't it?
Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS at March 26, 2007 10:42 AM
Could we hope for anything more?
Posted by: havekoranwilltravel at March 26, 2007 11:14 AM
Smooth-talking Prince Hassan, patron and host of Bernard Lewis (a picture of Lewis in Hassan's tent can be found, placed with deliberate pride, on one of Lewis' recent books), likes to talk about the "Arabs" and "the Arab" in nicely-inflected British English. And he, rather than his thick-necked nephew, has become the true inheritor of the "moderate" mantle -- not to be confused with any immoderate keffiyeh -- of his brother, "plucky little king" Hussein. But from time to time the mantle, used as a mask (wrapped around the face, covering everything below those liquid brown eyes), drops, and Hassan appears, the real Hassan, defender of the Faith, and of the Sunni Faith.
Well, here he is. He wants, as do the rulers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the Americans to stay and protect the Sunnis and prevent what the Americans, if they have any sense left (and Bush has taken leave of his megalomaniac senses, determined to ignore, in this democracy, the will expressed about Iraq not only in the 2006 elections, but in his collapsing approval rating over the war in Iraq -- if 70% of the public want the troops out, who is Bush to say them nay? And what if that figure becomes 80%? And what about those troops themselves, not the compliant generals, but the people who do the fighting, and get wounded or killed? What do the members of the National Guard think? The Reserves? What do even the most loyal branch, the professional soldiers trained in obedience and not-reasoning-why, think of staying in Tarbaby Iraq? And what do all those young officers who have left the Army think of Iraq, and what sense it makes if the goal is, as it should be, to weaken the Camp of Islam?
One piquant detail: Hassan tells us that the Kurds are Sunnis. Yes, they for the most part are. But so what? Their resentment and even hatred of the Arabs, and especially of the Sunni Arabs who have ruled over them, more than makes up for the fact that they share "Sunni" Islam with the Sunni Arabs.
What Hassan simply cannot recognize, any more than the Sunni Arabs in Iraq can recognize, is that the Kurds want out. Au ras le bol. They've had it with the Arabs. And if they've had it, so have many non-Arab Muslims, such as the most advanced Berbers, in Algeria, in other parts of North Africa, and in France. And the creation of an independent Kurdistan will inspire those other non-Muslim Arabs, and that for Infidels, and for those non-Muslim Arabs, is a Good Thing.
We want to press the matter home. We want to show how indifferent the Arabs are to the wellbeing of non-Arab Muslims. And Prince Hassan has done just that in his bland remarka above about the Kurds being "Sunnis" -- and therefore he wishes that their numbers should be toted up, by the world that counts, in the column of Sunnis. But he ignores Al-Anfal, the Sunni-led massacre oof 182,000 Kurds, and all the other mistreatment of the Kurds by the Arabs.
In the same way, the westernized secularized Kanan Makiya, who now teaches at Brandeis (and in a recent article he is described as trying to figure out "what went wrong" in Iraq, apparently having made the mistake of other advanced, westernized, secularized, long-in-exile Iraqis, who simply did not know, or refused to recognize, the violence, the aggression, the habit of mental submission, the ingrained inshallah-fatalism, that characterize the Iraqi masses, because those masses are Muslims, raised in a society suffused with Islam -- and that is something that the most unrepresentative "representative" men coming out of those societies, such as Chalabi and Makiya, do not themselves recognize, and what's worse, mislead the largely ignorant policymakers in the West, including those who believed, with Bernard Lewis, that Iraq the Light Unto the Muslim Nations could in fact be created, who foresaw that the "liberation of Baghdad will make the liberation of Kabul look like a funeral procession," and who even today refuse to confront their own part in misreading Iraq, and misleading the American ignoramuses and naifs, on their messy messianic mission, when all that Iraq should mean, for Americans and other Infidels, is a place to exploit the natural fissues, sectarian and ethnic -- the fissures which Prince Hassan so tellingly cannot quite comprehend, as he ignores the ethnic fissure (Kurds correctly wanting to be free of the Arabs after all that the Arabs during the entire history of modern Iraq have done to them, stealing their oil, stealing their land, and massacring them by the hundreds of thousands).
Makiya wrote a book about the Kurdish massacres. He couldn't understand, in that book, the silence of so many. Why didn't other Arabs in Iraq protest -- why was he, Kanan Makiya, virtually the only one? Why, he might have further asked, didn't the Arab League protest? Why didn't any Arab head of state protest? Why was there silence about the massacring of the Kurds?
