February 28, 1996 marked the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led
coalition's defeat of Iraq, a military triumph that resulted in the
liberation of Kuwait and the extension of U.S. power and influence in
the Persian Gulf. The following month, however, marked a different
anniversary, one less gratifying to American self-esteem. For it was
in March 1991 that Saddam Hussein brutally suppressed rebellions by
Iraqi Kurds and Shi'a while the American president and other Western
leaders passively looked on, out of respect for Iraq's territorial
integrity.

The U.S. commitment to the territorial integrity of Iraq was mistaken
then and remains ill-considered now. Opponents of Iraq's
dismemberment argue that an intact Iraq is necessary to balance Iran,
that a separate Kurdish state would destabilize Iraq's neighbors, and
that a new Shi'a entity would tilt toward Tehran. In reality,
however, an Iraqi break-up would pose little threat to U.S. allies,
including Turkey with its large Kurdish population. Iran's
ideological appeal to Iraqi Shi'a is limited at best, and any tilt in
the regional balance of conventional forces in favor of Iran could be
easily countered by U.S. power. On the positive side of the ledger,
the division of Iraq into three entities would eliminate the Iraqi
threat to the oil-rich Gulf states, end the Ba'athi quest for nuclear
weapons, free the Shi'a and Kurds from oppression, and remove Baghdad
from the list of revisionist rogue states. Hence, if the central
government in Iraq collapses, the United States should support the
division of Iraq into separate Kurdish, Sunni Muslim, and Shi'a
Muslim entities, rather than try to restore overall authority to a
new regime in Baghdad.

This essay argues for just such a shift in policy by first laying out
why Iraq has the potential to fragment, and then by describing in
more detail why many U.S. policymakers oppose the dismemberment of
Iraq. It proceeds to show both why their fears are misplaced and why
their sense of opportunity is blunted. The essay concludes by
proposing steps the United States could take to capitalize on an
Iraqi collapse to bring some semblance of security to the area and
some solace to its long-traumatized people.

The Fragile Iraqi State

Although far from certain, the chances that Iraq will collapse are
high. The Iraqi state is inherently fragile, having never been able
to build up widespread popular legitimacy among its heterogeneous
population. Since its creation following the disintegration of the
Ottoman Empire, Iraq has wrestled unsuccessfully with the question of
how to incorporate the interests of its Shi'a and Kurdish populations
into a Sunni-dominated political system. Between the formation of the
British mandate in 1922 and the 1968 Ba'athi coup, roughly forty
local or national uprisings occurred. The main reason is that almost
every Sunni-dominated Iraqi regime promulgated a version of Arab
nationalism that served as an excuse for preserving the unbalanced
communal status quo, and that scorned Iraq's Shi'a and Kurdish
peoples.

Since the Ba'ath Party came to power in 1968 several cosmetic
solutions for the country's divisions have been proposed, but none
has worked for long. The Ba'athi regime has faced near constant
Kurdish unrest in the north and agitation by Shi'a Islamic leaders in
the south. Both have been exacerbated by the pan-Arab ideology of the
Ba'ath, which both Kurds and Shi'a consider an alien doctrine. But
Ba'ath or no Ba'ath, the pattern of Iraqi domestic politics is plain
and consistent: from 1922 until now, each cycle of Shi'a and Kurdish
revolt and Sunni repression has been bloodier than the one before.

After Desert Storm, the Ba'athi regime was in utter turmoil, with
much of its armed forces shattered and both the Kurds in the north
and the Shi'a in the south in open revolt. The regime barely
survived, abetted by both American actions and inaction. The United
States did not recognize (or overlooked) the fact that much of the
elite Republican Guard was still intact and loyal to Saddam Hussein.
This, combined with an unwillingness to allow rebel Shi'a and Kurds
to use arms that coalition forces had captured (while letting the
Republican Guard use helicopter gunships to suppress them), helped
Hussein cling to power. Superior firepower won the day; later,
thousands of Kurdish and Shi'a fighters who survived the regime's
onslaught were systematically rounded up and murdered, sometimes
along with their entire families.

