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Link: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/15/seven_questions_jay_garner

Seven Questions: Jay Garner, by Foreign Policy, USA


The man who first led reconstruction efforts in Iraq says that Arab-Kurd tensions are overblown and that “soft partition” would have been a good idea.

Jay Garner knows Iraqi Kurdistan. First appointed to the region following the Gulf War, the retired U.S. lieutenant general has returned to the region countless times – most famously when he was pulled out of retirement to lead U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. He was quickly succeeded in an expanded version of that role by L. Paul Bremer, but has since remained an active commentator on the region and the U.S. strategy there.

Speaking from Iraqi Kurdistan by phone, Garner discussed recently reported tensions between Kurdish leaders and the Iraqi government with Foreign Policy’s Elizabeth Dickinson. As U.S. forces begin their long pullout from the country, Garner warned that Sunni-Shiite relations are far more fragile than those between Arabs and Kurds, that there are no stirrings of independence in the north, and that former U.S. senator and sitting Vice President Joseph Biden’s call for what many described as a “soft partition” of Iraq would have served the country well.

Read full article at Foreign Policy magazine, USA