Blood Borders and Their Discontents

geocurrents.info/geopolitics/blood-borders-and-their-discontents

By Martin W. Lewis
In 2006, Armed Forces Journal published a short, map-illustrated article
by retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel, novelist, and pundit Ralph
Peters. In Blood Borders: How a Better Middle East Would Look,
Peters argued that unjust borders drawn by self-interested
Europeans were generating many of the Middle Easts problems.
Changing state boundaries to reect the organic frontiers of religion
and ethnicity, he suggested, would reduce tensions and enhance justice.
Peters insinuated that only radical remapping would allow the United
States to withdraw its military: If the borders of the greater Middle East
cannot be amended to reect the natural ties of blood and faith, we may
take it as an article of faith that a portion of the bloodshed in the region
will continue to be our own.
Blood Borders did not make a major impression in the United States;
few Americans have even heard of it. The same cannot be said for the
greater Middle East. In the countries that Peters would pare down, his
article generated widespread and on-going outrage. Iranian
nationalists point to Blood Borders when arguing that the United States
seeks to dismember their country. Sentiments are if anything stronger in
Pakistan. A professionally produced Pakistani map entitled Operation Enduring Turmoil (see above) portrays a
slightly modied Peters scheme as part of a conspiracy to thwart China and diminish Pakistan, allegedly
masterminded by the Project for a New American Century (a defunct neoconservative think-tank). The general
tenor of Pakistani public opinion is reected in the rst two sentences of a March 24, 2010 article in The Dawn:
Ralph Peters of creating-the-map-of-independent-Balochistan and then getting it published in a Defense
journal, continues to write. It seems like Mr. Peters is still living in the 80s, and can [only] see Iran and
Afghanistan through the eyes of an old decrepit Cold War protagonist.
It is worth examining the logic behind this infamous map
more closely. One might imagine the blood in Blood
Borders to connote genetic ties, but Peterss groupings
are founded on commonalities of language and religion,
not those of genes. In his schema, four new countries
would emerge: twoKurdistan and Baluchistanbased
on language, and two othersan Arab Shia State and an
Islamic Sacred Stateon largely religious grounds. The
latter two do not have strong national roots. Very few Gulf
Shiites have ever sought to build a single nation-state
around their faith. Peterss Islamic Sacred State,
moreover, deviates completely from his culturalnationalist foundation. The criterion for independence
here is apparently instrumental: to remove Mecca and
Medina from the Saudi state and the Wahabbi religious
establishment.

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Kurdistan is surely Peterss most favored nation. The lack

of a Kurdish state, he argues, is the most glaring injustice
in the notoriously unjust lands between the Balkan
Mountains and the Himalayas. Yet his own Kurdistan
would do injustice to the Iranian Azeris, who would have to
give the Kurds their core territory in and around the city of
Tabriz. The logic behind such a maneuver is blatantly one
of geopolitical advantage for the United States: A Free
Kurdistan, stretching from Diyarbakir through Tabriz, would
be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and
Japan. Peters does not indicate what would happen to the
Azeri-speaking inhabitants of the area, but he does oer a
hint: Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years
of history: Ethnic cleansing works.
The rest of Iranian Azeri territory would go to Azerbaijan,
roughly doubling its population. This Greater Azerbaijan,
however, also has a weak national foundation. Although
the northern Azeri and the southern Azeri speak the same
language, they do not tend to see themselves as forming a single political community. The people of Iranian
Azerbaijan, by and large, consider themselves to be Iranian, despite their irritation with Persian education.
Peterss expanded Azerbaijan would also apparently include a sizable non-Azeri region, Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh is ocially part of Azerbaijan, but is currently under the control of a
break-away republic closely linked with Armenia. Peterss map implies that Azerbaijan should reclaim this area.
Contrary to Iranian and Pakistani claims, Peterss geopolitical strategy is not that of the United States. U.S.
foreign policy here, as elsewhere, rests on the assumption that boundaries between countries should stay as
they are. Peters detests this idea: the greatest taboo in striving to understand the regions comprehensive
failure [is] the awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries worshipped by our own diplomats. In rearranging
the geopolitical framework, Peters would reward several US allies, but he would punish others. Pro-U.S. Jordan
would gain a substantial slice of northwestern Saudi Arabia, but Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia would suer.
Turkey would lose its east to Kurdistan even its far northeast, which is not Kurdish speaking. Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia would not so much lose territory as be dismembered. Peters views the governments of Pakistan
and Saudi Arabia as false friends scheming against U.S. interests while cooperating on the surface. The
dissection of Saudi Arabia in particular is depicted as necessary for future regional peace and stability: The rise
of the Saudis to wealth and, consequently, inuence has been the worst thing to happen to the Muslim world as a
whole since the time of the Prophet, and the worst thing to happen to Arabs since the Ottoman (if not the Mongol)
conquest.
Peterss assertion that an independent Kurdistan would be pro-US may be plausible. I am not so sure, however,
that an independent Baluchistan would ally with the United States, except perhaps out of necessity. The same
can be said for a potential Arab Shia State, in which anti-American sentiments would run strong. Such a country
would be both wealthy and powerful, encompassing most of the oilelds of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and southern Iraq,
while virtually encapsulating oil-rich Kuwait. The creation of such an oil giant would likely terrify and infuriate
Sunni Muslims, as well as Persian and Turkic Shiites, across the region.
Note that Peterss Arab Shia State also deviates from his ostensible ethno-religious basis of division. Arabicspeaking, Shia-majority Bahrain, for example, would be excluded, while substantial Persian-speaking areas
would be included (in the map above, such areas are mapped as Bandari, speaking the coastal or port-city form
of Persian).

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Blood Borders is obviously a problematic and provocative article, as we shall see in greater detail in tomorrows
post.

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