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Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Durnpty had a great fall;
Not all the king's horses,
Nor all the king's men
Could set Humpty Dumpty together again.
Should a Humpty-Dumpty Iraq
Be glued back together again?

Iraq's draft constitution will probably be approved in the referendum to be held today. But whether it is ratified or not ultimately does not matter, as the finished product — and the whole constitution-making process — is totally out of touch with the realities of a country that no longer exists as a coherent body politic.

The problem is not with the constitution, but with the conventional wisdom — almost an idee fixe — that Iraq is a viable modern nation-state and that all it needs to make it work properly is the right political institutions. But this is a fallacy and responsible leaders should begin to think of alternatives.

Let's be frank: Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia as it disintegrated in the early 1990s. This should be acknowledged and ultimately welcomed, despite conventional diplomatic norms regarding the inviolability of the territorial integrity of existing states.

Of course, such norms are helpful. But once a state disintegrates, as happened in Yugoslavia, no constitutional formulations can save it. Constitutions works only if all sides have an interest in operating within the proposed framework — and this obviously is not the case in Iraq.

There is nothing sacrosanct in the continued existence of multi-ethnic and multi-religious states if their constitutive groups do not wish to live together. On the contrary, there are lessons to be learned from the demise of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and even — perhaps especially — Czechoslovakia, which negotiated its break-up without violence.

By contrast, Bosnia-Herzegovina is an example of another failed attempt to keep a decrepit multi-ethnic entity alive: It doesn't work, and the country is held together only by the almost dictatorial power of the international community's High Representative and the presence of foreign troops.

It is time to face reality: The Kurdish region in the north is functioning in a reasonable way and it has even been able to allay Ankara's fears that its existence will aggravate Turkey's own Kurdish problem.

With the Shias building their polity in the south, the Sunni areas too should be allowed to go their own way. This may be more conducive to peace than trying to impose on them a hated occupation or an equally hated Shia hegemony.

The emergence of three states — or highly autonomous regions — instead of a unified Iraq is happening anyway, constitution or no constitution.
[via: Taipei Times]