Though we in the U.S. heard about Iraq on the news so much since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, when we sit back and think about the country, its people and life there apart from its contemporary history – Saddam, the War and beyond -- what do we really know? Let’s sit down and take a look at a map of Iraq. We’ll go with this one from PBS that indicates some of the nation’s religious and ethnic demographics…. (Maybe that’s something the British should have done before bringing in the Hashemite Monarchy in the ’20s….) What we this see is that Iraq is a country in four divisible sections:

— a distinctly Kurdish northeast with cities such as Mosul, Erbil and Kirkuk

— a mixed, though mainly Sunni center, featuring the capital of Baghdad

— a primarily Shia southeast, with cities like Karbala, Najaf, Nasiriya and Basra

— a sparsely populated no-man’s-land in the west 

Do these ethnic, religious and linguistic (Arabic vs. Kurdish) differences matter? Often, yes. Or, at least, maybe they shouldn’t, but as we’ve learned from historical experience...they just well might.