Creative Execution: What Great Leaders Do to Unleash Bold Thinking and Innovation

Iraq’s Tortuous Destiny

Created as a British Mandate in 1921, using the same logic that gave us Yugoslavia at the Treaty of Paris in 1919, where the victors of World War I quilted the world into various ethnic fashions, Iraq has from its humble beginnings been a volatile state. Traditionally ruled by the Ottoman Empire, Iraq consists of three major ethnic groups: Sunni and Shia Muslim Kurds in the north, Sunni Muslim Arabs in the center, and Shia Muslim Arabs in the south. The country’s population exploded in the second half of the twentieth century, surging from 5 million to 25 million, with a heavy concentration in the cities of Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra. The British first landed in Iraq during World War I after it declared war on the Ottoman ...