One of the recent devolpments in Iraq that is cause for concern is the movement for Kurdish autonomy. (Arab-Kurd Compromise Nears: Deal Would Allow Ministate Within Iraq After U.S. Leaves). While this didn't seem to be a really good idea, it took four women to put this in perspective.

First, from Riverbend — our woman in Baghdad.

Splitting Iraq...

Salam blogged about a subject close to every Iraqi's heart these last few days- the issue of federalism in Iraq and the Kurdish plan to embrace Kirkuk and parts of Mosul into the autonomous region in the north. I can sum it up in two words: bad idea. First off, Kirkuk doesn't have a Kurdish majority as Talabani implies in every statement he makes. The Arabs and Turkomen in Kirkuk make up the majority. After the war and occupation, the KDP (led by Berazani) and PUK (led by Talabani) began paying party members to set up camp in Kirkuk and its outskirts to give the impression that there was a Kurdish majority in the oil-rich area. The weeks of May saw fighting between Kurdish Bayshmarga and Turkomen civilians because in some selected areas, the Turkomen were being attacked and forced to leave their homes and farms. While Kurds and Turkomen generally get along in Iraq, there is some bitterness between them. Making Kirkuk a part of 'Kurdistan', as some are fond of calling it, would result in bloodshed and revolt. The Arabs in Kirkuk would refuse and the Turkomen wouldn't tolerate it. To understand some of the bitterness between Turkomen and Kurds, one only has to look back at what happened in 1959 in the northern part of Iraq. During that time, the Iraqi communist party had control and was backing Abdul Kareem Qassim, who was president back then. Many die-hard communists decided that the best way to promote communism in the region would be to attack religious figures, nationalists and socialists- especially in Mosul, a conservative, dominantly Sunni Arab city and Kirkuk. For several weeks in 1959, there were massacres in both areas. During this time, communist Kurds from Suleimaniyah and Arbil were given orders to control the rebellious region. For days, there were assassinations of innocents… people were shot, dragged in the streets, maimed and hung on lampposts as an 'example' to those unwilling to support the communist revolution. Naturally, the people in Mosul and Kirkuk never forgot that- anyone over the age of 50 from that region will have at least six woeful stories to tell. [...] To say that all Kurds want an independent Kurdistan would be a lie. Many Kurds are afraid of expanding the autonomous region because they know it will lead to a lot of bloodshed and strife. The Kurds who've always lived in Baghdad, as opposed to those living in the north, are afraid that this step by the ambitious Kurdish leaders will lead to a 'reaction' against Kurds outside of the autonomous zone. It's happening already- many people are bitter against Kurds because they feel that the splitting of Iraq will be at the hands of the Kurdish leaders. Another thing Kurds seem to be worrying about of late is the fact that 'there is blood', as they say, between Berazani and Talabani. For the time being, they are presenting a united front for the CPA and Washington, pretending that they couldn't get along better if they were brothers. The reality is that before the war, they were constantly wrangling for power in the north with supporters of one attacking the supporters of the other, with innocent people, all the while, falling victim to the power struggle… and that was before oil was involved. Imagine what happens if they get Kirkuk. We all lived together before- we can live together in the future. Iraqis are proud of their different ethnicities, but in the end, we all identify ourselves as "Iraqi". Every Iraqi's nightmare is to wake up one morning and find Iraq split into several parts based on ethnicity and religion. Salam said it best when he said, "There are no lines and none should exist…"

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Next, from a writer that is new to me but is fast becoming essential reading — Helena Cobban. Helena starts off with Riverbend's post and then...

Fears of Balkanization in Iraq

Tragedy, tragedy, tragedy. I remember back at the end of April when Martin Indyk, who was at the apex of Washington's Middle East decision-making for all of the Clinton administration, suddenly saw that the post-war situation in Iraq was not going as smoothly as he and many of his friends had hoped. Suddenly running scared by that, he told an audience at Washington's elitist Brookings Institution April 23 that, "We're going to have to play the old imperial game of divide and rule and the stakes could not be higher." [...] The use of "imperial" tactics in Iraq is bound to fail, and most likely sooner rather than later. But still, the attempt to pursue them will quite predictably lead--has already evidently led--to the infliction of terrible harm on the already multiply traumatized people of Iraq, as well as to quite a lot of (totally avoidable) harm on the people staffing the US and allied occupation forces. I read that chilling report of Martin's words back in April with a horror born in good part of my experience living in Lebanon while that beleaguered country was falling radically apart into religiously "cleansed" cantons in the 1970s. (Of course, the attempt at that cleansing was carried out in anything but the spirit of true religion. It was, however, generally carried out in the name of one religion or another--mainly, the Maronite 'Christian' version.) And then, just a few weeks ago, there was supposedly "wise" Les Gelb, urging an extreme form of federalism onto the Iraqis-- as I commented on, here . At this point I would urge everyone who has not lived in a society undergoing "radical Balkanization" as I have to head straight for a library or bookstore and get hold of two books. The first is Slavenka Drakulic's The Balkan Express: Fragments from the other side of war. That's an incredibly well-written account of what it was like to live in Croatia (and to try to work in other becoming-'former'-Yugoslav cities) just as poor old Yugoslavia was being torn apart by (frequently manufactured) ethnic hatreds in the early 1990s. [...] The other book has an eerily similar title: Beirut fragments: A war memoir, by Jean Said Makdisi. It too is out of print. You can get a used copy from Amazon for $7-- plus, if you go to the Amazon page for the book you can read the first few pages of her prologue. Both Drakulic and Makdisi have given us truly invaluable testimonies about what war feels like for the members of "warred-upon" society. They both write superbly in English. They are definitely "insiders" to the conflicted societies they write about, and they write with passion and insight from their role not just as professionals but also as mothers, i.e. people with extremely important responsibilities to society.

