Potential Challenges and Opportunities in Iraq’s Future

Abstract

The people of Mesopotamia are an ancient people who have experienced prosperity and poverty, authority and subjection, civilization and barbarism all together. The British, who won the first World War, were responsible for creating a new Iraq with many structural deficiencies. This inevitably led to structurally driven political, social and economic violence, which still entangles the people of Iraq. Arabs, Kurds, and other ethnoreligious minorities could not find a recipe that would glue all of Iraq together ever since [1]. The aspiration of Iraq’s ruler was always beyond the boundaries of the country, beyond nationalism. Over all previous centuries, it is hard to find a genuine nationalist who ruled Iraq with a sole focus on Iraqi’s wellbeing. They rather had supra-nationalist aspirations such as Arabism, Socialism, and currently Shi’ism [2]. This chapter tries to pinpoint the structural maladies of Iraq. Some have been created by external forces, inasmuch as Iraq has been the major arena for the bitter rivalry between the United States and Iran. However, this paper argues that main cause of the failing of Iraq as a state is manufactured by Iraqis themselves. This study uses an inside-out look at Iraq’s never-ending cycle of violence and distrust between the newly so-called “rivals” and the new “establishment.” It ultimately presents a set of recommendations pointing the way to alleviate the prolonged instability in the country.