Sunni tribal volunteers with national flags stand in formation during their graduation ceremony in Habaniyah, 80 kilometres west of Baghdad. Khalid Mohammed / AP Photo
Sunni tribal volunteers with national flags stand in formation during their graduation ceremony in Habaniyah, 80 kilometres west of Baghdad. Khalid Mohammed / AP Photo

Redrawing Syrian and Iraqi borders is no easy task



Behind closed doors, one scenario is gaining popularity: a Sunni partitioning of Iraq and Syria. Under various proposals, the southern Syrian province of Daraa, Suwayda and Quneitrah would form a separate state, while mainly Sunni Anbar in west Iraq would be combined with Mosul to become an autonomous region. Iraqi Sunni tribesmen have been lobbying Washington for months.

Meanwhile, the Free Syrian Army’s southern forces have been acting independently for more than a year – answering only to the US and Saudi-run Military Operations Centre in Amman.

As their offensive against Damascus gains ground, FSA commanders have promised to maintain security along Syria’s borders with Jordan and Israel, and to lay the foundations for a democratic southern state. One cannot deny the allure of the pitch: modern, friendly Sunni states. New partners in trade and allies against ISIL.

But when faced with the facts, autonomous Sunni regions in Syria and Iraq are more fantasy than feasible, even if the idea of sovereign states in southern Syria and west Iraq do have their roots in history.

The area now comprising north-west Jordan, Daraa, Quneitrah and the Golan Heights was historically known as the Hauran, once an ancient city-state, later a province under the Ottomans. In the 1920s, large parts of the Hauran were combined to establish a Druze-controlled state under the French.

Sunni tribes and the western Iraqi desert plains were always administratively grouped with Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate and later the Ottomans, a province that stretched well past the Tigris and to the modern-day Iranian border.

The greatest obstacle to the formation of modern Sunni states lies in simple geography. The two states would be landlocked, without a port or functioning airport, connected to the outside world by a handful of roads devastated by air strikes.

Although blessed with some of the most fertile agricultural lands in the Middle East, an independent Hauran would lack access to the coast and key trade routes to Turkey.

A Hauran state would be forced to rely on the Jordanian market. Farmers would then have to compete with Jordanian produce, which enjoys generous subsidies.

The only other immediate trade partner would be west Iraq, itself still building its nascent economy.

A west Iraq Sunni state would fare no better. Western Iraq is known to have vast untapped oil and natural gas reserves – the Akkas gasfield, near the Syrian-Iraqi border, is reported to have the capacity to produce 100,000 barrels of oil and over 400 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. Yet Anbar is without any oil or natural gas infrastructure. A planned pipeline from Akkas was abandoned by a South Korean company after ISIL’s Anbar gains.

Should a future Iraqi Sunni region be at odds with the predominately Shiite east Iraq, it would have to rely on Jordan’s Aqaba port for export, requiring thousands of kilometres of pipeline and refinery infrastructure.

Even now, with a lifeline to Jordan open, Anbar remains heavily reliant on Baghdad. Fallujah and Ramadi rely on truckloads of humanitarian aid and food supplies let through Haditha, the last government outpost before ISIL territory.

Faced with these tough facts, proponents of Sunni partitioning offer up another scenario: a confederation with Jordan.

Due to the historic ties to Iraq and Syria, proponents say it would only be natural for Jordan to administratively form a union with southern Syria and Western Iraq, an official or informal “greater Sunni Arab state”. But all the speculation has no basis in reality.

Despite its support for Iraq’s Sunnis and moderate Syrian rebels, Jordan has no appetite for territorial expansion. After taking an influx of more than 1.4 million Syrians and 500,000 Iraqis, Jordan’s economy and infrastructure are still reeling.

In southern Syria and western Iraq, Jordan sees buffer zones, not future citizens.

Yet perhaps the greatest stumbling block to Sunni partitioning is political. There is no one dominant ideological identity uniting the denizens of southern Syria or western Iraq.

West Iraq, once a Baathist stronghold, now largely falls along tribal lines. If they cannot agree to unite, how can they agree on a state?

Southern Syria is even more fractured. Due to the growing number of militias, nearly every cluster of villages has become its own state.

Should the West and its Arab allies pursue a partition of Syria and Iraq, it will yield only one result: cantonisation.

Rather than unified states or autonomous regions, all signs show that southern Syria and west Iraq would break down into city-states and villages ruled by tribesmen and warlords.

Without a unified economy, army, police force or governance, the two regions would be paralysed by a power vacuum, with various militias’ territories expanding and contracting through endless infighting.

Such failed would-be-states would be unable to fight ISIL and would be perfect prey for the caliphate’s expansion.

The West and its Arab allies are probably exploring several scenarios as they re-examine their ISIL strategy. Syrian and Iraqi Sunni states should be crossed off the list.

Taylor Luck is a political analyst and journalist in Amman

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