To begin Newsnight's week focusing on Iraq, we have two opposing viewpoints of how the country may look in the year 2020.
In the first Toby Dodge, Reader in International Politics, Queen Mary University London, argues that the country will become a regional battleground on which wider conflict is fought.
In the second, Brendan O'Leary, constitutional adviser to the Kurdish Regional Government and professor of Political Science at University of Pennsylvania, suggests that the regionalisation of Iraq will being stability Kurds and Shias, with an uncertain future for the Sunni population.
Based on the two visions of Iraq in 2020, Newsnight has made two short dramatisations of what life might be like for one Iraqi woman 13 years from now.
Iraq 2020: The collapse - by Toby Dodge
For the last four years Iraq has been dominated by the collapse of its state and the complete absence of law and order. A myriad of armed groups, insurgents, militias, terrorists and criminals, have stepped into the vacuum, deploying increasing levels of violence to drive Iraq deeper and deeper into civil war.
Today discussions in Washington and London are dominated by two polemical alternatives, the surge of US troops to Baghdad, suggested by George Bush or the cut and run polices now being pursued by Tony Blair in Basra.
In spite of these different approaches the final outcome for Anglo-American involvement will probably be the same. Given the steep decline in US public support for George Bush's policy, Iraq is increasingly likely to be abandoned by a fickle America in the aftermath of the next presidential elections. This will leave a traumatised population dominated by a civil war that has already killed, according to The Lancet, 654,965 people.
Collapse and civil war
Against this background, how Iraq will look in thirteen years time? A decade and a half of state collapse and civil war will, at best, leave Iraq with an ineffectual government held up in a fortified green zone in the centre of Baghdad. Like today this government will have no influence beyond the mercenary patrolled walls that surround its compound.
The country beyond will have been brutalised and divided by a war of all against all, where life is nasty, brutish and short. Far from dividing into three neat sectarian pieces Iraq will have shattered.
After 13 years of civil war there may well be islands of comparative stability but these will have evolved under the domination of local war lords. They will have gained control over limited geographical areas because of external interference or their own skills in organising violence.
Beyond these enclaves the rest of what was Iraq will still be racked by profound levels of violence as different groups fight it out for domination. This continuing instability will draw two different groups of outsiders into Iraq.
Terrorist attacks
The first will be increasing numbers of trans-national jihadists drawn to Iraq because, like Somalia and Afghanistan before it, it will offer them a platform from which to launch terrorist attacks across the Middle East and into Europe.
The second group interfering and thus stoking the flames of violence will be the neighbouring state. The ruling elites of Iraq's Arab neighbours have already begun to deploy alarmist sectarian rhetoric, claiming that the country is now on the frontline in a sectarian war between Sunni and Shia, Iran and the Arabs.
As US forces withdraw, this rhetoric and the proxy war it alludes to, can only increase. Iraq's future will thus be broadly comparable to Lebanon in the late 1970s, but on a much larger scale.
Iraq in 2020 will be a regional battleground with its population being fought over by outsiders pursuing their own agendas, at the expense of the long suffering people of Iraq.
Iraq 2020: Stability - by Brendan O'Leary
Thirteen years ago I was among those mad fools who believed that Northern Ireland could have a successful peace process and that stable and democratic power-sharing institutions would eventually enable former adversaries to work in the same government. In 2007 it may seem more mad to foresee an emergent and functioning federal Iraq, thirteen years from now, but not if we stand back from the current sectarian horrors, and carefully appraise what has already happened and is about to happen.
Constitution
One of the key building blocks of the Iraqi federation is already in place. The constitution of 2005 mandates a pluralist and democratic federation. Endorsed by four out of five voters the constitution permits provinces to aggregate to form regions, and recognised Kurdistan as the first established region. It allows Kurdistan to unify with Kirkuk province by referendum - and when that happens the votes will be there for a larger Kurdistan.
The first foundation stone is therefore in place: the Kurdistan region is already self-governing, internally stable and run by a coalition of two secular parties who command nine of out of ten local votes. Kurdistan's leaders will not promote secession from Iraq, as long as the constitution is upheld, because they know that will endanger their people's welfare. The second building block is under construction. Last year the Iraqi parliament authorized legislation to allow the formation of other regions in 2008. One large region in the Shia dominated South may emerge emerges, as preferred by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Or, two or more regions will form, around the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, or the commercial port of Basra.
But when the Shia create their own region, or regions, they will lawfully control their internal security, and will likely erect hard security perimeters, as has Kurdistan. These will act as a firewalls against the sectarian fires still burning in Baghdad, and against jihadist and Baathist terrorists.
The third territorial block will be less easily put in place. The constitution, wisely, does not permit Baghdad to become part of another region, but it is permitted to become a full region of its own (it has approximately a quarter of Iraq's population). Expect this option to be actively canvassed next year, whether the current US-led 'surge' succeeds in Baghdad or not; and whether or not the US-led coalition is withdrawing by then.
Cool-headed observers agree that the Baghdad that will emerge from current horrors will have its Shia majority consolidated, but with pockets of Sunni Arab enclaves and multiple 'peace lines' segregating the two major communities. The political contest for the Shia leadership of Baghdad will be decided among Dawa, Sadr's Mahdi army, and SCIRI. Whoever wins will see the merits of making Baghdad a city-region, provided it has some prospects of prosperity and stability.