Although Saddam Hussein has remained in power these last five years,
his regime is cracking under the pressures of the U.S.-led sanctions
system established after the war. Saddam's legitimacy has virtually
vanished as his extended clan-based power and patronage structures
have grown increasingly narrow. As is well known, in August 1995 two
of Hussein's sons-in-law and members of his inner circle--Lieutenant
General Hussein Kamel and Colonel Saddam Kamel, who headed Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction program and special forces
respectively--defected to Jordan, called for Hussein's overthrow, and
revealed to Western governments considerable information on Iraq's
politics and arms programs. They returned to Iraq in February 1996
and were promptly murdered. In March 1996, former chief of staff
General Nizar al-Khazraji joined the ranks of defectors; he now lives
in Jordan. Less well known is that earlier in 1995 members of key
tribes--particularly the Dulaymi--rebelled against Hussein's regime
and were brutally put down. Such defections have led Saddam to rely
increasingly on the power base of his own sons, Uday and Qusay, and
not merely on the threat but the actual use of brute force to
survive. This, in turn, narrows even further what remains of the
regime's popular base.

In addition to Saddam's troubles among the Sunnis and his own
extended family, the Kurdish territory in northern Iraq has achieved
de facto autonomy, protected by allied airpower through Operation
Provide Comfort and the tenacity of Kurdish fighters. In the south,
the Shi'a revolt has been crushed, but the regime rules there by
sheer terror alone. Sanctions, despite the recent U.S. decision to
ease them slightly, are also leading to widespread popular anger even
in the central, Sunni-dominated areas of the country.

Although a post-Saddam, or even post-Ba'athi, regime might restore
some semblance of normal rule, "normal" in the Iraqi case still means
authoritarian repression based ultimately on the omnipresent threat
of brute force. The history of this cobbled-together and sorry entity
makes manifest the truth that its basic problem cannot be solved
merely by a change in regime in Baghdad. Moreover, the legacy of
Ba'athi repression for the better part of the last three decades will
make it even harder for a successor regime to incorporate Sunnis,
Shi'a, and Kurds into a unitary and relatively harmonious state.
Iraq's historical trajectory is unmistakably aimed toward
disintegration.

U.S. Policy: Conservatism at its Worst

It has been said that conservatism at its worst is the habitual
resistance to all change, even when the change at issue would benefit
those resisting it. If so, then U.S. policy toward Iraq is a perfect
example of such conservatism.

The United States remains committed to the territorial integrity of
Iraq despite the weakness inherent in the Iraqi state and the various
depredations, internal and external, caused by that weakness. After
Desert Storm devastated the Iraqi armed forces, the Bush
administration sought indirectly to replace Saddam Hussein with
another Iraqi strongman committed to holding the country together.
U.S. officials preferred a unitary Iraq in order to balance Iran.
Washington therefore wanted the Kurdish and Shi'a revolts to succeed
to the extent that they would cause Saddam's downfall, but not to the
extent that they would lead to national dismemberment. Such fine
tuning proved beyond American officials, and, tilting excessively to
the side of caution, they succeeded only in undermining the power of
the revolts which were to topple Saddam Hussein.

