City states? God he's dumb.
No-one could ever be dumber than the barbarians who hate city-states. City-states are
awesome.
(In case of Baghdad, which is right there between the sunni and shi'a areas, and has both populations represented within it, I can certainly see the logic of making it a city-state if you decide to divide Iraq into multiple countries...)
I'm beginning to see a connection between 'people who don't understand the Middle East' and 'people who think the Middle East should be broken up into small countries'.
The big problem is that the borders are often poorly drawn. It's easy to be haughtily dismissive about attempts to create more homogeneous countries and to make sure people who hate each other with a passion aren't crammed into one country... if you're looking at it from the perspective of the West, which already
went through that. Less than a century ago, irridentist claims based on ethnic interests were literally the thing that sparked World War Two. How was that solved? By re-drawing borders and - in many cases - mass deportations. Messy, but things have been a lot better in Europe since then. Except of former Yugoslavia, of course, where ethnic tensions and claims... oh. Wait.
I have no doubt that major border revisions could vastly improve the political situation in the Near East and Middle East. If you make sure that every group that ardently feels distinct and has trouble with the neighbours has its own country, you'll have a lot more peace and tranquility than you get when you force multiple such groups into one artificial country drawn up by colonialist rulers.
So, yeah. Break things up into small(er) countries. It really
is the way to go.