This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Maoist Internationalist Movement

Partition of Iraq is no solution

October 8 2007

MIM is going to say it now, that Biden's soft-partition idea is not going to work in Iraq. Thus far the united $tates has attempted the Martin Luther King integrationist model for Iraq, but it has not handed out sufficient super-profits for Iraqis to go for that along with U.$. occupation. Perhaps Uncle $am should have offered Saddam Hussein to become governor of the 51st state and things would be further along now.

Now comes Senator Biden to say that Iraq has to be partitioned among Kurds, Shia and Sunni Muslims, sort of like MIM said originally, when this all started, unleaded, plus and super-test.

MIM is going to predict that both Muslim cultures would kick out U.$. troops by force. The Kurds would go for U.$. occupation, but Turkey(1) and Iran would not tolerate it, not to mention the Iraqi majority. Would-be Korean imperialists signed a deal with Kurds for oil already,(2) but we just do not see it in the cards.

Underneath the likely failure of a partition plan is both economics and history. In explaining why British troops are withdrawing from Iraq, with 2500 troops due to be left there,(3) the "Financial Times" gave the overall picture:

"The British decisively lost the south – which produces over 90 per cent of government revenues and 70 per cent of Iraq’s proven oil reserves – more than two years ago."(4)
Even at face-value, the partition of Iraq is a major loss of face for the united $tates. Saddam Hussein had managed a secular and united Iraq. The united $tates cannot even muster that when it is directly involved.

Demonstrating his ingenuity in Iraqi politics, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani proposed a new military plan to go along with a soft- partition plan. To give the Democrats what they want, he proposed a faster troop withdrawal than Bush has so far offered the Amerikan public--more than 100,000 troops out of 160,000 gone before the end of 2008. Yet, in contrast with the Bush administration, Talabani asks for three Amerikans bases. Instead of making it look like Kurdistan wants U.$. occupiers, Talabani asks for the largest and quickest troop cuts but permanent bases not just in so-called Kurdistan but in all three regions of Iraq, three separate U.$. military bases.(5)

The Democratic Party probably harbors illusions about the partition plan, because it would upset Saudi Arabia. In this way, the Democratic faction of imperialists again plays its bad cop role against the Saudis. However, partition turmoil in Iraq will not only increase Iranian influence, but also it will cause yet another blow to Saudi interests, just when I$rael needs Saudi Arabia for a Mideast peace. It's a card the Democrats can play big enough to annoy Arabs, but not big enough to cause a new harmony.

Until the first Gulf War, MIM was quite friendly to the Kurdish struggle. The Kurdish population contains a high percentage of communists. Today though, we have to see why it is not possible to support all national struggles all the time. Currently, the Kurds inside Iraqi borders are the biggest potential pawns of the U.$. imperialists in the whole region except for I$rael. So the Kurdish communists should fight hard to kick out U.$. occupiers, because perceptions are stacked against them and suspicion lingers that they will not fight the occupiers as hard as the others.

The geopolitical chess board is recently built to make the Kurds the most likely lackey nation. Both the Democrats and Republicans have geopolitical models of how Iraq works and they are both wrong. Between the two, Bush's arrangement of the Mideast has the greater chance as serving for the basis of a Mideast peace agreement. The Democrats are delusional about I$rael and how it is possible to offend all the actors in the Mideast. Their only consolation is that they may end up running against Giuliani, who is probably worse still, like Democrats on steroids. The Saudis and other major players will have no reason to go along with the Democratic plan or Giuliani's generalized "war on terror" hysteria, so the result will be more war under the guise of honeyed phrases. The so-called moderates have their chance right now with the Bush administration. After that, we can predict that Obama, Clinton and Giuliani do not have the correct world view and the result will be a further march toward the one-state solution in 2009, the joint dictatorship of the proletariat of the oppressed nations over imperialism. The Democrats and Giuliani will end up catering to the labor aristocracy even more than the Bush administration. If the I$raelis make use of the Bush administration's natural advantages, there can be peace. If not, there will be a slide toward wider war under the possible rubric of Democratic Party pseudo-peace mongering.

Notes:
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7033075.stm
2. "The Korea National Oil Corp. signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on oil development in January."
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2007/09/05/11/0301000000AEN20070904004700315F.HTML
3. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-brits9oct09,1,4616654.story?coll=la-headlines-world
4. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2591095c-4f34-11dc-b485-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=17aab8bc-6e47-11da-9544-0000779e2340.html
5. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-10-07-us-troops_N.htm