What is wrong, though an over simplification is: oil and greed. Most of Iraq's major oil fields are found in the heavily Kurdish north and Shi'a south, with the Sunnis sitting on the oil-scarce center. In addition, it ain't just the profits, but also who gets to manage it.

Think on a parallel example of Native Americans and Manifest Destiney into the 20th Century and how mineral and timber rights and revenue sharing were handled on reservation land by the U.S. government.

Iraqi opinion polls show that 60-70% of the population supports a strong central government. The only group that supports regions is the Kurds and they already have it. In Jan. 09 Basra tried to make itself a federal region and less than 1% of the voting population supported it.

Biden's thinking is cursorily rooted in history and impractical from our experience of power sharing arrangements in post-Ethnic conflict zones.

True, Kurdistan, Baghdad, and Basra were three autonomous provinces historically, but they were always autonomous under empires that were either based outside of themselves, and/or were only three provinces out of a plethora. They never were in a situation where Sunni Iraqi Arabs forced their will onto Kurds, and Southern Shi'is. Nor vice versa.

Also, although it's common to roll ones eyes anyone someone brings up the issue of oil, the previous poster is right. In the sense that the central Sunni zone can only rely on outside investment to build and maintain its infrastructure and spur sustainable economic growth if it can't rely on oil revenues. Something that plausibly will be non-existent, in spite of the Sunni Arab Sheikdoms' interests in maintaining a check of Iraqi Shi'is. Iraqi Sunnis fear (and some might say, rightfully so) becoming the next post-Soviet Afghanistan that no one remembers.

The 3 'stans fallacy lies in the devilish detail of re-drawing borders (again). That's a Kurd-driven constitutional plank, and was planning feature of Team Wolfowitz, when Sen. Biden was sucking opposition wind. It's hard to see redrawn borders that won't result in more insurgency, more civil war, and more regional power participation in those wars.

Rule of the majority sucks, if you don't have enforceable guarantees of individual & property rights, limited government powers, and a non-sectarian judiciary perceived as legitimate by most communities. 'Iraq-racy' features none of those benefits, so far.

Clan Barzani strikes me as the only truly cohesive leadership unit among the subdivided Iraqi sectarian factions, unless the Hakim's finally emerge to run the table. Given a singular unified Kurd authority, a patriarchy of Kurd revolt stretching back 80+ years; handicapping the Iraqi civil war/federal outcome depends a lot on what the Kurd intent is, what they will settle for. Without a Baghdad gov't that directs an army to hold onto mixed regions on the Kurd frontier, Barzani will be tempted to gamble on an Israeli model of an expansive ethnic homeland.

Re oil:
Iraqi's have decoded the Haliburton/KBR strategy, that (post-peak) oil money is in the oil development contracts, which will consume most of the future oil revenue. The tall towers go to financial centers, where a Chalabi eats caviar. Oil development and oil wars degrade the land itself, pollute and divert the precious water that the poor must drink and grow crops with.

Allawi visited the Saudis probably because they're giving him money for the election. It's also a way to show the Iraqi public that he stands with the Saudis rather than Iran.

JWING - The hell you say? Someday, we will have a converation on who is, and what constitutes being called an Arab! : )

There is a strong sense of nationalism within Iraq before and after the U.S. invasion. The rise of tribes in the country is directly related to the strength or weakness of the government. During the early Ottoman period for example they didn't have a strong administration of Iraq and so the tribes were strong. Later they started land reform which weakened the tribes. Under the Baathists they also had land reform and encouraged urbanization which again weakened the tribes, but then after the Gulf War Saddam was struggling and he had to turn to the tribes to help keep him in power. Same thing with after the U.S. invasion, the collapse of the state made Iraqis look to others for a sense of security and that was the insurgency, the militias, and tribes. As the government has slowly recovered people are looking towards it again, and the tribes are trying to join the political process.

As for revenue sharing, it's already happening. Each province's budget is related to their population. It's not whether they have mostly Sunnis, Shiites or Kurds living there. The problem is the provinces can't spend their money.

