The political history of Iraq is a continuing one. The uncertainty about its future hovering over the turbulent years since the overthrow of Saddam Husain's dictatorship testified to many of the suppressed narratives that have been a feature of Iraq's complex history. The new spaces that opened up, encouraging forms of political behaviour unimaginable only a few years before, created opportunities for a variety of groups and interests to shape Iraqi history. In doing so, they came up against others with very different versions of Iraq to tell and who believed they had the right and the power to make their versions the new reality. All had to deal with the legacies of the fallen regime, the relationships of compromise, betrayal and advantage which had allowed it to maintain its ferocious hold on power for so long. Sadly, they and the Western allies whose military intervention gave many Iraqis hope for a radical break in their history often failed to recognise how much they were part of this same history and thus ran the risk once more of succumbing to its baneful logic.

The Iraqi state, no less than any other state, embodies a certain hierarchy, expressing differentials of power and status, and using sanctions, sometimes violent, to maintain an order suggested by the values and material interests of those who rule. As such, one of their main preoccupations has been to maintain boundaries, both territorially and socially, within Iraq.