This is not the first time in history that Iraqis have been unable to agree on a government. The Middle East, 1920:

1920: In 1919, the British and French implemented the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement and divided the Arab world into nation-states. The League of Nations recognized these borders and allotted "mandates" to the French and British to govern these states until it was determined that they were ready for independence.

David Fromkin writes in A Peace to End All Peace that in 1920, when Iraq was the British territory of Mesopotamia:

"When, in line with the American principles being adopted- or at least affected- in London, the Cabinent instructed Arnold Wilson to ask the peoples of Mesopotamia what states or governments they would like to see established in their area, Wilson's reply was that there was no way of ascertatining public opinion.

While he was prepared to administer the provinces of Basra and Baghdad, and also the province of Mosul (which with Clemencau's consent, Lloyd George had detatched from the French spehere and intended to withhold from Turkey), he did not believe that they formed a coherent entity. Iraq (an Arab term that the British used increasigly to denote the Mesopotamian lands) seemed to him too splintered for that to be possible. Mosul's strategic importance made it seem a necessary addition to Iraq, and the strong probability that it contained valuable oilfields made it a desirable one, but it was part of what was supposed to have been Kurdistan; and Arnold Wilson argued that the warlike Kurds who had been brought under his administration "numbering half a million will never accept an Arab ruler."

A fundamental problem, as Wilson saw it, was that almost two million Shi'ite Moslems in Mesopotamia would not accpet domination by the minority Sunni Moslem community, yet "no firm Government has yet been envisaged, which does not involve Sunni domination." The bitterness between the two communities was highlited when each produced a rival Arab nationalist society. "

Fromkin continues:

"Gertude Bell, working on her own plan for a unified Iraq, was cautioned by an American missionary that she was ignoring rooted historical realities in doing so. "You are flying in the face of four milleniums of history if you try to draw a line around Iraq and call it a political entity! Assyria always looked to the west and east and north, and Babylonia to the south. They have never been an independent unit. You've got to take time to get them integrated, it must bedone gradually. They have no conception of nationhood yet."

Now that Iraqis have some understanding of nationhood (as well as tyranny, at least under Saddam), perhaps a truely unified Iraq under representational government is not such a far off lofty goal. This is up to the Iraqis themselves, and the United States and Euroupe should do everything to encourage infrastructure in the country. Iraq can be a great nation if it does not fall apart.

Posted by Ryan S. on Thursday, September 22, 2005 at 10:57 PM | Permalink |