�Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know�� Dan Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, [Source]

In the period that elapsed between President Bush�s threat to invade Iraq (U.N. speech, September 2002) and the physical invasion (March 2003), one concept dominated the American discourse on Iraq: �Britain created Iraq.� Think tanks repeated it, politicians re-iterated it, websites and blogs (left and right) propagated it, writers discussed it, and national newspapers and TV networks interviewed myriad imperialist personalities to seek �insight� on an enigma called, �Iraq�s creation.�

They all agreed and parroted each other that Britain �cobbled� Iraq �together� from the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire, as if Iraq never existed before. This is not only a mechanical view of Iraq, but also a definite program that deliberately erases thousands of years of Iraqi history before that �cobbling� took place for the obvious purpose to prepare Iraq for chiseling and remodeling by the Zionist Empire of the United States.

Rhetorically, what magical potion did Britain use to �cobble� Iraq in just four years of occupation (1917-21), while it took Mother Nature billions of years of evolution and thousands of years of civilizations, wars, invasions, turmoil, and modernity to shape it! [Suggested readings: 1) Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq; 2) Geoff Simon, Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam; 3) Ayad a-Qazazz: In the Cradle of Civilization; 4) Muslim Heritage.com: Basra. 5) Angel Fire.com: The Abbasid Caliphate 6) Hugh Kennedy: The Early Abbasid Caliphate]

Is it not strange that while U.S. ideological and militarist landscapes were ablaze with discussions on Iraq�s creation, Britain, the �creator� of Iraq�s boundaries, and the junior partner in the invasion, remained silent on its historical role in Iraq?

An explanation exists. Britain had no reason to speak of Iraq�s past. That would open up voluminous chapters of British colonialist history around the globe. For instance, after Britain created a Jewish �homeland� in Palestine to facilitate the establishment of a Zionist state, it withdrew only from Palestine, but not from other occupied Arab lands and states including Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Raas al-Khaima, al-Sharija, Oman, and Southern Yemen. Further, during the fifty-eight years since Britain and the West planted Israel as a Middle Eastern �reality,� Britain has always acted as if it had nothing to do with that reality or the Palestinian issue.

From recent history: after George Bush and an army of neocon ideologues began designating Iraq as the second stage of the �war on terror,� the question of Britain�s �creation of Iraq� occupied the headlines. Was the bringing of that issue accidental? No. In fact, why debating how Britain designed Iraq, while the issue was Iraq�s WMD? This begs the question: did Iraq then seek WMD as a remedy for its �creation,� or was Iraq�s attempt to own WMD the reason for which the U.S. invaded it to undo that �creation�?

Unavoidably, any discussion on the perfunctory issue that Britain �created� Iraq necessarily hides a string of objectives. 1) To subtract its legal and historical status, 2) to reduce it, by propaganda, to a non-entity by denying its coherent socio-political structures, 3) to convert it into an object of predation by designing, in advance, its �new� laws and economic structures, and 4) to prepare the grounds to partition it (conquest by pieces), should the invasion succeed.

The question remains, does the British design of Iraq�s boundaries qualify it as an artificial state? Moreover, after declaring Iraq artificial, did the United States drown Iraq in a blood bath to prove that the Iraqi people suffer from an incompatibility problem so it must partition their country because it was �artificial� in the first place?

Let us break the imperialist chain of deception that Britain designed Iraq with this scenario: in one hundred years from today, how would future generations consider U.S. policy in Iraq? Would Iraq � partitioned or whole � be an established historical legality because of the passing of time, or would it be an imposed illegality regardless of any passing of time?

A logical answer should be, in both cases, the U.S., as was Britain before it, has no right, whatsoever, to impose any order in Iraq or give it any status. Who authorized Britain to design Iraq�s borders in the first place? Likewise, what gives the United States the right to re-change these same borders? In the end, we are not talking about a benign, Samaritan empire. We are talking about an imperialist state with a long history of violence and genocide. As such, the United States has no right to kill hundreds of thousands of people and shape the lives of the survivors.

If the formation of Iraq�s boundaries by the British occupiers makes of it an artificial state as the acolytes of the neocon empire are insinuating, then consider the following:

One: if Iraq is an �artificial creation,� then all Iraqis are artificial by implication. But we, Iraqis, whether in Iraq or those naturalized in countless foreign countries, are substantive and exist as Iraqis by birth, culture, memory, and by emotional ties. How could we be artificial if we came to existence as Iraqis? Where is our artificiality? How are we supposed to call Iraq�s millennial history � the history of the future artificial state of Iraq? How should we respond when some one asks us about our heritage: U.S. or European nationals, and former citizens of �the provinces that Britain cobbled together� to create the artificial state of Iraq?

Two: all political states (nation-states) of the Earth (including insular nations) are artificial beginning with the most artificial among all artificial states, and that is, the United States of America.

First, look at the map of the United States as ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1783 whereby thirteen former British colonies became an independent state. Pay attention to the incoherent, scattered order of those colonies. Second, take a cursory glance at the current map of the empire and all these square maps of individual states. Now, extend your glance to the northern and southern boundaries. Notice that unusual horizontal line that separates most of the U.S. from colonialist Canada. Also, remember America�s war against colonialist Mexico and subsequent annexation of the territories of Arizona and New Mexico. Remember Polk�s infatuation with Rio Grande as the frontier with Mexico. Remember, as well, the history of Texas, Nevada, Georgia, Florida, the mid and western states, etc.

