Modern Iraq's History of Social Conflict
Political scientist Michael J. Sodaro (2004), writing of the myriad factors impacting upon the process of democratization now underway in post-Saddam Iraq, argues that the most critical variable with the potential to disrupt or even inhibit this process is related to cultural diversity. Iraq, an artificially created country constructed out of elements of the Ottoman Empire, has long been plagued by internecine civil conflicts, violent clashes among disparate internal groups (e.g., Kurds and Arabs, Sunnis and Shi'ites) and between Iraq itself and its neighbors (Iran and Kuwait) (Tripp, 2000). Since its independence from the British Protectorate established in 1920 by the League of Nations, Iraq has experienced alternating periods of monarchial rule under the Hashemites, military coups, dictatorships, and invasion in recent years by a U.S.-led coalition (Tripp, 2002). Certainly, as Samir al-Khalil (1989) commented in a pre-Gulf War text on Iraq's history, the country has failed to achieve anything resembling harmonious relationships among its cultural groups.
Other factors -- geographic distribution of resources, religion as a divisive force, devastation caused by war, antagonism toward the West, the destruction of governmental and social service infrastructure, and competition for power and influence in the "new Iraq" -- certainly play important roles in inhibiting democratization (Tripp, 2000). Nevertheless, if one examines the history of the country, one is inescapably made to realize that the country called "Iraq" is not a homogenous society in which civil society emerges from a shared cultural heritage (al-Khalil, 1989; Tripp, 2000). Sodaro (2004) noted that the sudden removal of Saddam Hussein's tyrannical regime after the U.S.-lead coalition invasion in 2003 created a power vacuum. In this void stepped Shi'ite clerics, Kurdish rebels, expatriates and exiles, and others eager to c...