Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2013-01-17-Speech-4-152-000"
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"en.20130117.23.4-152-000"2
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"Mr President, one of the phenomena of modern life is the mass migration of peoples around the world from south to north. But another way of looking at it is that it is a mass migration of peoples from arbitrary, artificial states to states which are rooted in some kind of national consciousness. One of the peculiarities of the European system was the development of the nation state as a political concept.
Iraq is a very classic example of an arbitrary state without any ethnographic basis. You can infer that from looking at the straight lines that comprise its borders on the map. The three Ottoman provinces of Basra, Mosul and Baghdad were more or less randomly yoked together for reasons of
pertaining to other countries.
And the only way that countries like that historically have been able to function is because one group, usually a minority group, has established some kind of hegemony over the others, as was indeed the case in that unhappy land.
The best thing we could do for a country like Iraq – or indeed Syria if the revolution there continues – is to move towards a proper devolution of power, to cantonalism or even, if people want, to referendums on separation. But of course that would have implications for us here in the European Union and we refuse to look those implications in the face."@en1
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