The 1990-1991 crisis in the Middle East and the disturbances that followed in Iraq's Kurdish and Shi'i areas have starkly exposed deep-seated divisions in the Iraqi population. Iraq has essentially been dismembered along the lines of the three Ottoman provinces that were arbitrarily assembled into a state by the British after the First World War.This book examines the complexities stemming from this situation. It focuses on the intertwined and contradictory cultural, political and religious divisions in Iraqi society during the country's formative years, 1920-1960, offers a new explanation of the social categories and 'cultural packages' in conflict since Iraqi's inception as a modern state, and points out the reasons behind the unity or fragmentation of group connections, loyalties and identities.