Page 1 of redux: The Middle East fragments By Brian M Downing
National borders from the eastern Mediterranean to the Iranian
border were made after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in
1918. Britain and France, with little consideration for
sectarian or ethnic realities, drew lines across the area and
established the new countries of Iraq As authoritarian regimes
disappear under the weight of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and
the ongoing uprising in Syria, regional boundaries may be
redrawn by indigenous peoples and regional powers. Five new
states could emerge: Shi'ite Iraq, Sunni Iraq, Sunni Syria,
Greater Kurdistan, and Shi'ite Syria. Shi'ite Iraq Sunnis
governed the Mesopotamian area since the time of the Ottomans,
as they did after the British installed the Hashemite monarchy
to govern Iraq in the 1920s and also under later rulers,
including Saddam Hussein. Nonetheless, Iraq was, and is,
overwhelmingly Shi'ite - at least 60% today, perhaps much more
owing to Sunnis' fleeing to Syria over the last few year