Will redrawing the map of the Middle East end conflict?

Will redrawing the map of the Middle East end conflict?
BY CLAUDE SALHANI

13 July 2006

LT. COL. Ralph Peters published an article in the US’ Armed Forces Journal last month where he outlines his vision as to what is needed to solve the many woes — and wars — troubling the Greater Middle East: redraw the maps of most countries in the turbulent region, as Lt. Col. Peters (retired) would have it. In so doing, the face of the region as we know it today would change, thereby hopefully eradicating present day conflicts.

What Peters omits from his expose is that these changes would produce winners and losers, which in turn would be the genesis of newer conflicts.

Working from the assumption that "international borders are never completely just," Peters suggests major alterations. "Modern borders," says Peters, "have been the cause of injustice, oppression and atrocities." Peters starts with Israel: the Jewish state, he says, must abide by the demands it return to the pre-1967 lines, "if it hopes to ever live in peace."

Next he takes on Saudi Arabia: The kingdom stands to lose the most, according to the author’s plan. He advocates breaking it up into three parts. The Eastern province would be tied to the "Arab Shia State," composed of parts of southern Iraq and Iran — and bits of some of the other Gulf states. Rest assured, Peters leaves the UAE (and Oman) intact. It’s Yemen that wins big with large swathes of Saudi Arabia going its way. The second part of Saudi Arabia, the part comprising the holy cities of Makkah and Medina, would be shaped into what he calls the "Islamic Sacred State." Peters sees Saudi Arabia as "A root cause of the broad stagnation in the Muslim world."

The basis of Peters’ thesis is that today’s borders were "most arbitrary and distorted," which he claims were "drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers)." To those who think that borders are unchangeable, he offers this advice declaring "that boundaries must not change and that’s that, it pays to remember that boundaries have never stopped changing through the centuries. Borders have never been static," says Peters."Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works," adds the retired army officer. Look at the former Yugoslavia,

Then he comes to Iraq — "A Frankenstein’s monster of a state sewn together from ill-fitting parts." He adds, "the US and its coalition partners missed a glorious chance to begin to correct this injustice after Baghdad’s fall." According to Peters, "Iraq should have been divided into three smaller states." He says the United States "failed from cowardice and lack of vision, bullying Iraq’s Kurds into supporting the new Iraqi government — which they do wistfully as a quid pro quo for our good will."

He correctly states that should there be a free plebiscite to be held. “Make no mistake,” says Peters, "Nearly 100 per cent of Iraq’s Kurds would vote for independence.

The same goes for the Kurds of Turkey, whom Peters says "have endured decades of violent military oppression and a decades-long demotion to ‘mountain Turks’ in an effort to eradicate their identity." While the plight of the Kurds in Turkey "has eased somewhat over the past decade, the repression recently intensified again and the eastern fifth of Turkey should be viewed as occupied territory."

Peters sees the Kurds of Syria and Iran, rushing to join in forming an independent Kurdistan if they could.

In the new Middle East, according to Peters, "Iraq’s three Sunni-majority provinces might eventually choose to unify with a Syria that loses its littoral to a Mediterranean-oriented Greater Lebanon: Phoenicia reborn." "Correcting borders to reflect the will of the people may be impossible, for now. But given time — and the inevitable attendant bloodshed — new and natural borders will emerge. Babylon has fallen more than once."

True, but there is bound to be more bloodshed before any such changes take place, if they ever do. And more blood after these changes take place is sure to follow.

Claude Salhani is International Editor and a political analyst with United Press International in Washington. He may be contacted at Claude@upi.com