Shortly after taking office, key Clinton administration principals
made clear that they endorsed the Bush administration's basic policy
approach, a policy supported to this day by an impressive bipartisan
consensus. But that alone does not make it right. Because of its
commitment to Iraq's territorial integrity, the U.S. government is
currently caught between two very unpleasant alternatives. On the one
hand, the continuation of Saddam Hussein's rule guarantees poor
U.S.-Iraqi relations and involves an unpredictable but hardly
insignificant degree of danger to every U.S. ally in the region.
Hussein has not moderated his attitudes since Desert Storm, and his
behavior demonstrates in many ways his eagerness to defy the West and
pursue Iraqi hegemony in the region. On the other hand, Hussein's
overthrow portends a collapse of order in Iraq, leading to a
fragmentation into Kurdish, Sunni, and Shi'a components--something
Washington vigorously opposes. This leaves a policy based on the
familiar wishful thinking of a "third way": a unified post-Saddam
Iraq under a moderate reformist leader who would bring internal
harmony and a responsible regional foreign policy to Baghdad. Such a
moderate successor would not only keep Iraq together but, ideally,
would support the growing U.S. military presence in the region--or at
least not oppose or effectively complain about it.

But this hope for a "third way" is merely that: a hope. The most
likely successor to Saddam would emerge either from the Ba'ath Party
itself or from the highly-politicized army, neither of which is known
for its moderation, respect for human rights, or friendliness toward
the West. Moreover, there is history's hangover with which to reckon.
Following decades of Sunni sprees of violence and repression, any
successor to Saddam would have to deal with seething sectarian and
ethnic rage. Iraq's Kurds, in particular, have been victims of some
of the most infamous massacres of the century and, as a result, any
Kurdish leader who relied on Baghdad would be scorned--if not also
butchered--by his own people. Similarly, the Shi'a--whose 1991 revolt
was crushed by tanks bearing the slogan "No more Shi'a after
today"--would hardly be prepared to trust any Ba'athi or post-Ba'athi
military successor to Saddam. Thus, even if by some miracle a kinder,
gentler successor did emerge, he would face a legacy of blood and
suspicion that would make any form of genuine power-sharing untenable.

The only two realistic alternatives in Iraq are disintegration or
repression. Force alone can hold the victims and perpetrators of mass
killings together in the same state, sharing opposite valences of the
same gruesome fate. The unpleasant truth is that U.S. support for
Iraqi integrity amounts to a de facto endorsement of continued
repression and more than episodic state-sponsored domestic violence.

Four Fears

The United States opposes the break-up of Iraq on account of four
basic fears: First, there is the fear of tilting the broad regional
balance of power toward Iran; second, fear that the solidification of
Kurdish sovereignty in northern Iraq would undermine Turkish
sovereignty, security, and pro-Western orientation; third, fear that
the creation of an Iranian proxy state on the Saudi and Kuwaiti
borders would specifically jeopardize the security of those states as
well as that of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates;
and fourth and more generally, fear of the regional consequences of
questioning the legitimacy of internationally-recognized borders.

These concerns are not whimsical and should not be blithely
dismissed. But they are all either exaggerated or simply wrong.
Further, while certainly there are risks in the disintegration of the
Iraqi state, there are also costs to its continuation and potential
benefits in its collapse. Sound analysis must weigh all factors; the
analysis underpinning current U.S. policy does not. Let us now
consider each of the four fears in turn, starting with the matter of
the balance of power.

Between the British withdrawal "east of Suez" in 1971 and the
adoption of "dual containment" in 1993, the United States sought to
foster a balance of power in the Persian Gulf--attempts that have met
with limited success at best. In this twenty-two year period the Gulf
experienced two Iraqi-instigated war crises lasting a total of nine
years, and a revolutionary upheaval in Iran spread out over another
two and half years. In other words, for over half the period, the
Gulf was either at war, in turmoil, or just entering or emerging from
one or the other.

Nor has the U.S. diplomatic minuet in such matters been particularly
graceful. In 1971, the Nixon Doctrine tapped the Shah's Iran as a
pillar of regional stability in order to foster a pro-Western climate
in the region and to balance radical, pro-Soviet Iraq. But the
American embrace was suffocating, preventing the Shah from claiming
title to the nationalist credentials he might otherwise have earned
from steering OPEC toward its most lucrative era after the 1973
Arab-Israeli war. That lucre, in turn, and with no little irony,
contributed much to the decay of Pahlavi Iran and the onset of its
terminal crisis.