But the greatest failure of Makiya in that book is his apparent inability to recognize that the indifference or even approval of other Arabs is no mystery. It is as one with the Arab indifference to the cultural and linguistic imperialism of the Arabs in Algeria, who would deny the Berbers their rights to preserve and use their own language and their own folkways. It is as one with the support given, and interference at the U.N. and other forums run by, the Arabs -- all the Arabs in the Arab League, without exception -- for the masscre, by Arabs in the Sudan, of those perceived to be non-Arab Muslims in Darfur.
In a sense, both Prince Hassan -- who fails to see why the Kurds should not be included in the column of "Sunni Arabs," and Kanan Makiya, who has failed to see why the Arabs outside Iraq never protested the massacre of the Arabs -- show the limits of those "moderates," who, no matter how outwardly well-spoken or seemingly Western in their ways, in the end cannot dare to examine Islam, for what it does to the people who, through no fault of their own, are born into it, and swim in societies suffused with it, and so even a Makiya, or a Prince Hassan, cannot begin to see that Islam is, and always will be, a vehicle for Arab imperialism, as the Kurds of iraq, even the "Sunni" Kurds of Iraq, and so many other non-Arab Muslim victims of Arab Muslim oppressors, can testify.
Posted by: Hugh at March 26, 2007 11:18 AM
Havent the Kurds practically partitioned off their part of Iraq already? Seems to be working for them. Why wouldnt it work for the Shia and the Sunni? The only way to keep dogs from fighting is to separate them. Same goes for people.
Posted by: havekoranwilltravel at March 26, 2007 11:21 AM
"Countries" are an infidel concept. There is only the Land of Islam and the Land of Islam-to-Be, where this kaffir notion of nations will be dissolved into the Caliphate (or, should the Shi'ites somehow rule, the Imamate).
How short-sighted of the Prince.
Or is this simply tactical taqqiya?
Keep the American infidels tied up in protecting the Muslim interests as the jihadists infiltrate the West and undermine us from within?
Sounds Machiavellian -or should I say Mohammedan?
Posted by: profitsbeard at March 26, 2007 12:33 PM
The woman who babysat our child for several months was a Sunni who fled Afghanistan back in the early 80s during the Soviet-Taliban war. When asked about attending a local Islamic center she said that she would never do it - it was dominated by Arabs and she and her family absolutely despised Arabs. You should have seen the look in her eyes. I guess the Arab fighters brought in by OBL were less than congenial folk.
Posted by: Ansar Al-Kuffir at March 26, 2007 12:44 PM
It is better to be lucky than good. The 2006 US GDP was $13 trillion. We will have spent around ten percent of that in Iraq before this is over, less than the cost of Federal social programs in any given year. Here’s what we bought:
1. An awareness of Islam and its threat to our way of life.
2. Millions of assault weapons and billions of rounds of ammunition, distributed to tribes throughout the Middle East.
We owe our servicemen a debt of gratitude for their patience, service, and sacrifice.
The spread of small arms throughout the Middle East may be seen as a threat to Israel, but in reality it is the opposite. The threat to Israel is fixed and is independent of the number of small arms because of the inability of Muslims to organize a front and airpower’s ability to devastate any attempt to create one.
at March 26, 2007 12:44 PM
Pez says "It is better to be lucky than good. The 2006 US GDP was $13 trillion. We will have spent around ten percent of that in Iraq before this is over, less than the cost of Federal social programs in any given year. Here’s what we bought:
1. An awareness of Islam and its threat to our way of life.
2. Millions of assault weapons and billions of rounds of ammunition, distributed to tribes throughout the Middle East."
------------------------------------------
We have certainly bought #2, but I'm not so sure about #1. Despite what we have witnessed since 2001 or 1979 or indeed 623 AD, we in the West remain as unaware and dumb about Islam and its threat to our way of life as ever.
If anything, we and our leaders, whether in politics or the church almost certainly knew more about Islam 100, 150, 200 or more years ago than what we know today - the writings of John Quincy Adams, Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt and John Wesley bear witness to that.
at March 26, 2007 1:27 PM
Excellent piece, Hugh. It seems the unified face of Islam isn't quite as unified as thought or hoped for, by the Sunnis.
