The carve-up of Iraq will spawn a redivision of the Middle East
The adoption of a weak Iraqi federal constitution is likely to unleash an ethnic and sectarian crisis across the region
David Hirst
Tuesday October 18, 2005
In the great settlement that followed the first world war and the collapse of the Ottoman empire, one of the Middle East's largest ethnic groups, the Kurds, were the main losers. They had been promised their own state, but, thanks to Kemal Ataturk's nationalist rebellion and abandonment of the project by the western powers, they ended up as repressed minorities in the four countries - Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria - among which their vast domains were divided.
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