After the Iranian Revolution, the United States moved to support
Baghdad against the sudden greater evil of Islamic Iran. That
support, however, may have contributed to Iraq's decision to invade
Iran in September 1980.

The Reagan administration inherited the accumulated mess. The
desultory interlude of the Iran-Contra debacle notwithstanding, U.S.
antipathy toward the Iranian mullahs led it generally to help Baghdad
even after the military balance had shifted in favor of Iraq and,
indeed, well after the Iran-Iraq War was brought to an end in June
1988. This, in turn, may have contributed to Iraq's mistaken belief
that it could invade Kuwait with impunity, which it did in August
1990--on the Bush administration's watch.

It would be claiming too much to say that U.S. policy in the Persian
Gulf since 1971, with its maladroit manifestations of bobbing and
weaving, has been responsible for everything that has gone wrong. But
it is certainly reasonable to conclude that U.S. attempts to foster a
stabilizing balance of power fell considerably short of stellar
success. One is justified, therefore, in becoming nervous when
listening today to the veterans of U.S. policy of the past twenty
years holding forth complacently on the wisdom of a unitary Iraq, all
for the sake of the regional balance of power.

Today, both Iran and Iraq are eager to rebuild their militaries, and
so we are back to calculations of local balances. If Iraq were weaker
(and a fragmented Iraq would be), the argument goes, Iran would have
free play in the region and would be able to manipulate the price of
oil or use military means to advance its interests. Although there is
nothing wrong, and much right, in principle with balance of power
arguments, this particular one is misguided. Its key assumption is
that an intact Iraq fosters regional stability and enhances the
security of the oil-rich Gulf sheikdoms. But clearly, a strong and
united Iraq has promoted neither peace nor security in the region in
the past. Indeed, Iraq under Saddam Hussein has invaded Iran and
Kuwait, maintained a long-standing cold war with Syria, and supported
warring factions in Lebanon. Baghdad also tried to lead the
anti-Israel and anti-peace coalition and has aided and abetted
terrorism of several shapes and sizes for use against Israel, Turkey,
Iran, Kuwait, and possibly Saudi Arabia as well.

It is essential to grasp that this aggressive behavior is not due
solely to the special depravities of the Ba'athi regime or to Saddam
Hussein personally. Iraq threatened the territorial integrity of
Kuwait and fought against Israel well before the Ba'ath took power.
The problem is that an Iraq strong enough to balance Iran is also
strong enough to dominate the rich but underpopulated Arabian
peninsula, unless the United States is there to protect it. There is
no way to square this circle: It is simply impossible to have an Iraq
that is strong enough to balance Iran but too weak to threaten the
oil-rich Gulf states.

Moreover, even a united Iraq can do little to prevent the greatest
threat to the regional balance of power: Iran's strategic
unconventional weapons programs. Indeed, if anything, the existence
of a united Iraq is a goad--one of many, admittedly--to Iran's
ambitions. If the United States were to allow Iraq to build its own
weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems, Iraq could, at
least theoretically, play a role in deterring Iran, but Washington is
committed to preventing this development. Moreover, an Iraqi
capability of that sort would only stimulate and accelerate Iranian
efforts to match it.

Beyond that, it should be obvious that a united Iraq cannot "balance"
Iranian weapons of mass destruction designed for use against Saudi
Arabia and the other Arab Gulf states, Israel, or other countries.
Once the notion of balance is raised to the level of weapons of mass
destruction, the operative concept is that of the strategic umbrella,
or extended deterrence. But it is senseless to think in these terms
about a hypothetical Iraqi strategic force in circumstances where
Iraq is roughly as hostile to many of the potential targets of
Iranian aggression as is Iran itself.

