Iraq Under Qassem
Uriel Dann
Israel Universities Press
Ever since Iraq attained statehood in 1920, its leaders have had to contend with powerful forces of fragmentation. These have operated in the past and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Their cumulative effect up to the revolution of 1958 will be briefly analyzed in this Introduction.
Iraq is not a geopolitical unit. The country is divided into three sharply defined geographical areas. The valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris, river-irrigated and containing some of the most fertile agricultural soil on earth, opens towards the Indian Ocean; it is from here that British influence, ultimately leading to British occupation, penetrated. The mountains of the north and the north-east, rain-fed and poor of soil, adjoin the Armenian Knot which fans out east and west, towards Turkey and Iran, as well as southwards. The steppes of the west, arid and scarcely habitable, merge by degrees into the Mediterranean hinterland towards the north and Arabia in the south.
There is no “Iraqi nation”, nor is there a tradition of cooperation to cement the various communities. This heterogeneity has had a decisive effect on the political life of the country.
The leading political element in Iraq are the Sunni Arabs who populate ...
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