3rd why would the Shiites stage a coup when they run the country already? They're 60% of the population. Their problem is that they are split between several different parties. The Dawa Party and the Sadrists are also opposed to Kurdish sovereignty. If there were ever a military coup in Iraq again, it would probably be because some group was sick of the government being dysfunctional and not working, not to place one sect/ethnicity above the others.

JPWREL, I thought Biden's 'its happening anyway' argument made sense in 2004-5, when he was think-tanking on this side of the world. And the Kurds indeed insisted on the federal constitutional plank, and a Kirkuk referendum, to allow them a path to expand their autonomous KRG line of control. But much of the population that Saddam used to displace Kurds was Shiite. Maliki has indicated a willingness to use 'his' army to push back agin continued Pesh expansion. It's just not at all clear that we gain accelerated US disengagement/withdrawal or Iraqi stability, if/when Kurd borders are in play. Au contrare.

I'd guess the US will be grey-mailed to sweeten and guarantee both sides of any Kirkuk deal, if our withdrawal is threatened while autonomy is contested. A shia-stan centered on Basra is also likely to come to blows between competing sadrists, before party dominance of the new region is settled.

The Barzanis are going for kurd sovereignty (again, still), including retention of the full-spectrum independent army, now better equipped than it's ever been. Nation-states giving up territorial claims, even after 50+ years of interrupted sovereignty, is pretty rare. Wars get fought over mid-stream sand-bars, glaciers and far island pastures.

As long as the post-occupation deal is seen as a zero-sum game, Iraqis will fight over a shrinking pile of goodies, as the oil sits underground, an insecure/refugee population grows, and interest on debt-financed gov't piles up.

UAE- a looser confederation than we are used to, but very much in keeping with historical affiliations.

Like JWING's comments there were three villayets (Mosul, Baghdad, Basrah) but all within a "national" framework under the Sick Man.

Even within that, significant places like Mosul City were really self-ruled, as were much of the Kurdish territories.

Perhaps implicit self-rule under the veneer of a national framework is, in fact, the more typical model for Iraq, as is the historical antecedent of strong city-state/regions.

For a number of reasons, Iraq needs central government---to control the waters, the oil, and transportation systems, and protect borders and sovereignty. Oil is a compelling glue, but the critical interdependencies are beyond them---What happens if the supposedly powerless Sunnis cut off water/hydropower distributions south of Mosul Dam, or the Kurds do the same into Diyala?

There would be a lot of southern Iraqis begging for water.

Look, too, at the oil pipeline routes and oil refinery locations (Bayji), rail routes, major highways, and electrical distribution routes, etc... The concept of break-away free-standing regions is pretty much an american one---from people who do not understand geographic and geo-political constraints. Smart Iraqis do.

All that aside, you look at Iraq's economic/employment heritage. Everyone is a farmer by heritage. Farming is gainful, respectable, and contributing employment---even if heavily subsidized. It is also essential to slowing the inevitable surges of populations to cities---making over-crowded and unstable political threats.

Assuming water resources, energy, transportation, and agricultural resources are properly managed, Iraq represents a unique arrangement of closely related and easily connected smaller towns serving as ag support centers and feeders for farming regions more common to Syrian and Turkish urban-linked farms and farm towns, than some backward area.

There are unique opportunities, but all are dependent on some high levels of common dependencies, and autonomous self-rule. One or two years of stupidity, and the consequences that would follow it, would reset the course.

Money needs to flow at the national level to national needs, and is, as presently, distributed on a per capita basis to the regions. Money is power, and some regions will create their own additional layers of prosperity and start to jump ahead of the rest (like Kurdistan did). But every jump will be dependent on brokered interactions with neighbors. Life has always been this complicated in this region.

The balance will seldom be perfect---a spinning, wobbly top. But, there are enough forces in motion to keep the top spinning---which will keep it upright.

Iraq is Iraq, and not somebody else's misperception of what they would like it to be. They are going to have to figure it out, and it won't look like our ideas.