Spread of Terrorism in Iraq from the Perspective of a Failed Nation-State-Building

Terrorist activities have spread in the Arab countries of West Asia within the past few years. The terrorist organization known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is among the groups that is fighting the governments in both Iraq and Syria in an organized and unconventional fashion. This article addresses the correlation between the failed nationstate-building and the outbreak or intensification of terrorist activities in Iraq. Three interrelated factors are particularly important including the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, absence of dominant centralist citizenship identity, and slow process of formation of democratic progress and institutions which are respectively related to territorial saturation, national cohesion and integration, and political stability. These components of nation-state-building have given rise to the appearance of terrorist groups in the country. The author has investigated nation-statebuilding as the independent variable and spread of terrorism in Iraq as the independent variable.