The causes of geopolitical conflict have been studied for centuries, but the interconnected world in which we live after the Cold War requires us to revisit our assumptions.

In his famous 1993 article “The Clash of Civilizations” in Foreign Affairs, political scientist Samuel P. Huntington put forth what he believed to be the root cause of conflict: culture.

Culture can be defined as the sum of human endeavor as experienced by a group over time. This experience is shaped by the actions and attitudes of its members as well as the impact of other cultures with which it comes into contact

Yet, if we say that culture is the main driver of geopolitics, what does this mean about the conflict in the Middle East?

First, let’s say we divide the region into cultural entities – Arab, Turkish, Kurdish and Persian – with Islam a common factor among all and Christian and other minorities living among them. 

Then, we layer over the cultural impact of European colonialism. The British mandates of Iraq, Jordan and Palestine all became monarchies except for Palestine, which later became Israel, while the French mandates of Syria and Lebanon produced republics.

Turkey has gone through its own cultural and political upheavals since 1920, while the Kurdish people have remained a part of the whole but with a different culture. The outlier is Iran (Persia), which maintained cultural continuity outside of the Ottoman Empire.

While the Kurdish people have always maintained a separate identity and culture, they were not always in conflict. The Ottoman Empire allowed for its non-Muslim and non-Turkish populations to be self-governing as long as taxes were paid, and the borders protected. The Sultan accepted the Kurds, at least tacitly, as a separate entity and allowed them to continue to grow within their own culture. 

However, this changed in the early 19th century when Sultan-Caliph Mahmud II bowed to Western pressure by initiating democratizing reforms known as the Tanzimat and was less capable of protecting the economic interests of Muslim merchants in the empire. 

Similar developments took place elsewhere. Iraq and Syria evolved into Arab nationalist entities after the First World War, while Iran maintain its own Persian and Shi’a identity, neither of which complemented Kurdish culture. 

Iraq is a test of culture. After the overthrow of Saddam and the establishment of a new Iraqi government, the victorious U.S.-led coalition forces attempted to enshrine in Iraq a modern pluralistic democracy. 

The “One Iraq” policy would transform Iraq into a model of federalism in the Middle East, and it was, for a short while. Yet as the KRG developed, Erbil and Baghdad drifted apart, which was catastrophic for this policy. 

The appearance of ISIS then began to both bring Erbil and Baghdad closer and drive a wedge between them. From the beginning, Kurdish forces backed by US air and Iranian ground support were the only group capable of holding the line. The war spread to Syria causing the Syrian forces to abandon large areas that the Syrian Kurds then filled while fighting ISIS. In a similar vein, the Iraqi Kurds took control of the Kirkuk province after Iraqi troops abandoned it. 

Following ISIS’ defeat, Baghdad launched an attack on the Kurds to regain Kirkuk and other disputed territories, which returns us to the clash between Kurdish culture and the Iraqi State. To date the Kurds have requested autonomy, federalism, or independence in their historic homelands, but received negative responses to every request. 

Culture clashes across the region are changing the political map, and may provide policymakers with a roadmap to peace, at least in the Kurdish areas: accepting the Kurds as a separate people with a distinctive culture and allowing them to establish some form of homeland would allow all to find their own way. 

Establishing Kurdistan in Iraq and Syria would prove difficult but is doable with international support and protection. The first step is to understand that culture is what makes a people a nation and that enforcing artificial borders will only continue to fuel violence.

Paul Davis is a retired US Army military intelligence officer. He has been a consultant to the American intelligence community specializing in the Middle East with a concentration on Kurdish affairs. Currently, he is an adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics in Washington DC and the President of the consulting firm JANUS Think.