Iraq

Iraq exemplifies the dangers of forcing three distinct ecological zones into a single political organism—a colonial experiment in nation-building that ignored millennia of natural partition. When British Colonel Mark Sykes drew a line across Ottoman Mesopotamia in 1916, he merged three vilayets (provinces) centered on Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra into one state. These weren't arbitrary divisions: they traced ancient boundaries—Assyria in the mountainous north (Kurdish), Babylonia in the central plains (Sunni Arab), and Sumer in the marshy south (Shia Arab)—each with distinct ecosystems, economies, and populations.

The Tigris and Euphrates rivers—source of the world's first urban civilizations—illustrate source-sink dynamics in brutal clarity. Both originate in Turkey's highlands, where 22 dams now regulate Iraq's water supply. When Turkey fills a reservoir, Iraqi farmers lose harvests. The Mesopotamian Marshes, once 20,000 square kilometers of wetland supporting the Marsh Arabs for 5,000 years, have lost 84-90% of their area since the 1970s. Iraq cannot negotiate as an equal; it must accept whatever flows downstream.

Oil reinforces the fragmentation rather than healing it. Kirkuk's northern fields lie in disputed Kurdish-Arab territory. Basra's southern fields fund a Shia-dominated government. Sunni-majority provinces in the west sit atop comparatively little petroleum. In 2025, oil accounts for 90% of Iraq's exports and 85% of government revenue, creating a $258 billion nominal GDP that the IMF calls 'size without sustainability.' The 2025 census counted 46.1 million Iraqis but notably excluded ethnicity questions—acknowledging that colonial borders paper over three nations with different languages, sects, and historical trajectories. Iraq functions less like a unified organism than a siphonophore: apparently one creature, actually a colonial aggregate of specialized polyps that cannot survive separately but pull in different directions.