Ethnic Divisions Fragment Iraq

"Winning a war with Iraq would be the easy part," says UAB anthropologist Brian Hesse, Ph.D. "Winning the peace would be hard." In Islam, there's a political sense that all men should be part of one community. Iraq, however, is plagued by fundamental splits between the Kurds, the politically powerful Sunni Arabs and the majority Shi'a Arabs. A war could leave Iraq fragmented with the Shiites and Kurds seeking independence. Whoever is eventually in charge in Iraq will have a tremendous job satisfying all of these groups. "Saddam Hussein has tried using ancient archeological finds, such as re-creating Babylonian monuments, to build unity and encourage Iraqis to find at least part of their identity in the glorious centuries when the Assyrians and Babylonians ruled the ancient world."