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Are you still with me on this? I hope so because this is really important shit. Helena dusted off a review of these two books that she wrote ten years ago. This is a long piece. I can't encourage you enough to read the entire thing. It's absolutely brilliant. It's absolutely terrifying. It's hard to pull quotes out of this because there so much, but here are a couple...

JEAN, SLAVENKA, AND THE TEA-PARTY FOR SANITY

An accident of history, really, that brought this nice young man, untested in foreign affairs, to the Presidency of the republic at a time when the United States is in a position of unequalled supremacy in world politics. Decisions that he makes -- on Bosnia, Somalia, Cambodia, wherever -- can rip apart the fabric of whole nations. What does Bill Clinton know of war? Forests of print have addressed this question, and enough electronic wizardry to boost a message to the edge of the universe. But that discourse was always dominated by men -- fighting men in uniforms, political men reading opinion polls, think tank men finetuning the game of grown-up bully-boys called 'deterrence'. But put all of these specialists together in a room, and the picture you get of this thing called "war" is still incomplete. Locked outside, but more deserving of entry than ever before, are people with a different view of war: those who are not its producers but, perforce, its consumers (and who thereby are consumed by it). Themselves products of two great developments of this century of ours -- the inclusion of massed civilian populations in the target sets of warriors, and the spread of mass education -- some of these civilian war-consumers can today describe war in a way that is more complete than any previous description. Especially the women among them. Move over, Les Aspin. Move over, all you Clausewitz wannabes with your Rube Goldberg 'models' of this or that form of warfare. Move over, the warrior-poets of glory or of anguish. Make room for experts like these: Jean Said Makdisi, a college teacher and mother who chronicled 16 years of war in Lebanon in her 1990 book Beirut Fragments; and Slavenka Drakulic, a journalist and mother who chronicled the first year of the present Balkan wars in her book The Balkan Express; Fragments from the Other Side of War (1993). These women might both have put into their titles a word, "fragments", that implies a tentativeness of experience or discourse. But each book builds an overwhelming, thoughtful, and undeniably true picture of what war does to societies at the end of our century. Never mind the generals. Compared with these women, what does Bill Clinton know of war?

And even Jean, while pronouncing a non-violent manifesto, does so with huge empathy for those who are not able to. In the passage about her attitude toward those who defended Beirut in 1982, she expressed clear support for people using forceful means to defend their hometown. And she even seriously questioned whether, under each and every circumstance like those she has seen, she would abstain from acts of personal cruelty: What do all these acts of unimaginable cruelty mean? ... I want to know whether I can escape the apparently inescapable conclusion that it is in the nature of the beast, that any of us could do it, that I could do it. Could I, if pushed far enough, yet do it? I have not seen my baby's body mangled in the dust or my fiancee's raped body lying bloody in the street, legs wide apart and eyes blank. I have not seen my father dishonored in death or my mother's nakedness exposed to the world. I have not seen my beautiful, strong, young husband reduced to unidentifiable bits of flesh... And since I haven't, I no longer dare say that I would not do such cruel things as have been done. Besides, is there a difference between killing people by pressing a button as you soar through the sky and killing people while you see terror on their faces?(JSM, pp.202-3) Slavenka might reply to this question that yes, from the point of view of the killer, there is a difference: In her interview with Ivan, he spells out how much harder it is to kill someone when you can see his face. But both women would probably agree, that from the point of view of the victim and her or his survivors, there probably isn't any difference at all. * * * The atmosphere at our tea-party has become quite serious. We are talking, after all, about questions at the core of human existence and purpose. Jean might bring some of her points home, for the Americans present, by expanding her reflection on what she describes as the "generalized rage" of the young men with guns. Perhaps, she writes, they wield them, "to vent a bottomless anger with a world that has done them no good and, when they shoot, aim at their own dissatisfaction as much as at any more precise target."(pp.133-4) In her introductory essay, this thoughtful, experienced survivor of the war-zone warns that: Outsiders look at Beirut from a wary distance, as though it had nothing to do with them; as though, through a protective glass partition, they were watching with immunity a patient thrash about in mortal agony, suffering a ghastly virus contracted in forbidden and faraway places. They speak of Beirut as if it were an aberration of the human experience: It is not. Beirut was a city like any other and its people were a people like any other. What happened here could, I think, happen anywhere.(JSM, p.20)

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Read all of this very carefully. Helena saw a country, Lebanon, fall apart. Jean and Slavenka lived through the destruction of their countries. I fear for Riverbend and her country.