While we fought in Iraq, dividing Iraq into nearly autonomous ethnically- or religiously-based sub-states would have rightly been seen as a defeat for America. With al Qaeda still strong, they'd have had a base in western Sunni Arab Iraq. Then, I said that once al Qaeda and other Iranian- and Syrian-supported insurgents and terrorists were defeated, that a separation could take place. Nobody views the dissolution of Czechoslovakia as a defeat for American, NATO, or the EU, after all.
So this might be fine if the factions can't settle their differences within Iraq:
Tribal leaders in Iraq are warning of war unless the country splits into a federation amid a deadly new wave of apparently sectarian violence.
Monday's attacks across Iraqi cities left at least 77 people dead and more than 248 others injured, officials say, pushing the death toll over the past week to well above 200.
On the same day, the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat reported that Sunni protest leaders had called for "armed confrontation or the declaration of an [autonomous] region".
Maliki's response was correct, I think:
Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, said he was willing to contemplate the establishment of an autonomous region in the Sunni-dominated western provinces, provided it came about through the correct legal procedures, according to the independent Al Sumaria television.
I'd rather have Iraq remain united to provide a better buffer against Iran. It depends on how a federation is defined.
Not that even a legal split would be easy. Friction across the boundaries of the de facto autonomous Kurdish region is tough enough to cope with. Dividing the boundaries, state assets, and state debts between Iraq and the Sunni Arab west would be extremely difficult. Indeed, that path might be more prone to provoking fighting than resolving differences within the existing Iraq.
But talks could reveal that while lowering tensions. And maybe Sunni Arab states would pressure Iraq's Sunni Arabs to tone it down lest Iraq become a mostly Shia state that the Sunni Arab states will worry is more prone to being influenced by Shia Iran.
But if all the problems of separation can be worked out, a federal state might be okay now.
