Au rythme régulier d’une fois par semaine, un Américain fantasme à haute voix sur le fait que “nous” devrions redessiner les frontières du Moyen Orient.
Time to redraw the map of the Middle East - Peter Van Buren
▻http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/03/10/commentary/world-commentary/time-redraw-map-middle-east
The only answer left, the one not yet tried, is to negotiate a comprehensive resolution that addresses all of the issues, borders and struggles now underway. That resolution will need to be enforced with military power coordinated by the U.S., Russia and Iran, with each speaking for, and agreeing to corral, its proxies.
It will mean giving the Islamic State group a seat at the table, as the British were forced to do with the Irish Republican Army in the 1990s to resolve the Troubles in Northern Ireland. One, by definition, must negotiate peace with one’s enemies. That is why, in part, the current cease-fire in Syria, which excluded Islamic State, has little chance of achieving any long-term progress.
Out of the new negotiations will have to emerge a Kurdistan, with land from Turkey, Iraq, perhaps Iran, and Syria. Assad will stay in power as a Russian proxy. Iran’s hold on Shiite Iraq will strengthen. A Sunni homeland, to include the political entity Islamic State will morph into, will need to be assured via a strict hands-off policy by Baghdad.
That Sunni homeland offers the first real way to geographically contain Islamic State. There obviously is risk in overtly allowing Islamic State to continue to exist, though that lives alongside the questions of whether it can be militarily destroyed, or if another group will simply take its place, as Islamic State did with al-Qaida in Iraq. These groups are symptoms of the broader Sunni-Shiite problem, not problems of their own per se.
(Oui, la confusion entre l’IRA et l’ÉI est charmantissime.)
