The threat of widening of the sectarian divide is a product of the Iraq war. More by design than by default, the Iraqi state is well on its way to destruction. The world is witnessing that process unfold. Three separate states might eventually emerge as independent entities. It is said that it may happen by default. But this is hard to understand.

America is chockfull of area experts on Middle East. They should have known that Iraq was clumsily put together in the early 1920s by lumping together three separate Vilayats of the Ottoman empire.

Each of these Vilayats was a separate ethnic entity, viz. Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the middle and west, and Shias in the south. After the First World War, the Sunnis have been dominant and they had kept down both the Kurds and Shias -- actually a pre-Iraq legacy.

Indeed, Shias outside Iran were at the bottom of the heap for historical reasons. That is how history happened.

The problem today is that the reaction to the American invasion resulted in the creation of a resistance.

Originally, the Sunni and Shia militias worked together, particularly Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi army. They all hated the American invasion. Then, by subterfuge and much international intrigue, al-Qaeda was inexplicably allowed to enter the fray, and they, more or less, took over the resistance.

They converted the purely nationalistic resistance into a Shia-Sunni conflict by attacking venerated Shia shrines. As it happened, historically the Americans had won the confidence of Shias as well as Kurds with marriages of convenience on both sides, and these survive. Americans are still well-placed with these two communities.

The largely Shia government in Baghdad is an American creation that represents a convergence between the Shias and the Americans, parallel with the American-Kurd understanding.

How the Sunni resistance, surprisingly quickly, came under the leadership of what is being called al-Qaeda is not at all clear. This al-Qaeda seems to have limitless money, limitless equipment, explosives, and men.

The logistics of al-Qaeda's war against the Americans and Shias has not been investigated with the customary thoroughness by American and western experts. This fact seems to have much significance.

Controlling the consequences of the Shia-Sunni conflict is sure to be very hard. This conflict was greatly facilitated by the simple American device of talking in terms of Shias, Sunnis and Kurds as entities to be satisfied.

Recognizing them as separate entities, and dealing with them separately, helped these entities become modern communalisms, which has re-ignited the historical hatred among the three communities.

Musharraf has urged the Pakistanis to provide what is, in fact, a leadership role for the Islamic world by being moderate and democratic, and by electing the kind of persons that President Musharraf likes.

This self-serving device of talking about a major issue that is worrying the people, and slipping in the question of consolidating his own power is a tale to the marines. Couldn't Pakistan's foreign service have perceived that no Arab recognizes the right of any non-Arab to talk about Islam, much less to lead the Arab world?

They think that Islam and the Arabic language are inextricable, and non-Arabic-speaking people can only be second rate Muslims. Pakistan has tried since the 1950s to assume the leadership of the Islamic world, and has repeatedly been rebuffed -- and ridiculed.

Remember King Farook's biting remark that Islam was born on August 14, 1947. It is about time that Pakistanis gave up day-dreaming.

Anyhow, the problem needs to be analyzed. There have been historic wrongs suffered by one or the other community, particularly by the Shias who were at the bottom of the heap in Iraq and in various other states including Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.

They are now beginning to think of acquiring power for themselves in the name of democracy. Preaching to the Islamic world that division and internal strife will hurt everyone is useless. No one listens to sentimental lectures from Pakistanis. Indeed they laugh at the Pakistani's naivete.

The fact of the matter is that a sound and generally acceptable principle has to be employed to work out new solutions to old problems. The only principle that rises above communalisms and separate ethnic distinctions is the right of self-determination, rule of law, and equal human rights for all.

That is to say, employing democratic norms, no one is superior and no one is inferior. All historic wrongs can only be corrected by democratic principles. This can, and will, be the solution to the age-old problem between the Sunnis and Shias in Iraq.

Earlier the Sunnis subordinated the Shias, and now the Shias will try to do the same. This is unwise. Let both live in a modern secular state and have equal rights enforced by rule of law. This is a master solution that can be relied upon. This is the only way to unite all Muslims everywhere. There is no other basis on which Muslims can be united, and live peacefully in a common state where different ethnicities and sects have to live together.

It can be said that the bullet has already been fired; the genie is out of the bottle. The civil war in Iraq is indubitably gaining momentum. This means that Iraq will have to be divided, and three separate states would probably emerge, just as the invaders had meant to do, to start with.

If Iraq cannot be kept united, let the rest of the Islamic world come together and lay down the principles that all should follow; one's recommendation has already been given. It is still possible that Iraq can become a loose federation or, the same thing, a confederation.

But that is contingent on democratic principles being employed by all, and full and equal rights have to be given to all sections of the population. This would take a lot of doing.

But Iraq was, after all, a secular society, and this virus of clashing Shia-Sunni communalism has recently been injected from outside. There is still a faint hope. But the rest of the world has to be prepared for a three-state solution of the Iraq problem in the short run.

What will happen in the long run depends, of course, on what the Americans and the major powers will do, and how the local population will react. The dynamics that will determine the shape of the Middle East will necessarily be complex.

Pan-Islamists, without keeping democratic precepts center-stage, only make things worse by needless sentimental preaching and meddling. They should think hard and arrive at fair solutions that the rest of the world can accept.

We must somehow get out of the habit of thinking that we Pakistanis have a God-given function to preach to the rest of the Islamic world. It is late in the day, but still a conference on the Middle East, either among non-Arab or Arab states, can hope to bring the Muslims together and possibly sort out some of the problems.

MB Naqvi is a leading Pakistani columnist.