A number of tribal sheikhs in the South of Iraq have signed an agreement to band together into a “semi-autonomous region”.

The Lebanese al-Akhbar daily reported that a “semi-official” autonomous government was announced yesterday in Southern Iraq. The paper said that “over 40 tribal chiefs from the provinces of Basra, Nasiriya, 'Amara and Samawa” have signed an agreement announcing the birth of a “self-ruling government” in the Shi'a-dominated southern provinces; and released a statement signed by “the administration of the autonomous government of the South.”

The new “government” elected 'Abd al-Muhsin al-Shalash at its helm, and announced its commitment to the Iraqi constitution “at the present time,” adding that the “government” intends to amend the constitution in the future.

The newspaper did not add further details regarding the local support to the new council, or whether the founders of the “autonomous government” have links with the major political parties. But al-Akhbar pointed that the current constitution allows an Iraqi province (or a number of provinces) to form a “region,” which, if approved by a popular referendum, would be acknowledged by the government and would be granted a large measure of autonomy, including a regional government and parliament. The paper said that the founding of the “autonomous government” may be a first step in entrenching “Iraqi federalism ... which, is (currently) applied solely in the Kurdistan Region.”

Several American observers and analysts have speculated that the only logical method of solving the current strife in Iraq would be to encourage and assist the breakup of Iraq into 3 strong regions bound together in a loose federalized form of government. The present constitution permits the country’s 18 provinces to create such regions.

Much of the talk has been about creating two more regions based along ethnic lines, much like the Kurdistan region in the north. This would see a Shi’a south and Sunni west, much like the country is in large part ethnically divided now.

Joe Biden (D-DE) has associated his Presidential campaign with a plan devised by Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. The plan calls for a national government to assume responsibility for the overarching needs of Iraq as a country, including national defense and a fair proportionate distribution of oil sale proceeds to the various sects/semi-autonomous regions.

Edward P. Joseph of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution have developed a similar plan. Mr O’Hanlon is perhaps best known as a firm and loud proponent and defender of Mr Bu$h’s ego-war in Iraq and was co-author of an op-ed in Monday’s NY Times that has been greeted with a great deal of derision and contempt on the internet.

While the Biden-Gelb Plan sees the removal of US forces beginning in 2008, the plan put forward by Messers Joseph and O’Hanlon do not.

Withdrawing U.S. troops, O’Hanlon said, remains “a very bad option” that most likely would lead to all-out civil war.

Mr O’Hanlon apparently feels that what we have in Iraq at present is not a civil war.

A man who walks around with his eyes wide open doesn’t stumble into closed doors, and might not consider Mr O’Hanlon’s opinions with any great favor.

The NY Times had an article about this topic several days ago, as it reviewed the Biden-Gelb plan.

Mr. Biden’s so-called soft-partition plan — a variation of the blueprint dividing up Bosnia in 1995 — calls for dividing Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions, held together by a central government. There would be a loose Kurdistan, a loose Shiastan and a loose Sunnistan, all under a big, if weak, Iraq umbrella.

“The idea, as in Bosnia, is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group — Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab — room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests,” Mr. Biden and Mr. Gelb wrote in their Op-Ed on May 1, 2006. “We could drive this in place with irresistible sweeteners for the Sunnis to join in, a plan designed by the military for withdrawing and redeploying American forces, and a regional nonaggression pact.”

The proposal acknowledges forthrightly what a growing number of Middle East experts say is plain as day: Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis are not moving toward reconciliation; they still haven’t managed to get an oil law passed, and de facto ethnic cleansing is under way as Sunnis flee largely Shiite neighborhoods and towns, and vice versa.

While Iraq is somewhat divided along ethnic lines at the present time, its cities are not, although actions of the civil war taken by both sides have tended to clean districts in order to create one-sect areas.

The Biden-Gelb plan in its present form places a lot of emphasis on the UN to help maintain the integrity of an unoccupied and federalized Iraq, which might not be a prudent method of dealing with the situation. It also involves Iraq’s neighbors, acting in their own best interests, in helping to maintain order, in a quasi-Gulf States Forum.