ABSTRACT
As is the case with most of the countries in the non-European, post-colonial world, a central theme in the politics of the Middle East1 has been the struggle surrounding the formation of modern states.2 In one way or another, the problems of state formation have touched, and continue to touch, almost every other issue confronting the peoples of this region. For this reason, it is useful to discuss this issue as a prelude to the discussion of the particular situation in Iraq and especially the events following the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Without such a prior discussion, any attempt to test the theory developed in this study in terms of its relationship to the circumstances in Iraq would be largely unintelligible.
