Here, I’ll start with how we jacked up in Iraq. I’ve found this philosophy does apply in some form to most of the Arab people. Note that I said Arab, Persians are not necessarily included. Your typical Iraqi cares about things in this decreasing order: his family, his tribe, his sect (Shia/Sunni), and then his nation. This has a lot to do with a Bedouin or Bedouin-related heritage in a lot of cases.
It has a lot to do with the fact that before the first world war there was no Iraq. It’s an artificially created state in which Sunnis were made to sit in the seat of power whilst being a minority. This was unlike the Ottoman empire under which the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites had autonomous control over their respective territories. So the fact of the matter is that most of the people living in Iraq hardly even consider themselves Iraqis and would rather relate to their sectarian or ethnic identities which are hundreds if not a thousand years old. Sunnis are albeit a different case since they’ve been in the seat of power for a long time and don’t have many issues with being identified as an Iraqis.
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