This is not innovative or new. Friends serving in the military in Iraq have been predicting this as the outcome since at least 2004.

--Whether we want it or not.

Not just Turkey -- which will probably go to war to prevent a Kurdistan from being formed -- but also Iran is implacably opposed to a Kurdistan. It's a shame, really, because the Kurds have been hard done by for a long time in that area, and they're the only people in Iraq with actual recent experience in behaving like civilized human beings.

In Turkey, it's illegal to even PRINT THE LETTER W because it doesn't occur in their language but does in the completely banned Kurdish language. Of course, having a collapsed state next door does Turkey no good, either, so maybe they'd be willing to listen. If only there was a superpower with interests in the region and the credibility to lead the negotiations.

The United States doesn't owe very much to Turkey OR Iran regarding Iraq. Precisely because a Kurish state causes headaches for both these countries, it may be our wisest course.

Iraq was originally a consolidation of these and other states anyway, so this is a logical proposal better likely to maintain peace in the region.

Actually, Fnarf, the vast majority of Iraqis have been remarkably "well-behaved."

I won't pretend to be an expert in these issues, but I know that a similar "solution" by the British to divide India between (Pakistan and Bangladesh) and Hindus (the rest of the subcontinent) hasn't exactly worked out according to plan. I imagine there are disputed border regions which would probably just lead to further conflict, just like in Kashmir.

Turkey has been as steadfast ally of the United States through many difficult periods and was a key cold-war ally.
The west has for many many years held up Turkey as a model for muslim democracy, despite its many faults. To blithely suggest that the US doesn't owe very much to Turkey is an expression of noticeable hisorical ignorance.

Of course, with the cold war over, perhaps realisically we "dont need them anymore," and it's their own problem that they developed a nationalist state with a significant minority in one part of it. And the Europeans think they are kind of low caste, so who cares?

It may be cosmically just, right, and inevitable for the Kurds to get their own state but in their guts the Turks see their own state as born out of a life and death struggle to survive at all in the face of attempted political annihilation by the Great Powers after WW One. Americans may erase the historical hardrive every press cycle but neither the Turks or the Kurds do. If the dual/dueling mafias controlling Iraqi Kurdistan right now cant somehow come to a careful political accomidation with Turkey that makes the Turks feel their internal stability (and political borders) wont be threatend, then the chances of thousands and thousands of deaths goes way up.

Partition, may be inevitable, but to suggest it will definately be the happiest solution is really just another throw of the dice, as this whole debacle has been from the begining.

On the other hand, Iraq in chaos has meant windfall profits for big oil. Perhaps they believe they can ride Middle East chaos and misery for years and years to come, keeping profits up by keeping supplies constricted and simultaneously extending the term of future profitability.

I sure wish our foreign policy wasn't being run by people who think the profits of big oil are more important than anything else, but I think it is being run by those people and innocent death and suffering are just a blip in the PR mill to them.

The land itself is one thing to "divide up", but more importantly, how do they divide up the nations oil wealth? There is no way they can just draw those lines without a fight. Some Iraqi Army units in the north are really just made up of almost 100% Kurdish militia members who are ready in an instant to take the oil fields they feel are thiers. I cannot see how this wouldn't end up in war, but then, sometimes a civil war is an awful necessity in nation building.

Last time we took The Turk for granted, they almost captured Vienna.

Josh:

I'm afraid my comment above was in response to other comments.

Josh, I believe you are mischaracterizing the piece. It does not call for separate states, but rather mostly autonomous regions within a super-state. With a key component of guranteed sharing of oil revenue.

Basically he's saying that the Constitution needs to be rewritten. With the rights of women protected!! However mush I see this as a good thing, I see nothing in this piece suggesting why the Shia would do this given the current political and military layout in Iraq. It seems very very very unlikely. (That horse left the fucking barn two years ago, Biden, you boot licking dip stick!)

If there is hope for a political solution before full on pre-partition-civi-war I suspect Kerry's campaign proposal, howevery wimpy we may feel he is, would be the most likely to have the effect Biden claims to want to achieve: a full on international and regional conference on a solution for Iraq. With the intention of turning over the US military role to a truly international body. This isn't going to be happening under Bush.

I am not too familiar with Kerry's current Iraqu proposal.

this is what I proposed about four years ago - yes, before all of this - online in the Yahoo news groups blogs.

nice that they're finally getting a cluestick, after spending more money than it would have cost to REPLACE all oil imported from Iraq for the next 40 years with American-made biodiesel, wind energy, solar energy, and clean coal.

Ok, my general disgust with Biden got the better of me. This kind of autonomy with in a federation with access to oil revenue as a binding force sounds like a possibility.

It is important to note that this is being offerred as an alternative or antidote, to partition. Partition, according to many expert predictions, will likely result in a massive civil war because oil resources are not distributed evenly accross ethnic religeous lines.

With Bush out of the way, some of this might be achievable...

Juan Cole has a more detailed breakdown of how he sees it might work (he has been an opponent of withdrawl for its own sake because he believes the increase in bloodshed from a resulting civil war would be exponential):

http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/settling-iraq-before-it-blows-up.html

ChetBob, my "noticeable hisorical ignorance" aside, I wasn't claiming we owe the Turks nothing, just that the outcome (defacto or otherwise) of an autonomous Kurdish region is probably a good outcome for the interests of the United States, and Turkey lost the opportunity to direct the present situation in a more favorable direction for themselves when they opted out of any involvement in the situation. I firmly disagreed with the Iraq war, and even understood why Turkey at the last minute decided to not allow US troops to stage the invasion from their territory.
After the inevitable invasion happened, they could have joined at least the reconstruction or humanitarian portions of the war.

Facing reality, Iraq has *already* decayed roughly back into the three ethnically dertmined ottoman empire provinces from which it was carved. A Kurdish state adjacent to both turkey and Iran is already a reality. A formal recognition of this reality, in conjunction with some smart diplomacy to involve the Turks in stabalizing the south, would make a happier outcome than just ignoring it. Fat chance of that happening. Oh well, I'm off to go wallow in my ignorance.

GOLOB:
That was very polite slap back!

There really was no way the Turks could participate with any personnel on the ground in the north because of extreme distrust between Turks and Kurds, athough I believe ground trade is pretty thriving.

They couldn't help in other areas of Iraq for the same reason other countries dont - it would make them defacto allies and defenders of the USA occupation when they didn't agree to it in the first place. Most knowledgable analysts I have read that make sense seem to think that there will be no significant international assistance until the Bush administration is gone.

I'm sure some accomodation between Turkey and an autonomous Kurdistan in what is now Iraq would be theoretically possible, but its an enormous powder keg. Much easier to work out if Iraqi Kurdistan remains nominally part of a Federated Iraq of some sort.