text: what happens to the middle east if we were to pull out all us troops out of iraq in the near future?   iraq has no effective police force or army yet, and it is full of foreign insurgents, and a mix of ethnic groupings.  in actual fact iraq didnt exist as a country until it was artificially formed by international treaty, led by the british and french in the 1930's.   its is actually made up of several very diverse and naturally hositle ethinc groupings such as the kurds, marsh arabs and mespotamians.  therefore the likelyhood is that the country would collapse into either civil or external war, or potentially a mixture of both.  the kurds in the north would establish their own state as they have wanted since the beginning of the last century. the ramifications of that would be that not only a third of iraq would disapear but there would also be border clashes with both turkey and iran, as what the kurds belive to be their homeland straddles all three countries.  the shi'ite muslim marsh arabs in the south would want to split either into independance, or more likley join onto their neighbour and spiritual brother iran.  this would leave a realtively narrow corridor across the middle where the population is predominantly sunni muslim in religion and baathist politically as iraq. this would have no economy as both oil regions are in either the kurdish or shi'ite controlled areas, therefore nothing to sustain an economy.    this would end up as a third world drain on resources or more likely get overtaken and subsumed into one of its neighbours.