Will Sunni and Kurdish Iraq Join the Abraham Accords?

If you studied Latin in high school-- didn’t we all?-- you surely recall the opening line from Caesar’s Gallic Wars:

Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est.

It means that all of Gaul is divided in three parts. As you know, Gaul is what they used to call what is now called France.

What occasioned this recollection from my high school days? Why a proposal from an Iraqi Sunni cleric that the country be divided in three, with Kurdish, Sunni and Shia parts. The cleric also proposed that the Sunni portion join the Abraham Accords and diplomatically recognize Israel. As I have often noted, in the Middle East, Israel is the solution, not the problem.

Happily enough, the Abraham Accords seem to have been embraced in the Middle East, even beyond the signatories.

The story comes to us from Debkafile, an Israeli website apparently run by former intelligence agents. It echoes a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by Wisam al-Hardan:

Calls to establish Iraq as a federation of three states for the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish communities were issued on Friday, Sept. 24 by 300 prominent leaders from Irbil, capital of semi-autonomous Kurdistan. Since the Kurds of Iraq have achieved self-rule and conduct independent foreign and security policies, and Shiites rule Baghdad – albeit bitterly riven between pro and anti-Iran elements – the campaign launched on Friday focused in fact on the Sunni claim. Their territory ranges across the central and western provinces of Iraq and they have already begun to flex autonomous muscles. Last week, local Sunni leaders initiated the opening of the first land crossing between Iraq and Saudi Arabia in the western province of Anbar.

The Irbil gathering pressed equally for the emergent Sunni State of Iraq to recognize Israel with full diplomatic and economic ties. Although Shiites are a majority, in Iraq, the 10 million Sunnis and 9 million Kurds represent 45 percent of the population. Both have come out strongly in favor of joining the epic Abraham Accords signed by the US, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain a year ago.

In a keynote speech to the gathering, Sheikh Wissam al-Hardan (see photo) chief of the Shammar tribe, the largest in Iraq with communities in Syria and Jordan, and a close Saudi ally, told the gathering: “We demand full diplomatic relations with the State of Israel, and a new policy of normalization based on people-to-people relations with the citizens of that country.”

Debkafile continued:

These affirmations by a prominent Arab leader in a country under heavy Iranian influence was a striking anomaly. It was moreover echoed by none other than a prominent Shiite military officer.

Maj. Gen. Amir al-Jubouri, an acclaimed figure for leading the Iraqi military forces that drove ISIS out of Iraq, had this to say: “Abraham, peace be upon him, birthed a nation that paved the way for peace. Today, we and all his descendants from the three main religions bear responsibility to complete this path together.”

Stay tuned.