As President Bush readies a new strategy for Iraq, some experts in Washington are looking beyond the question of US troop levels to what might happen if worst-case scenarios come true. Call it Plan B: How the United States might handle Iraq's partition.

It may still be possible to hold Iraq together, many of these critics believe. A surge in American military strength might help. But the hour is late – and a lack of contingency planning on the part of US officials may be one reason the situation has become so dire.

"If I was working for George Bush, I would want somebody to be thinking hard about this, sort of preparing the groundwork," says Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign-policy studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The US might need actively to aid Iraqis in relocating to parts of the country where they feel safer, says Mr. O'Hanlon. This sort of resettlement assistance wouldn't be unprecedented, he notes. The US did it in Bosnia.

Such a policy would perhaps preempt the violent Balkans-style ethnic cleansing that is already occurring in Iraq, O'Hanlon says. Sectarian strife is displacing 100,000 Iraqis a month.

"One-third to one-quarter of the ethnic cleansing that might occur [in Iraq] has occurred," says O'Hanlon.

Of course, to many US officials such a policy would be anathema. Mr. Bush has long insisted that a unified, democratic Iraq is one of his goals – not an Iraq separated into sectarian regions.

It has been widely reported that the new "way forward" Bush is expected to announce next week will include a substantial surge in US forces, designed to bring stability to violence-torn parts of the country.

Such an increase might allow reconstruction aid to begin to have a real effect in Baghdad and elsewhere, improving the daily life of Iraqis and strengthening the shaky central government, according to an influential report on the subject co-authored by Frederick Kagan, a military historian at American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

"Victory in Iraq is still possible at an acceptable level of effort," says a summary of the AEI study.

But events in Iraq now may be running at a speed that outpaces the US ability to respond. Bush has mulled over his options for weeks, while sectarian violence rises and the political partition of the country continues apace, says Vali Nasr, an adjunct senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The attempt to form a unity government has completely failed, says Mr. Nasr. Absent viable political plans, power is determined by the violence of militia in the street.

"The carnival of Saddam's execution is handwriting on the wall about how deeply divided this society is," he says.

Will the country's political divide be followed by a physical one? Possibly. Sen. Joseph Biden (D) of Delaware, incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has long advocated establishing Iraq as a loose federation, consisting of Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish regions, and a Baghdad that belongs to all.

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