The whole notion of a need to balance Iran with a bordering state is
flawed and outdated. Just as the United States offset Soviet nuclear
threats to Western Europe mainly with strategic forces based at sea
and in the United States, Washington could itself "balance" a nuclear
Iran with forces far from the Persian Gulf. Certainly, a united Iraq
is no more help against Iranian weapons of mass destruction than a
divided Iraq would be.

The second argument advanced on behalf of a united Iraq is that its
break-up would alarm leaders in neighboring states with large Kurdish
populations. Iran, Turkey, and Syria all have such populations.
Leaders in these three countries regularly meet to discuss ways to
prevent the emergence of a Kurdish entity in the region.

Iran and Syria strongly oppose the creation of a Kurdish state in
northern Iraq. The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) has bases
in Iraqi Kurdistan, which has prompted Iranian pressure on Iraq and
attacks by pro-Iranian proxies. After the Second World War, Iraqi
Kurds worked with Iranian Kurds against the central government of
Iran. Damascus does not face a Kurdish insurgency, but Hafez al-Assad
is not the sort of man to risk one. Acknowledging all of this, if
Syria and Iran are discomfited by the idea of a Kurdish state, it
does not follow that Washington should sympathize with their distress
or feel obliged to take steps to alleviate it. Syria is hardly a
Western ally. Tehran has delighted in fostering instability
throughout the Middle East and beyond; the possibility of its tasting
some of its own poisons might even frighten it into more responsible
behavior.

Clearly, from the American point of view, the real problem with
Kurdish irredentism does not involve Iran or Syria but Turkey, a key
American ally. And there is no gainsaying that the Kurds pose a
problem for Turkey. Many Turkish Kurds have refused to be
assimilated, while Ankara has only recently and hesitatingly
recognized their distinct status. The Kurdish Workers Party (PKK),
long a thorn in Ankara's side, has often operated out of Iraq (even
though its leader, Abdallah Ã-calan, resides in Damascus). As recently
as July 1995, Turkey invaded northern Iraq to weaken the PKK's
position there.

Turkey's position with regard to Iraq's own Kurds is more ambiguous.
On the one hand, it has hoped to use Iraqi Kurdish groups to
undermine the PKK--and with some success. On the other hand, it fears
that a strong Kurdish entity in Iraq would rally Turkish Kurds
against Ankara. Such fears are not frivolous; Turkish anxiety
regarding a Kurdish state deserves careful consideration. Turkey has
long been a staunch ally of the West, and it serves as a bridge
between the Muslim and Western worlds. It is also an important model
of successful political reform and economic development in the Muslim
world. Moreover, Turkish goodwill is essential for the prosperity of
any successor states in Iraq.

Yet Turkish concern over possible major Iraqi Kurdish support for the
PKK ignores the best weapon Ankara has against foreign-backed
insurgency: host government accountability. Currently, Iran, Iraq,
Syria, and Turkey can all use Kurdish organizations to undermine one
another. Attempts to retaliate, such as Iran's and Turkey's
incursions into Iraq to punish the KDPI and PKK respectively, have
limited impact since Baghdad does not care whether the Kurds suffer
or not, while the Kurds remain committed to their cause. A permanent,
internationally recognized Kurdish government in northern Iraq, on
the other hand, would have a strong incentive to discourage
aggression or subversion from its territory since it would be an
obvious--and vulnerable--target of retaliation.

Furthermore, Turkey could seize on the Kurdish issue to extend its
influence on the region. Turkey has the largest Kurdish population of
all the Middle East states, and Turkish Kurds are the most culturally
modern and economically developed. Thus, the Turkish government could
gain great influence within the Kurdish populations of its neighbors
through its own Kurdish population. Admittedly, such a shift in
Turkish policy would take time, and it may never come about. But the
reality of a Kurdish state as a neighbor may lead Ankara to
reconsider its position--and it would be wise to do so.

