Surely, greed and Islamism aren't mutually exclusive to the idea that suicide terrorist campaigns are "directed toward a strategic objective" and their sponsors seek to "establish or maintain political self-determination," as Robert A. Pape puts it.
>Actually the whole idea is ridiculous. "Chechnya" is an
>administrative district arbitrarily created by the Bolsheviks, and
>Chechens are not indigenous to large sections of it. Naursky
>district (which is very big) has been the territory of the Terek
>Cossacks since the 16th century. Several Chechen clans fled to join
>the Tereks when Chechnya was islamized, due to their centuries-old
>ties of intermarriage. But who needs knowledge when you can just
>write bullshit.
The origins of modern Iraq were similarly arbitrary -- Iraq was made of three vilayets (administrative districts) of the Ottoman Empire -- Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra -- that British imperialists carved out for as a mandate for the British Empire:
<blockquote>The history of modern Iraq begins with the last phase of Ottoman rule, during the 19th century. Until the 1830s Ottoman rule in Iraq was tenuous, and real power shifted between powerful tribal chieftains and local Mamluk rulers. Many of the nomadic Arab tribes were never fully brought under Ottoman control. Local Kurdish dynasties held sway over the mountainous north. In the second half of the 18th century the Mamluks established effective control over the territory from Al Basrah to north of Baghdad. The Mamluks imposed central authority and introduced a functioning government. In 1831 the province of Iraq, then subdivided into the three vilayets, or administrative districts, of Mosul, Baghdad, and Al Basrah, came under direct Ottoman administration. From 1831 to 1869 a series of governors came and went in rapid succession.
From 1869 to 1872 Midhat Pasha, one of the Ottoman Empire's ablest and most scrupulous officials, at long last imposed effective central control throughout the region. He modernized Baghdad, in everything from transportation to sanitation to education, and he imposed his rule on the tribal countryside. ("Iraq," <http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761567303_11/Iraq.html>)</blockquote>
<blockquote>[B]ecause Britain, along with its French and Russian allies, coveted the Ottoman domains. Lloyd George wished to acquire two provinces above all: Palestine, on behalf of Jewish Zionists from Europe, for whom the fundamentalist chapel-goer had a messianic sympathy, and Mesopotamia -- with Baghdad at its heart -- for its oil and its position as the Arab world's frontier with Persia, Afghanistan and India. (Some things have not changed.) Although the twin campaigns in Mesopotamia and Syria, which included Palestine, were similar Allied land-grabs, the differences were significant. Syria's population sought independence from the Sublime Porte, Iraq's did not. Syria wanted to remain united; Iraq for the most part preferred to retain separate identities for Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs. Britain would divide Syria, and unite Iraq.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . [T]he King-Crane Commission confined its investigations to Syria, where it found the population overwhelmingly in favour of the two goals Britain had specifically excluded: independence and unity. In the event of their having to accept a mandate -- a term invented by Jan Smuts at Paris to disguise what would in fact be protectorates or colonies -- the Syrians asked that the mandatory be the United States. Syria was actually carved into four mandate territories -- mini-Syria and Lebanon under the French, Transjordan and Palestine under the British. (Charles Glass, "Iraq Must Go! A History of 'Regime Change' in Iraq," <http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/glass_iraqmustgo.cfm>, 9 Oct. 2002)</blockquote>
The experience of having its borders drawn by great powers is a common fate among the majority of existing states today. Only states that are still or used to be great powers and their settler colonies have had a chance to draw their own borders more or less on their own terms.
Nations and states are both historical constructions (as opposed to entities found ready-made in nature), so they are basically whatever human beings make of them, mostly based upon the principle of might makes right. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Monthly Review: <http://monthlyreview.org/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>