WASHINGTON Ñ The United States must use any military campaign
against Iraq to redraw the map of the Middle East, a study says.
The study, published in the Ari Foundation Bulletin, warns that without
such an effort the destruction of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime
will result in a dangerous vacuum in the region.
Researcher Osman Boyner, a leading Turkish executive and graduate of
Harvard University's JFK School of Government, said the Bush administration
must undo the British efforts in the 1940s when it helped form what he
termed such weak states as Kuwait and Jordan. Boyner said Britain
established the border of Iraq to balance such regional powers as Persia,
now Iran, as well as Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
"The U.S. government should look at their task in Iraq, not as a sole
removal of Saddam Hussein, but as a new start for the region," the study
said. "A new map of the Middle East has to be drawn. This is not an easy
task, and much pain is associated with the decisions that will be taken."
The study said Washington could fill the power vacuum in the region by
maintaining a military presence in Iraq or installing a puppet regime in
Baghdad. Boyner expressed doubts on the effectiveness of either option in
preventing the return of Iraq as a rogue state.
Instead, the study said, Washington should view the Iraqi issue as part
of a series of Middle East disputes. Iraq, with its Shi'ite majority, can
serve as the crossroads of the region.
The report termed the four major disputes as the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, the deterioration of Saudi Arabia and Arab Gulf neighbors, the
Russian and the Caspian region, and the economic gap between rich and poor
in the Middle East.
"The social split in society that seems a strong candidate to break the
House of Saudi might bring a chaos to the pillar of U.S. in the Middle
East," the study said.
"A strengthening Iran through a slow evolution to democracy will impose its
own policy rules in line with its Shi'a philosophy."
"The policy of re-drawing the map of the Middle East will not sound
realistic at first, and it might not even sound realistic at your second
reading," the study said. "But the region is in desperate need of new
drastic changes, since the glue-policies of the last 50 years, have brought
an instability to the region that enhanced with some of the dynamics
suggested above can tip the whole region to an emotionally controlled
state."
