Cold War Veterans Blog

If Iraq fragments, what's Plan B?

A partitioned Iraq, which could preempt violent ethnic cleansing, looks ever more likely to many experts.

By Peter Grier Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON As President Bush readies a new strategy for Iraq, some experts in Washington are looking beyond the question of US troop levels to what might happen if worst-case scenarios come true. Call it Plan B: How the United States might handle Iraq's partition.

It may still be possible to hold Iraq together, many of these critics believe. A surge in American military strength might help. But the hour is late - and a lack of contingency planning on the part of US officials may be one reason the situation has become so dire.

"If I was working for George Bush, I would want somebody to be thinking hard about this, sort of preparing the groundwork," says Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign-policy studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The US might need actively to aid Iraqis in relocating to parts of the country where they feel safer, says Mr. O'Hanlon. This sort of resettlement assistance wouldn't be unprecedented, he notes. The US did it in Bosnia.

Such a policy would perhaps preempt the violent Balkans-style ethnic cleansing that is already occurring in Iraq, O'Hanlon says. Sectarian strife is displacing 100,000 Iraqis a month.

"One-third to one-quarter of the ethnic cleansing that might occur [in Iraq] has occurred," says O'Hanlon.

Of course, to many US officials such a policy would be anathema. Mr. Bush has long insisted that a unified, democratic Iraq is one of his goals - not an Iraq separated into sectarian regions.

It has been widely reported that the new "way forward" Bush is expected to announce next week will include a substantial surge in US forces, designed to bring stability to violence-torn parts of the country.

Such an increase might allow reconstruction aid to begin to have a real effect in Baghdad and elsewhere, improving the daily life of Iraqis and strengthening the shaky central government, according to an influential report on the subject co-authored by Frederick Kagan, a military historian at American Enterprise Institute in Washington. .......rest of the article