We now come to the third of our four fears: that a Shi'a state in
southern Iraq would alarm the Gulf states with substantial Shi'a
populations, and also work as a kind of force multiplier for Iranian
pressure against Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is indeed anxious about the possibility of a Shi'a state
emerging from southern Iraq, in part due to the fact that its Shi'a
population, though small (about 5 percent), is concentrated in the
oil-rich Eastern Province. In the past, Saudi Shi'a have demonstrated
against the regime, and Bahrain, which has a Shi'a majority,
witnessed riots and demonstrations by Shi'a against the Sunni ruling
family both last year and this. Kuwait, which is 30 percent Shi'a, is
also wary of a Shi'a state on its northern border.

But the true Shi'a threat to the Arab Gulf is internal to these
countries, not external. All the Gulf states exclude the Shi'a from
decision-making and are often openly disdainful of their religious
culture. The Saudi regime's Wahhabi version of Islam is deeply
hostile toward Shi'ism, which it considers idolatrous. The sources of
discontent in Bahrain are regime corruption and systematic neglect of
Shi'a grievances. And, more to the point, even Iran at the height of
its revolutionary fervor was not able to organize these Arab Shi'a
communities and use them for its own purposes. During the Iran-Iraq
War some Iranian revolutionaries believed that faith would trump
ethnicity, and expected the Shi'a to rise against the Sunni Arabs in
Baghdad. They did not do so. There is little reason to think they
would follow a new Iraqi Shi'a state--even though it would be Arab
and not Persian--any more willingly.

Finally, the fourth fear: administration officials are squeamish
about redrawing boundaries created after the First World War in such
an artificially constructed part of the world. Secession is not
recognized as a right under international law, and policymakers worry
that encouraging it in one case might be a formula for generic
instability in the Middle East and elsewhere. After all, it is not
easy to explain why the Kurds deserve a state while other minorities
in Africa, South Asia, and even Europe do not.

Although the issue of borders and sovereignty raises legitimate
questions, the case for the Iraqi Kurds and Shi'a is compelling. The
serious and sustained human rights violations make it so. There is no
hard evidence that successful secessionist movements inspire
emulation elsewhere, and elevating territorial integrity to a
principle in the name of preventing unrest can have the perverse
effect of perpetuating a violent state in order to prevent the
widespread violence usually associated with secession. As the West's
recognition of the breakaway states in the former Yugoslavia
suggests, sometimes partition is the only solution to the collision
of sectarian hatreds.

The Myth of Shi'a Unity

As we have noted, many policymakers in the West fear that a Shi'a
entity in southern Iraq would become Tehran's puppet. Without doubt,
Tehran remains hostile to the West and intent on dominating the
Persian Gulf, so it does not lack for motive to manipulate an Arab
Shi'a entity on the Saudi and Kuwaiti borders. U.S. leaders worry
that a Shi'a state in southern Iraq would provide Iran with greater
access to the region and raise the potential for the spread of
radical Islam, and this worry provides the main rationale for
maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity.

On the surface, the possibility of an Iraqi Shi'a state being
dominated by Tehran appears strong. Shi'a in southern Iraq and Iran
are linked by many ties. Najaf and Karbala have long been religious
centers for both Iraqi and Iranian Shi'a, and clerical networks
extend over the border. Iraqi Shi'a opposition groups, such as the
Dawa party and the Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq, have received support from, and a haven in, Iran.

There are four ways in which Iran might dominate a new Shi'a state:
through ideological affinity; by military conquest; by subversion; or
by providing a model for government. None of these is convincing.

First, ideological affinity is unlikely to lead Tehran and an Iraqi
Shi'a state to work together. Iran is today in ideological disarray
and the tenets of the revolution ring hollow both at home and abroad.
The strain of political Islam found in Iran, particularly the
doctrine of the Guardianship of the Jurisprudent (velayat-e faqih),
assumes that one leader should guide Shi'a politically. This sounds
like a recipe for unity, but in reality it is a source of division,
for it both raises and begs the question of who is to lead.
Background is instructive.

