Iraq\'s History of Social Conflict

Iraq's History Of Social Conflict

As the "cradle of civilization," it is not surprising that the history of social conflict in Iraq is an ancient as mankind itself. Unfortunately, the intervening millennia have not brought any substantive or lasting peace to this region, but have rather been opportunities for still further major social conflicts over resources and ideological differences that have shaped the course of the country's destiny and served to mold it into modern-day Iraq. Moreover, it would appear reasonable to assert that, based on the powerful historic religious differences that have divided the country, these patterns of social conflict will likely continue well into the foreseeable future. To gain a better understanding of what the basis for this divisiveness has been, this paper provides a review of the relevant peer-reviewed and scholarly literature concerning modern Iraq's history of social conflict, of power struggles between rival clans, of hostility and wars with neighboring states, as well as the struggles' aftermath, and Iraq's deteriorating relations with the West. An analysis of the course of the modern state of Iraq's development and how this led to its distinctive politics today is followed by a summary of the research and salient findings in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

As the United States continues to prosecute a war on terrorism with its front lines in Iraq today, the people of Iraq at least have something in common they can agree upon. No one likes foreign troops on their soil, at least against their collective will, and it is likely that most Iraqis citizens would like to see the war over and things return to "normal" as soon as possible. Unfortunately, Iraq never has been able to achieve a long-term sense of "normality" in terms of social conflict because when foreigners are not invading them, the different peoples of Iraq have plenty to disagree about anyway. According to Staub (1999), "We live in a time where genocide, mass killing, and other violence by groups of people directed at groups defined by their ethnicity, race, religion, culture, or political affiliation is widespread" (p. 303). In reality, though, such social conflict based on such differences is not a modern phenomenon, but is rather as ancient as mankind itself and its roots can be traced directly to the country of Iraq and the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The encyclopedic entry for Iraq shows that before the Arabs conquered the country in the 7th century AD, Iraq had been the site of a number of flourishing civilizations, including the Sumer, which developed one of the earliest known writing systems, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria (Iraq, 2004). Sumer and Akkad were the two city-states that produced the most sophisticated armies of the Bronze Age (Gabriel & Metz, 1991). The Greeks called the area Mesopotamia, meaning "the land between the two rivers," a reference to the Tigris and Euphrates basin; however, in the Bible, the region is referred to as "Shumer," the original Sumerian word for the southern part of Iraq, the site of Sumer with its capital at the city of Ur (Gabriel & Metz, 1991).

Modern social organization and therefore social conflict therefore find their collective historic basis in Iraq. According to Roux (1993), people first manifested the high degree of cooperative human effort necessary to make urban life possible in the early Sumerian cities of Eridu and Urak. Likewise, Gabriel and Metz report that these two cities "reflected the evidence of this cooperation in the dikes, walls, irrigation canals, and temples, especially the giant ziggurates, which date from the fourth millennium" (p. 4). Likewise, an efficient agricultural system made it possible to free large numbers of people from the land, and the cities of ancient Sumer produced social structures comprised largely of freemen who met in concert to govern themselves. Early Sumerian cities were characterized by a high degree of social and economic diversity, which gave rise to artisans, merchants, priests, bureaucrats, road and temple architects, and professional soldiers (Gabriel & Metz, 1991). Much like the increasingly multicultural society in the United States today, ancient Sumerian civilization was also comprised of a polyglot of ethnic people; however, all fourteen of the major city-states of the region shared essentially the same culture: "For the most part all Sumerian states had the same political institutions, economic practices, religious beliefs and practices, gods, legends, administrative language, and general way of life. Not surprisingly, they also developed the same military forms" (Gabriel & Metz, 1991, p. 5). The 1,200 years following the Arab conquest of the country have been marked by a steady stream of invasions, wars, incursions and revolts. In this regard, it would seem that in spite of - or perhaps because of - Iraq's abundant natural oil reserves, modern Iraq's history has been influenced more by foreign powers than the Iraqi people themselves.