Tim Arango on Iraq and national identity:

‘After the British took control of Mesopotamia and tried to shape it into a modern nation-state called Iraq, Gertrude Bell, the diplomat credited with drawing the country’s borders, visited a prominent Baghdad farmer and local leader to ask his advice on how to knit together Iraq’s many ethnicities and faiths. To prepare for the visit of Miss Bell — as she was known to Iraqis — the farmer stopped feeding his roosters. When she came, he put the hungry roosters in a cage, and the result was a bloody mess.
The farmer then turned to Miss Bell, as the story is related today by one of his descendants, Muthanna al-Lami, and said: “We had 400 years of the Ottomans, and we have suffered under them. Please help the Iraqis and don’t let them fight like these roosters.”

More than a decade later, the king that she helped install in power, Faisal I, wrote: “With my heart filled with sadness, I have to say that it is my belief that there is no Iraqi people inside Iraq. There are only diverse groups with no national sentiments. They are filled with superstitious and false religious traditions with no common grounds between them.” The same could largely be said today. If anything, many Iraqis say, unity is something for the far-off future.
“Reconciliation cannot take place right now,” said Amar Ahmed, 42, of Tikrit. “But after decades from now, maybe the next generations can forget what has happened with all this bloodshed.”’

Read the complete article in NYT here.

If we want the next generation to forget first the bloody cycle of revenge and more revenge should stop. But underfed roosters in a cage can’t help themselves.