Another glaring example of hypocrisy in Islam. As is currently evident in Darfur, it is Arab Muslims practicing lethal racial discrimination against non-Arab Muslims. So in reality, it isn't just dar al-Islam against dar al-harb, now is it.
Once the global infidel is removed, via conversion or death, subsequent discrimination in Islam against the less-than-optimal non-Arabic Muslims is sure to ensue. Logically, there is no other alternative, for as an example, an army comprised of Corporals alone, is sure to fail. Islam offers no solution to bridge to gap between the "haves and the have-nots", for that bridge does not exist.
Orwellian re-write:
"All Muslims are created equal, but some are more equal than others."
Islam lives on discrimination. The discrimination of women, of non-believers, and ultimately, when all other suitable groups are gone, the pool of non-Arabic Muslims. It is ironic that those who shed light on the reality of Islam are labeled racists, even though we all know Islam is not a race, but the Islamists themselves, those who actively engage in racial genocide, are exempt from that stigma.
The prospect of a one-hundred year war is just what the doctor ordered, and may yet cure us all of our affliction by Islamophobia.
Posted by: awake at March 26, 2007 1:34 PM
Secondly, the sectarian realities of Iraq were contained between 1925 and 1958 by the constitution of the monarchy that was established by my late great uncle King Faisal I on the basis of power-sharing arrangements whereby the central budget was shared in terms of returns equitably by all Iraqis. I want to remind you that since the invasion of Iraq … returns in oil have not been financed in an equitable manner as to be shared by all Iraqis.
He seems to have forgotten forty five years of extremely inequitable sharing of the central budget and oil returns. Jumps right to blaming it on the US led invasion. 45 years later.
Guess what fool? The oil returns are not shared by all Iraqis because they are the ones deciding to whom goes the booty.
Arabs just want their slaves back. I think I read it in Serge T.'s book about how the Arabs thought the Iraqi's made good slaves because of their intelligence, mild mannered-ness and light colored skin.
at March 26, 2007 1:40 PM
why isn't jordan the home of the palstinians????
Posted by: callmeinfidel at March 26, 2007 2:48 PM
just add the 100 year Muslim war to the 1400 years already on the books...
Posted by: exsgtbrown at March 26, 2007 3:06 PM
Who is responsible for this potential break-up of a country that had its integrity before? America, yes that is correct. It was America who invaded an independent country on false intelligence and created so much hatred amongst the people of Iraq. They caused so much pain to ordinary Iraqis for what? To steal Iraq's Oil and serve the interests of the Zionist illegal state.
To: America, 'I grew up thinking you are the best but I now know you are merely slaves of the powerful Jewish lobby'.
Posted by: Abdullah at March 26, 2007 3:25 PM
Abdullah,
That was one of the most useless posts I have ever read, dripping with unwarranted sensationalism and conspiracy theory. It is straight out of the Islamist handbook, so old and so tired, tired, tired.
*yawns.
Posted by: awake at March 26, 2007 3:43 PM
Abdullah,
You forgot to mention that the Jews drink the blood of Christian children and that 9/11 was simply part of the Zionist world conspiracy and orchestrated by the US government, in spite of the video survaillance footage and flight rosters verifying that Mr. Atta and his cohorts actually boarded those planes.
*yawns again.
Posted by: awake at March 26, 2007 4:09 PM
Its strange though they don't mind the "fragmentation" of infidel lands though.
India, fragmented to create pakistan.
Yugoslavia fragmented to create bosnia, then a further fragmentation fo kosovo.
No doubt fragmentation is always the answer to take land from the infidel, never to give it.
The hypocracy of islam and the stupidity of our leaders.
at March 26, 2007 4:14 PM
"They caused so much pain to ordinary Iraqis "
....Muslims are killing Iraqi Muslims at about 75-100 per day...I can see who is causing the pain....
at March 26, 2007 4:48 PM
Much of the fight continues on the basis of serious mistakes recognized today, but too late, by the Americans, i.e., dissolving the armed forces providing the resistance with such a large number of well-trained fighters, and indeed not securing the weapons stocks, arms arsenals or the opening the Iranian border and then closing it after Iranians had clearly taken advantage of this open border policy.
Our incompetance, in this case, is the greatest weapon we have in our arsenal.
The moral of the Iraq tale for any ME/Islamic state is this - Behave yourself or we will come to your country, and with the very best intentions for setting up a liberal democracy, we will reduce you to Iraq.
at March 26, 2007 4:59 PM
Apostate posted: fragmentation is always the answer to take land from the infidel, never to give it.