Ayatollah Khomeini's religious doctrine, which united supreme
religious and political authority for the first time in modern Shi'a
thought, is widely unpopular among most learned Shi'a, and it is
rapidly losing support now that Khomeini is dead. Almost all the
grand ayatollahs living in 1981 either openly rejected Khomeini and
his doctrine or maintained a discreet distance from his ideology.
Ayatollah Al-Khu'i, who was the leader of most Iraqi Shi'a, never
supported Khomeini's doctrine. Khomeini horrified many religious
Muslims when he affirmed that revolutionary logic and the laws of the
Islamic state take precedence over shari'a, Islamic law. The success
of this doctrine depended on the charisma of Khomeini, and without
his leadership his disciples are left with an insoluble paradox:
their doctrine calls for leadership by the most learned, but the most
learned reject the doctrine. This paradox is sharpened by the split
emerging in Iran's religious leadership over this issue. Today no
single grand ayatollah holds pride of place in Iran. The Iranian
government has proclaimed the intellectually second-rate Ayatollah
Khamenei as the leading source of emulation (marja-e taqlid) for
Shi'a, but no major religious leader supports Khamenei's pretensions.
Dismissed even in Iran, Khamenei is especially suspect among Shi'a
elsewhere.

Moreover, Shi'ism in Iraq does not function as a basis for identity
in the way that it does in Iran. Most of Iraq's Shi'a population
descended from Arabian Sunni tribes but converted in the nineteenth
century as they settled in Iraq. This recent conversion, and their
location on the "frontier" of the Shi'a world, has given the Iraqi
Shi'a a distinct identity and they follow a more popular version of
Shi'ism. Iraqi Shi'a do not naturally look to Tehran. Even during
Khomeini's charismatic leadership, Iraqi Shi'a fought against Iran,
ignoring his calls to rise up during the Iran-Iraq War. Though the
war was increasingly unpopular in Iraq, military defections were rare
even in the Shi'a areas. Indeed, the Iran-Iraq War generated further
divisions between the two communities. If giventheir own state, there
is no reason to suppose that Iraqi Shi'a would suddenly change their
minds and seek Tehran's guidance, especially given Iran's national
chauvinism and sense of superiority over its less learned and less
historically-distinguished Arab Shi'a co-religionists. Shi'a equality
in theory is not realized in practice even in Iran itself. For
example, Olivier Roy notes that it is as difficult for a
Persian-speaking Shi'a from Afghanistan to marry an Iranian as it is
for a Frenchman to do so.

As well as all this, many of the reasons that have caused Shi'a in
the Arab world to turn to political Islam would disappear if the
Shi'a had their own state. The Shi'a in Iraq have embraced political
Islam largely because the system has excluded them from power and
shunned their communal role and identity. With their own state, Shi'a
elites would have outlets for their ambitions, and the Shi'a would
have a state and symbols with which they could more readily identify.
A likely result of a separate Iraqi Shi'a state would be the eventual
emergence of Najaf and Karbala as rival theological centers to Tehran
and Qom. Saddam Hussein's efforts to keep the Shi'a passive led him
to murder and repress their leadership, culminating in his 1980
execution of the highly respected Ayatollah Baqir al-Sadr. Freed from
repression, Najaf and Karbala would flourish again and would serve to
weaken Iran's current ideological monopoly and to "balance" Iran's
ideological appeal more effectively than any military measures.

In any case, a military threat is limited as long as the United
States remains committed to resisting hegemony in the Persian Gulf.
On a yearly basis, Iran spends about 3 percent of what the United
States spends on defense, a fact that makes America's relative
meekness in dealing with Iran hard to understand. Since Desert Storm,
Washington has signed access agreements with Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar,
and the United Arab Emirates (UAE); it has also greatly expanded its
prepositioning in Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon's creation of the Fifth
Fleet, based