From someone who knows

It was no slip of the tongue when retiring US Army Chief-of-Staff Raymond Odierno said at his last Pentagon press conference that “partitioning Iraq” could happen and that “it might be the only solution” in view of the way things are going in this Arab country.

The general is no novice when it comes to Iraq; he spent most of the last two decades dealing with the conflicts there.

His suggestion that Iraq might be divided along sectarian lines into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish sectors angered Baghdad, but coming from a wartime commander in Iraq who helped capture Saddam Hussein and defeat Al Qaeda in that country, the words do not sound far fetched.

Odierno also said that the war between the Iraqi army and Daesh is currently at a stalemate, a statement the chief spokesman for the command, Air Force Col. Pat Ryder refused to agree with.

The coalition air strikes that back the Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish peshmerga reduced the areas controlled by Daesh by 25-30 per cent, said Ryder who also acknowledged that “it’s going to be a long fight”.

While Odierno’s remarks received from the State Department a response to the effect that “the United States believes a unified Iraq is a stronger Iraq. We also believe a unified Iraq is important to the stability of the region”, there has been no official rejection of the general’s comments by the Obama administration.

His statements should be read with alarm by Iraq’s various ethnic and religious communities, which should be aware of the fact that for as long as they are disunited, fighting each other, the danger that the country could end up splintered is real.

Odierno’s remarks might be just the kind of alarm Iraqis need to hear before it is too late for them to fix the situation.

They should heed them if they really care about their country.