That is why East Timor's independence severely ticked off binLaden. It was one of the reasons he gave for the attack on the WTC.
I hope south Sudan gains independence. This will really tick off the Saudis.
Posted by: DP111 at March 26, 2007 5:07 PM
I still believe Bible prophecy of Babylon Iraq will one day become the central nation of the world. It could come from all nations pouring in their money to help rebuild it it could also be all the oil it sells and the hidden ancient treasures and world tourism it will gain. I have faith that Iraq will match Babylon it has today, it is once again in the confused spotlight of what is truth? They are known by the world over to find it's truth in its invastion and truth to escape into freedom that is covered up by oppressing terrorists. It was embeded in lies by Saddam and is once again in that spirit. It will in future be the same old self its in its blood, i know Iraq will succeed only to fail right at the last.
Posted by: jesusisthelamb at March 26, 2007 5:11 PM
Abdullah posted: To: America, 'I grew up thinking you are the best but I now know you are merely slaves of the powerful Jewish lobby'.
Be very careful Abdullah. I shouldnt be openly telling you this, as I'm putting my life in danger, but Spencer and Hugh are part of the Zionist conspiracy. The Zionist conspiracy control the Internet, the servers and everything. They know where you live. Best thing now is to apologise and hope all is forgiven.
at March 26, 2007 5:24 PM
Abdy baby,
In case maybe you missed it ...
we
are
already
**** IN ****
the
100
years
war
at March 26, 2007 5:25 PM
Iraq’s break-up will lead to ‘100 Years war,’"
Will it really? Then lets get going
Posted by: UK Infidel Lover at March 26, 2007 6:58 PM
I hope south Sudan gains independence. This will really tick off the Saudis.
Posted by: DP11
I'd like to see that happen as well. Ans I am not talking Darfur as much as the Christian and Animist South - the part that's been under assault WAY before the whole Sudan mess was worthy of mention in our lovely MSM.
Yes they saw fit to hold back with their reporting until 'moosleems" attacked fellow "moosleems".
Until then the victims wer "only Christians and Animists". Nothing worthy of their attention - as usual.
They're simply afraid that honest reporting will wake more of us up to see the Muhammatrix we all find ourselves in!
Gotta go. Phone's a-ringin'.
Posted by: Allahfanculo at March 26, 2007 7:13 PM
hey Abdullah what about the Kurds? have not the Kurds suffereed enough? do not do they deserve their own country? what they are not good enough muslims, oh they are not arabs! Hey ABDULLAH you are a hypercrit! you whine about the Joos, and Americans, but what about those poor Kurds? what about those poor black muslims in Dafur? your cries of how bad those Joos are not taking hold here man, you are a typical arab, you are not downtrodden people, you are killing each other faster than any infidel can hope for! ABDULLAH look in the mirro, and that is who you can blame for the killing of other muslims. yeah from your own people. so stop blaming others.
become human and leave islam while you can if you are living in the West.
at March 26, 2007 8:01 PM
Not only is this strategy of a break up of these artificial nations necessary for the blood of these degenerates to flow freely, but we need to educate our troops about the realities of the Islamic faith, in order to provide understanding on why we need to be killing them. They need to understand what is the core of this cult. Presently I'm a student in a local college, and the ignorance and stupidity of a majority of these young students is abysmal. So it is with journalist, politicians, and assorted opinion makers. Is everything lost already?
Posted by: kiko at March 26, 2007 11:25 PM
"It was America who invaded an independent country on false intelligence and created so much hatred amongst the people of Iraq."
...the mass graves of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis raped,tortured, and executed by Sadaam was not false, The WMD issue was valid, Sadaam had WMD, he used them to kill tens of thousands Iranians in the Iran/Iraq wars and he used them to kill thousands of KUrds when the Kurds refused to obey him...The WMDs were removed (probably with Russian assistence) to be buried in the desert or to locations in Syria, Jordan, or Egypt..These WMDs will reappear one day...
The hatred amongst the Iraq people is generated by Muslims not Americans or coalition forces...It is the Muslims who are killing the Muslims..It is the Muslims who are urging more killing..It is the Muslims who are providing the bombs, bullets, and executioners of the Muslims...
......Abdullah, you need to quit listening to those crazed Islamic Clerics....open your eyes to just who is killing whom...
