Shutterstock/Wead. All rights reserved.Territorial integrity and preservation of existing borders have always seemed essential preconditions for any international resolution over Syria. Diplomatic efforts were made to foster a dialogue among the parties; a feeble military coalition was formed to “degrade and destroy” Daesh; and military advisors sent on the ground to simultaneously assist “moderate rebels”, the Kurdish Peshmerga and a crumbling Iraqi Army. However fanciful such a strategy may appear, it is safe to say that these operations were all supposed to work in the same framework: maintain existing borders, facilitate a political transition in Syria and fully restore Damascus and Baghdad’s territorial sovereignty.
The last weeks suggest a trend reversal. Diplomats, analysts and generals from various political environments have started toying with the idea that remapping the region along ethnic lines might be the key for a resolution to the conflict. In other words, the possibility of partitioning Syria and Iraq into minor ethnic states has become a more tangible option. The proposal never came out coherently, but started appearing on media commentaries; and as some observers noticed, it was circulating in the corridors of the last Vienna Talks. The reality is that a reshuffling of borders in ‘Syraq’ would probably meet positive consideration in more than one capital city, from Jerusalem to Tehran.
It would grant the Kurds a nation. It would safeguard Moscow’s sole port on the Mediterranean, keeping an Alawite state with Latakia as capital, and Tartus as Russian military garrison. It could be accepted by Riyadh, as it would entail a Sunni state stretching from Damascus to Baghdad, including part of the territories currently under Daesh’s control. It would be also welcomed in Tehran, taking southern Iraq—and the holy Shia sites of Karbala and Najaf—into the Islamic Republic’s arms. And, not surprisingly, it would not be disdained in Jerusalem either, in a country that already offers a doubtful example of how citizenship, religion and ethnicity can intertwine with one another. Overall, the hypothesis of partitioning ‘Syraq’ into minor ethnic states has been forging ever forward; so much so that even the UN and Arab League Envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has defined such a scenario as dramatic but possible.
