A hypothetical re-drawing of Iraq and Syria

This is an old idea that gets new attention every few years, when violence between Sunnis and Shias reignites: should the arbitrary borders imposed by European powers be replaced with new borders along the region's ever-fractious religious divide? The idea is unworkable in reality and would probably just create new problems. But, in a sense, this is already what the region looks like. The Iraqi government controls the country's Shia-majority east, but Sunni Islamist extremists have seized much of western Iraq and eastern Syria. The Shia-dominated Syrian government, meanwhile, mostly only controls the country's Shia- and Christian-heavy west. The Kurds, meanwhile, are legally autonomous in Iraq and functionally so in Syria. This map, then, is not so much just idle speculation anymore; it's something that Iraqis and Syrians are creating themselves. One of the major questions facing Iraq, perhaps even bigger than the question of whether it can put down ISIS, is whether the government can overcome these sectarian divisions and make Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds feel that they are part of the same Iraqi state. Until Iraqis believe in that project of a diverse, inclusive nation, and until the Iraqi government is able and willing to see it through, conflict is likely to continue.