Iraq Is Not Really A State
To start this story, we have to go back to the period just after WW I when Britain and France were divvying up the spoils of the region between themselves.
Iraq did not exist prior to these two western powers taking out a map of the Middle east, a ruler and a pen, and summarily drawing straight lines that happened to rather inconsiderately cut across cultural, language and racial boundaries. The architects of this secret agreement were a Brit by the name of Sykes and a Frenchman by the name of Picot.
Prior to this Franco-British interference, the area was called Mesopotamia and had long been ruled by a contentious but roughly-balanced mixture of tribes and kings.
Here's the old Mesopotamia in green as compared to the borders drawn by Sykes & Picot:
[picture removed]
To understand the current conflict, you have to understand the history of the borders, how they were drawn, and the extent of western plundering and meddling -- which began long before the Bush Iraq wars (I & II) began.
The old partition of the Middle East is dead. I dread to think what will follow
[June 13, 2014
The entire Middle East has been haunted by the Sykes-Picot agreement, which also allowed Britain to implement Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour’s 1917 promise to give British support to the creation of a Jewish “homeland” in Palestine.
The collapsing Ottoman Empire of 1918 was to be split into two on a north-east, south-west axis which would run roughly from near Kirkuk – today under Kurdish control – across from Mosul in northern Iraq and the Syrian desert and through what is now the West Bank to Gaza.
Mosul was initially given to the French – its oil surrendered by the British in return for what would become a French buffer zone between Britain and the Russian Caucasus, Baghdad and Basra being safe in British hands below the French lines.
But growing British commercial desires for oil took over from imperial agreements. Mosul was configured into the British zone inside the new state of Iraq (previously Mesopotamia), its oil supplies safely in the hands of London.]
(Source)
It bears mentioning that the area the French and British allotted to themselves was already fully-populated by the people who lived there. However the area was already determined to be rich in oil and other commodities, and both colonial powers were well-practiced at the art of dividing and conquering local people in order to take their resources.
For the people of Mesopotamia, western resource plundering has only accelerated since the arbitrary lines that comprise the 'state' of Iraq were drawn.
Of course, it's quite likely that Iraq's border were specifically drawn to cut across ethnic boundaries and thereby assure a failed state, because Britain had learned through history that failed states were the easiest to control. This was their preferred MO in India and numerous other colonies, and by 1916 it was a more or less perfected tool of statecraft.
But whether it was ineptitude or malign intent, the fact remains that Iraq was never a logical geographical entity; and its natural state would be to split into three autonomous regions: Kurds to the north, Sunnis to the west and Shiites to the south.
As a quick reminder, the differences between Sunni and Shiite Muslims stems from a split made shortly after the prophet Muhammad died in 632:
Facebook
Twitter