Iraq: Security as Identity

With the fall of the Ba’athist regime in Iraq, ‘negative peace’ which arose from concentration of power in the country, was replaced by extensive social confrontations caused by making ethnic, racial and religious distinctions as main criteria. Indeed, having won the ‘war with Iraq’ quite easily, the United States failed to resolve the ‘war in Iraq’. This failure is derived by non-historical outlook of American leaders and policy-makers towards a society in which religious, ethnic and linguistic fault lines have existed for decades and have been intensified. Thus, internal strives in Iraq can be viewed as a symbol of modern wars in the 21st century that are of a fully identity nature and the United States happens to lack a suitable strategy in this respect (i.e. resolution of identity conflicts in the Middle East). Consequently, the resolution of war in Iraq that is of a racial and religious nature demands a set of all-out actions such as fair distribution of oil revenues intended to remove poverty, political participation of all political groups as well as the expansion of democratic values.