Once you do that, there could be no doubt � the United States of America is an artificial state. Now compare that to the map of Iraq. Iraq has always been the land between the two rivers (Mesopotamia in Greek; see map 1 and map 2) and the inheritor of old and new civilization despite its geographical expansion, contraction, or political order. If one is to object that the United States has gone through over two centuries of historical developments to become what it is today, then Iraq has gone through eons to become what it is today.

Regardless, how could the United States be anything else but artificial since it formed its unlawful polity from lands looted from the Original Peoples of this land and from lands purchased from other colonial powers? Of course, this conclusion can apply unopposed to all political states in North and South America, as well as to Australia, New Zealand. Not only that, but why do Zionists of the world consider Britain�s installation of Israel on Arab land, natural, while the boundaries of multi-millennial Iraq, artificial?

Yet, we have learned to accept the illegality of all states of the world as a necessary order to avoid more wars; but open the boundaries and formation of selected states in order to conquer them, powerfully opens up the subject of origin and formations of all states without exception.

Finally, for what reason did the U.S. invade Iraq: 1) to redesign its boundaries and split its peoples into faceless groups, 2) search for WMD as per Bush, or, 3) take its oil and build its new empire?

After this overview, let us go back to Beeman. How did Beeman reach his historical verdict that Britain �glued the whole mess together with the resident British Army�? What mess was he talking about any way? More intriguing: what study of history enabled Beeman to blather the conclusion that Iraq was a mess before the British occupation? Had Turkey remained the colonial ruler of Iraq, would Beeman dare to say decades later that Iraq � as a whole, or as provinces � was a mess?

History did not tell us about any mess in Iraq before the British occupied it except for the struggle of the Iraqis against the Ottoman rule that Istanbul resolved temporarily by appointing Midhat Pasha, a reformist minded Wali (viceroy in Arabic) to rule Iraq in 1869. If Beeman considers Iraq before the British occupation a mess, then did he ever consider Britain�s act when it glued a true mess called Jewish emigration (from all nationalities and ethic groups) to Palestine into an illegitimate Jewish political state!

If millennial Iraq was artificial, then consider another Arab country that never existed in the entire history of the Arab World: Jordan. Jordan as a nation came to life as a �nation-state� because of conspiracy between the traitor dynasty of the Hashemites, Zionists, and Britain, and its territory sewed from pieces taken from greater Syria and Iraq. Nonetheless, I never read a western writer or politician ever called Jordan, artificial. Regardless, although Britain created Jordan to ease the birth of the Zionist entity, Jordan is a reality and it takes its continuity from that of the Arab nation as a whole.

It is not possible to conclude this overview without talking about the rich human mosaic called Pakistan. Pakistan as a nation-state never existed in the history of humanity. Pakistan came to life as a confluence of two main factors: 1) the demise of British colonialism in India, and 2) the determination of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Muslim elites to separate the Muslim regions of India from the rest of the subcontinent consequent to national antagonism between Hindus and Muslims. For the record, Gandhi rejected the partition but then accepted it.

But while greater India retained its millennial name, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-cultural fabric, the Muslim regions had to invent a state based on the presence of a large concentration of Muslim population despite diverse ethnicity. The new Muslim state was composed of two Muslim regions: West Pakistan and East Pakistan with India in between as a continental wedge. Consequent to a bloody war between Pakistan and India in the 1970�s East Pakistan became the Muslim state of Bangladesh.

Two facts about Pakistan

One: Pakistan is an invented name. But unlike any other invented name such as Exxon or South Africa, Pakistan is actually a very romantic collection of initials denoting lands (provinces) and cultures typical of the region. In short, the name Pakistan is the highest expression of how existent historical entities can germinate into a new historical reality.

To invent a name that represents the natural geo-ethnic milieu of the new country, Chowdhry Rehmat Ali, the founder of the Pakistan National Movement borrowed from many names. He borrowed the P from Punjab, A from Afghania (a region near Afghanistan), K from Kashmir, I from Iran, S from Sindh, T from Tukharistan, A from Afghanistan, and the N from the last letter of BaluchistaN. With such an invented name that reflected the warmth of the land and its inhabitants, the name Pakistan came to existence.

Two: As a new nation-state, Pakistan also reflected its rich ethnic palette. Pakistan�s major ethnic groups are Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtun, Baloch, and Muhajir (these are diverse immigrants moving out of India at the time of partition. Muhajir means, immigrant in Arabic.)

A question: Based on this historical overview is Pakistan an artificial country? The answer is a resounding no despite the artificiality of the way by which the country came to existence. Pakistan as a land, people, history, and ethnicity is a magnificent product of historical evolution. There is nothing artificial about Pakistan since a political state, any political state, is but a mechanism of governance.

However, think of the following hypothetical scenario. Had the Pakistani dictator Musharraf refused to cooperate with the United States for the invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. might have carried out its threat to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age (as per the threat of Richard Armitage), invade it, and then declare the country �artificial� thus require partition or restitution to India.

Of course, Pakistan does not have oil nor has Israel on its borders or near by. But had Pakistan the wealth of Iraq, the U.S. would have most likely invaded it, made its people fight each other, and then mobilize its media to declare an incompatibility problem between its inhabitants.

The argument then is not about the assumed artificiality, naturalness, or names of established political states, but rather about a specific colonialist strategy whereby the United States with lies and violence, hoaxes and ruses is breaking Iraq into pieces to suit its objectives. Since the hoax of Iraq�s artificiality or its people�s incompatibility is guiding the U.S. policy to dismantle it, then I have a few proposals to make next.

Next: Part 16 of 23

B. J. Sabri is an Iraq-American antiwar activist. Email: bjsabri@yahoo.com.

Previously published