.

As rulers of the Ottoman Empire the Turks saw a rugged, mountainous area dominated by Kurds, then, as the mountains fell away into the flatlands leading towards Baghdad, and west to what is now Syria, they saw a place where the majority of people were Sunni Arabs. Finally, after the two great rivers the Tigris and the Euphrates merged and ran down to the Shatt al-Arab waterway, the marshlands and the city of Basra, they saw more Arabs, most of whom were Shia. They ruled this space accordingly, dividing it into three administrative regions: Mosul, Baghdad and Basra.
In antiquity, the regions very roughly corresponding to the above were known as Assyria, Babylonia and Sumer. When the Persians controlled the space they divided it in a similar way, as did Alexander the Great, and later the Umayyad Empire. The British looked at the same area and divided the three into one, a logical impossibility Christians can resolve through the Holy Trinity, but which in Iraq has resulted in an unholy mess.

Many analysts say that only a strong man could unite these three areas into one country, and Iraq had one strong man after another. But in reality the people were never unified, they were only frozen with fear. In the one place which the dictators could not see, people’s minds, few bought into the propaganda of the state

In Syria, until 2011 many communities lived side by side in the towns, cities and countryside, but there were still distinct areas in which a particular group dominated. As in Iraq, locals would always tell you, ‘We are one people, there are no divisions between us.’ However, as in Iraq, your name, place of birth or place of habitation usually meant your background could be easily identified, and, as in Iraq, it didn’t take much to pull the one people apart into many.

— I Am Not Angry! (عصبانى نيستم)

— الحشاشين

"El sueño de la razon produce monstruos"
By Francisco Goya