Regionalisation
The financial road to full regionalisation is also now clarified. The parties in the federal government, in negotiation with the Kurdistan Region, have agreed an oil law, within the framework of the 2005 constitution. The constitution requires the revenues from currently exploited fields to be shared across the whole of Iraq, but leaves new fields under the control of regions.
The new federal oil law is a voluntary agreement to share all oil and gas revenues, from all fields, past and future, across the whole of Iraq, on a per capita basis. This agreement, provided it is implemented, makes regionalisation easier because it means that both resource-rich and resource-poor regions will benefit from such revenues. It also confirms that the territorial status of Kirkuk is a separate issue from the distribution of its oil revenues - which accrue to all Iraqis, irrespective of the vote in the forthcoming referendum.
Sunnis
What about Sunni Arabs? They comprise the formerly dominant minority, even if some of them were not direct beneficiaries of Saddam's regime. Many of their politicians regard Shia Arabs and Kurds as religious and racial inferiors respectively.
Many of their insurgents had hoped that by provoking a civil war, and a consequent American withdrawal, that they would be able to restore their community to power- and recreate a centralized Iraq. That has proven a mad mission. Their reactionary and indiscriminate violence, targeted primarily at Shia civilians, has unleashed a formidable backlash against their own, and has led to an exodus of Sunni Arabs from the South and from Baghdad.
Some Sunni Arabs leaders realize that the violent program of reactionary nostalgia guarantees only further suffering for their own. They put no faith in Saudi or Jordanian princes, let alone al-Qaeda. They are all terrified of Iranian hegemony over Iraq. In consequence, some are already negotiating with either the Americans or the federal government.
The wise know that the best that they can do is to confine Iranian dominance to the South. They are also aware that there are significant natural resources in Sunni Arab majority areas. It is just not true that the constitution leaves them with sand and the Koran for sustenance. But the Sunni Arabs' insurgency has never been about 'stuff', oil and gas, it has been about loss of dominance, prestige and pride.
So, behind all the horror two related features of the political landscape are clear to those who care to look. The deal between Kurdistan and SCIRI to end the centralization of Iraq is holding, and Sunni Arabs' hopes of a restoration of a centralized Iraq are being dashed.
The question for Sunni Arabs is increasingly how to adapt to their loss of dominance. They can adapt gracefully, through accepting the possibilities of regionalisation in the constitution. That would enable them to provide their own security, i.e. to police themselves. It may happen begrudgingly, after a long period of internal conflict among Sunni Arabs over the right path to take their people. The latter, regrettably, seems most likely right now, because no Sunni Arab leadership exists that is capable of organising a peace process, and making credible security commitments to the Shia Arabs and the Kurds.
If it is possible to foresee an Iraq which can function by 2020 - albeit with "ungoverned territory" among the Sunni Arab majority provinces, how might American and European policy be best organised to help that happen? Not by following the nostrums of the Baker-Hamilton report, which pines with Al-Sadr and al-Qaeda, for a centralised Iraq. Instead they should support the implementation of Iraq's constitution rather than re-kindle the illusions of some Sunni Arabs.
Turkey and Iran
Externally, an American and European engagement with Turkey is highly desirable. The Americans need to provide a security guarantee to Kurdistan in return for a pledge from Kurdistan Region not to secede from Iraq as long as the constitution of 2005 is respected. That will calm Turkish adventurism and reassure Iraq's Kurds that an American betrayal is not imminent. Likewise, an American and European engagement with Iran is desirable.
Iran is already the major regional victor from the removal of Saddam from power. Its regime needs assurance that it is not being targeted for destruction and stands to gain from seeing the full regionalisation of Iraq. There is no need to appease its nuclear development program: there are many diplomatic tools available to negotiate with it; and it will trade its leverage over al-Sadr in the right circumstances.
The states which border Sunni Arab majority areas (Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria) matter less if Kurdistan, the South and Baghdad all have regions with their own security systems. They will be able to control these territories. Saudis, Jordanians and Syrians may hope to influence Iraqi Sunni Arabs, but once regions are erected Sunni Arabs will no longer be able do damage to anyone other than themselves. In short, the worst firestorms of civil war will burn out - broken by the firewalls of regionalisation. With Kurdistan and the Shia Arab community internally and externally secured it should be a matter of time before Sunni Arab community leaders came to their senses.
This analysis does not forecast paradise in 2020. Iraq is a far more daunting task of political reconstruction than Northern Ireland. But it suggests that Kurdistan can become a consolidated secular, prosperous and democratic region, and that in the South, and in Baghdad, Shia Islam will be in the ascendant, and likely democratic (in the sense of 'majority rule'), but not liberal. Where it is most uncertain is in predicting the recovery of political sanity among the Sunni Arab community in the next decade.
It may be true that the Iraq war need not have happened, as critics in the West say, but if something like this scenario emerges it will not be true that the Iraq war will have settled nothing worth settling. Go ask the Kurds. Go ask the Shia Arabs. Go ask the relatives of Saddam's victims.