...as for Iraqi Oil, It belongs to the Iraqi people...The US is not taking it....Do you remember the Oil for food program? It was supposed be a program to exchange oil for food and medicine for the Iraqi people.....as it turned out....the people did not get the food or medicine...and the oil profits went to Sadaam, a few other Muslims, and to the corrupt UN officials....
Iraqi oil profits....just like the oil profits of any Muslim oil industry go to the Muslim leaders and not to the people....The Muslim leaders do not use oil profits to improve the lives of Muslims....(but the Muslim leaders live in palaces, own multimillion dollar yachts, private jets, and do as they please)....the rest of the Muslim populace live in poverty and fear...it is the same for any Muslim led country..
Posted by: exsgtbrown at March 27, 2007 7:10 AM
To: America, 'I grew up thinking you are the best but I now know you are merely slaves of the powerful Jewish lobby'.
Abdullah
does this mean you are of the blonde haired, blue-eyed convert variety?
PS We are the best.
Stability in Iraq is a myth. Keeping people quiet at gunpoint is not stability. If we have the Iraqi Oil how come it still costs so much for gas? Oh, that's right, Muslem countries aren't very good at refinement. Or is that not refined?
at March 27, 2007 8:43 AM
I would like to ask anyone - why is this a big deal? More years of war in muslim lands, or outside of it, started and conducted by muslims is just more of the same.
It is just the continuation of war since mohammed's time. muslims look at war as a religious duty, just as the other religious functions they perform.
From 'The Legacy of Jihad' edited by Andrew G. Bostom, MD; forward by Ibn Warraq
Chapt 29, The Law of War by Clement Huart, pp282-284
"...When was there ever a war that was not said to be a holy war? Either the war was conducted outside of the limits of muslim territory, which is indeed a holy war, since it is theoretically waged to bring the infidels into the bosom of the true faith; or else it took placeon musim territory itself, in which case it is still a holy war, since it is a question of putting down rebellion against the supreme authority. ..."
"...War is evil in itself, because it involves two consequences that are undoubtedly evil: the destruction of the human body and the devastation of entire provinces. ... War is therefore an evil, and the worst of evils; how, then, did it become a good thing and, as such, something incumbent on men? The answer is: in light of its purpose. Since this purpose is the exaltation of the true faith and the repression of the infidels' iniquity (since true equity exists, theoretically, only in muslim
society), it is understood that holy war is a necessary evil, as long as there will be
on earth minds which will not surrecnder to the evidence or to persuasion. And so the
casuists ended up classifying holy war among the accidental acts of piety, and they
ranked it after faith, payer, fasting, and pilgrimage, which are essentially acts of
piety.' ...
at March 27, 2007 10:58 AM
From 2004 I thought that splitting Iraq into 3 statelets makes a lot of sense.
It will let Shia and Sunny have good time killing each other.
US would retreat to bases in Kurdistan from which to watch the region and bomb the unruly bastards as needed.
I understand Hugh position is very similar.
However, lately I'm starting to have some doubts.
There is a Big Bad Iran. If things are not done right, Iran will virtually control Shia statelet.
A tiny Sunny statelet might fall under Iran as well.
What other local power has a strong enough army to confront Iran?
Saddam's Iraq was that local power, it is gone now.
It appears that partitioning plan requires some additional elements to prevent Iran from becoming local superpower.
Hugh, comments?
at March 27, 2007 2:56 PM
It appears that partitioning plan requires some additional elements to prevent Iran from becoming local superpower.
....
Oh. That's easy. Just continue the process of breaking into statelets. Break so called iran into little pieces. This works good to bring on the 100 year war which crown prince hassan spoke of yesterday and it is almost within our grasp!
nabi ZK
Posted by: zonie kafir at March 27, 2007 10:35 PM
The 100 Year War may occur despite or best efforts at peace. How many decades has fighting been going on in Afghanistan? When will it end? Iraq may have slipped into that phase as well. Was Iraq really at " peace " when Saddam slaughtered tens of thousands of Shiites and Kurds? When will the present fighting stop? With or without a Western presence the Muslims will slaughter each other for years to come.
----Nossy
at March 27, 2007 11:32 PM
Let them kill each other. Let them show the world their total lack of civility. Keep them killing one another.
Posted by: Ames Tiedeman at March 28, 2007 6:30 AM
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