US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned that Iraq risks “Balkanisation” unless its armed factions are brought under state control. He made the remarks to reporters at the Palace Hotel in New York City on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi Tuesday night. Rubio said Washington had no doubt about al-Zaidi’s commitment to disarming Iraqi armed groups, but called it a massive and difficult challenge.
He said at least three armed groups had disarmed and joined the national government, while at least one had been far less cooperative. Bringing all weapons under state control, he said, would mean Iraq no longer had “independent forces operating and balkanising the country”. So what does Rubio really mean?
And is the breakup of Iraq a real threat? Here’s what you need to know: It means a country breaking up into smaller, rival units, usually along ethnic or religious lines. The term comes from the fragmentation of the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire collapsed in the early 20th century.
In Iraq’s case, it has often been used to describe concerns that the country could split along ethnic and sectarian lines. However, what Rubio was pointing to was “fractures within the Iraqi state system” caused by Iran-aligned armed groups, Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow for Middle East Security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Al Jazeera. These groups act as rivals to one another, “but also by serving as arteries for pro-Iranian regime interests inside Iraq by wielding parallel economic channels, political influence, and oil smuggling networks”, she said.
Not imminently, although interpretations differ on how seriously to take Rubio’s warning. She described the armed groups as a “festering, now structural” challenge, and said they have “operated inside federal Iraq with near impunity”. Zeidon Alkinani, a Middle East political analyst and founding director of the Arab Perspectives Institute, was more sceptical.
He told Al Jazeera that Rubio’s remark could be read “either as a pressure tactic to push the Iraqi government forward on the disarmament process, or as a sign of the administration’s limited understanding of Iraq and the wider region”. He said disarmament was “a major turning point” in Iraq’s post-2003 politics, but “far from the greatest challenge Iraq has faced”, pointing to the 2003 United States invasion, the sectarian strife of 2006–2007, the war against ISIL (ISIS) from 2014 to 2017 and the 2017 Kurdish independence referendum as far graver threats to the country’s unity. Rubio told reporters he first met with the Iraqi prime minister, and then US President Donald Trump met with him on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday evening.
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