Syria and Iraq —the geopathology of a relationship

The decision by Syria to support the anti-Iraq coalition during the Gulf War has to be understood within the wider political geographic and historical regional context. While the two states have many common characteristics, such as the respective power of the Ba'th Party in each country, mutual feelings of territorial injury in the demarcation of the states' territory and centrifugal forces threatening the continued integrity of the state, intense ideological and territorial disputes have resulted in bitter inter-state enmity. Disputes have arisen over Syrian closure of Iraqi oil pipelines, the allocation of water flowing from the Euphrates and Syrian support of Iran during the Iraq-Iran war. The collapse of Syria's superpower ally, the Soviet Union, resulted in Syria supporting the anti-Iraq international coalition during the 1991 Gulf War, in an attempt to regain wider international legitimacy.