I always noticed, however, that optimistic Iraqi friends who downplayed sectarianism in Iraq always knew who was a Shia and who was a Sunni, just as accurately as people in Belfast are aware of which of their neighbours is a Protestant and which a Roman Catholic.Relations between Sunni, Shia and Kurd have always shaped Iraqi politics. In 1919, two years after the British capture of Baghdad from the Turks, a far-sighted British official called Arnold Wilson, the civil commissioner, warned that the creation of a new state out of Iraq was a recipe for disaster. He said it was impossible to weld together Shia, Sunni and Kurd, three groups of people who detested each other. Wilson told the British government that the new state could only be "the antithesis of democratic government". This was because the Shia majority rejected domination by the Sunni minority, but "no form of government has yet been envisaged which does not involve Sunni domination".

The Kurds in the north, whom it was intended to include in Iraq, "will never accept Arab rule".All very true - and Wilson was certainly more clear sighted and better informed than Mr Bremer 85 years later But Wilson, like Bremer, got Iraq wrong. The year after he wrote the insightful passage above, the tribes in the centre of the country, mostly Shia, rose in revolt. By the time it was suppressed the British and Indian troops had lost 2,269 dead and wounded - and the Iraqis an estimated 8,450 dead.The uprising created a potent myth for Iraqi nationalists It saw tentative joint action by Sunni and Shia They even held joint religious services. Wilson and several highly informed British officials in Baghdad at the time had underestimated the fact that, however much Shia and Sunni disliked each other, they hated the British even more.

The point is important because the fragmentation of Iraq is so evident today that it is easy to forget that Sunni and Shia Arabs, even when on the verge of civil war, also see themselves as sharing an Iraqi identity.There is a dangerous clich?o the effect that "Iraq was never a real country" If repeated often enough it might become a reality. It has long been true for the Kurds, who want to have their own independent state, to which they have every right. But until now at least, the Sunni and Shia have had several identities, of which one is strongly Iraqi. This shared identity helps explain one of the mysteries of the last two-and-a-half years. Why did the insurrection against the US occupation gather pace so rapidly?Self-assured to the point of folly, the US administration made mistake after mistake. Within a few months it created a sympathetic environment for the insurgents. US soldiers stood by and allowed Baghdad - and every other city - to be looted and state institutions from hospitals to libraries to be destroyed.