(City Comment - UK) David Pryce-Jones - Iraq is a country in name only, manufactured by Britain in its imperial heyday after World War I. So flimsy was the identity of Iraq that Turkey almost regained its former province of Mosul, in Iraq's north, which has a Kurdish majority. The population consisted of Sunnis, Shia, Kurds, and others who could not live together on peaceful terms. Iraq soon fell into the hands of a series of dictators ruthless enough to hold it together by force. Saddam Hussein is only the latest and most brutal. Yet another quintessential World War I British manufacture is Saudi Arabia.
2002-09-24 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive