A US plan to carve Iraq up is taking shape but the Arabs seem unaware of the impending disaster, writes Rasha Saad US plans to divide Iraq were the focus of pundits this week after the US Senate passed a non-binding resolution on partition. When the idea was first aired a couple of years ago, many saw it as no more than an attempt by some anti-Bush politicians to have something to say on an increasingly unpopular war. Now, however, the plan has received a measure of official recognition in the Senate -- 75 to 23 -- thanks to Sen Joseph Biden, one of the leading candidates for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. In an article headlined "Who wants to carve up Iraq and why?" Amir Taheri described Biden's attempt as "imperial-style redrawing of the map of the Middle East." In the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat Taheri wrote that as Iraq's parliamentarians prepare to reconvene, they face a full and complicated legislative agenda. However, "their most urgent task should be to nip in the bud the sinister conspiracies designed to carve Iraq into three or more mini-states." Taheri wondered why should Biden and most of his Democratic Party colleagues wish to carve up Iraq. "How could people who claim to be opposed to the Bush administration's supposedly imperialistic posture take the Sykes-Picot deal as their model?" Taheri suggested a couple of reasons that have to do with US internal politics. However, he pointed out a third. "The most important reason, as always in the Middle East, is oil." Citing proof for his assumption, Taheri said the idea of carving Iraq up into three states, which would mean creating, among others, an independent Kurdish state in the north, was first launched by a former US diplomat working for the Norwegian oil company DNO. "You would not be surprised to learn that the detailed plan for the carve-up, published in the form of a book, came just weeks after DNO signed a contract with the autonomous Kurdish government in Irbil," Taheri wrote. Taheri also wrote that at least a dozen of the senators who backed Biden's carve-up plan have been recipients of campaign contributions from another oil company interested in Iraqi Kurdistan. "This one is Hunt Oil, a Texas maverick in the oil business, which cut a deal with the autonomous Kurdish authorities just weeks before Biden made his move," Taheri added. Taheri condemned the Biden plan, warning it has already done "much damage to hopes of translating the recent security gains in Iraq into lasting political facts". According to Taheri the plan has increased the risk of Turkish military intervention in northern Iraq, "something that neither the US nor the still weak Iraqi government would be able to ward off." It has also given the mullahs in Tehran an additional excuse to intervene in Iraq, especially through the Kurdish branch of Hizbullah. The carve-up plan, adds Taheri, has also encouraged the most radical secessionist elements among Iraqi Kurds, a small but active minority. At the other end of the spectrum, the carve-up plan has given ammunition to those among Arab Iraqis who claim that the Kurds do not deserve any measure of autonomy, Taheri wrote. Taheri argues that anyone familiar with Iraq would know that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds are opposed to any carve-up. In fact, Taheri adds, Biden and his friends would be hard put to find a single Iraqi figure of any significance who would endorse their imperialistic exercise. "Why should the US turn the majority of Iraqis from friend to foe by proposing to divide their nation against their will? "The US and its allies came to Iraq with a clear mandate: to remove the tyrannical regime and to allow the Iraqis to build a system of their free choice. Dividing Iraq was never part of the deal," Taheri wrote. While Taheri is wary of the dangers of the partition plan on the internal Iraqi scene, Jihad Al-Khazen warns that if the plan is implemented it will be simply the beginning of the division of the entire region. In his article "Are the Arabs sleeping?" published in the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Al-Khazen warned that if the neo-conservatives succeed in partitioning Iraq, why wouldn't they divide the rest of the countries in the Middle East along sectarian or ethnic lines? In that case, Israel would become the basis of existence in the Middle East, not an exception or a deviant case. Asks Al-Khazen, "is the partition of Mesopotamia the end or the beginning? Are the Arabs aware of what is being plotted against them? Are they asleep? Are they in a state of unconsciousness? Are they in a state of clinical death?" Al-Khazen insists that Iraq is simply the beginning. He said a blockade had been imposed on it for 13 years until harvest time came. After the 2003 attack the Americans, Al-Khazen claims, found some remaining signs of life among the Iraqi people, so they devised the eradication of the Baath issue, even though the Baath was not only linked to Saddam Hussein and his gang. Millions of civil servants and soldiers were made redundant at a time they were nominally Baathists as membership in the party was a prerequisite for employment. The country's infrastructure was destroyed, and new terror gangs, local and imported, were created. Political parties and ministries have acquired militias and death squads. "All this has happened with the occupation witnessing and encouraging it," contends Al-Khazen. "The Iraqis and the other Arabs oppose partition, but I do not know if they are sovereign enough to take a decision. The reply needs to be more than a mere statement, however, the Arabs do nothing beyond talking. Some are blinded by money, others are blinded by poverty, but all are helpless," concludes Al-Khazen. In the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi Haifaa Zangana quoted statements made by the prestigious Iraqi Association of Muslim Scholars which called on the international community and its institutions, especially the UN and the Arab and Islamic worlds, to heed Iraq's warning about the occupation's attempt to partition Iraq and parcel it out to other Middle East countries. In her article "Resistance is the only answer to the partition's plans" Zangana pointed out that despite its plea to the international community, the panel obviously recognises the Iraqi resistance to the plans. In agreement with the association's view, Zangana believed the panel's statements on resistance to be "a necessary step that ensures the right of the Iraqis to fight occupation with all necessary means including armed resistance."
