This trend will lead to victory over the enemy and may well solidify a national Iraqi identity first forged in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. We shall see if the artificiality of Iraq is any more significant than the artificiality of any other country that relies on lines drawn on maps to describe itself.
The trend is showing up in polling in Iraq done by a University of Michigan project:
In the March 2007 survey, 54 percent of Iraqis surveyed described themselves as "Iraqis, above all," (as opposed to "Muslims, above all" or "Arabs, above all") compared with just 28 percent who described themselves that way in April 2006. Three-quarters of Iraqis living in Baghdad said they thought of themselves in terms of their national identity, as Iraqis above all.
And in December 2004, it was even worse with only 23% calling themselves Iraqis, above all.
"The escalating violence in Iraq gives a bleak impression of that country's future," Moaddel said. "Sectarian conflict seems to be increasing on a daily basis, with militias massacring hundreds of Sunnis and Shi'is solely on the basis of their religious identities.
"Yet it would be a mistake to think that this bloodlust represents widespread sentiment among Iraqis as a whole. While neither American nor Iraqi security officials have yet found a way to tame the militias, the Iraqi public is increasingly drawn toward a vision of a democratic, non-sectarian government for the country."
Just as the Iraq War isn't creating non-Iraqi jihadis, the war isn't creating Iraqi fanatics! Note that the researcher is a bit off. Shia militias supported by Iran are killing Sunnis, while Sunni jihadis supported by Syria are killing Shias. That's why all this violence isn't cementing sectarian allegiances among the Iraqi people. This isn't a civil war--this is an invasion by sectarian forces using Iraq as a battlefield for the wider Moslem civil war!
Iraq doesn't seem so artificial as the conventional wisdom has it. Perhaps silly talk of partitioning Iraq will end.
