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Southern discomfort
By
Hooman Peimani
In his Tuesday statement,
Ayatollah Mohamed Bakr al-Hakim warned American-British
forces to leave Iraq at the earliest possible moment or
face the Iraqi opposition's military resistance. Being
the leader of the main armed opposition group of the
Iraqi Shi'ites, the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic
Revolution of Iraq (SAIRI), Hakim's warning left no
doubt that the American-British hope for a stable and
docile Iraq run by a pro-American regime will not likely
come true.
The SAIRI leader made the warning in
a Tehran press conference attended by Iranian and
foreign journalists. During the event, he stated that
the Americans and the British sought to occupy Iraq to
achieve their colonial objectives, which are
unachievable, as, according to him, "The world does not
approve of any colonialism and occupation."
Hakim went beyond expressing resentment towards
the war on Iraq to spell out the SAIRI's determination
to resist its hoped-for objectives. He concluded,
"Foreign troops must exit Iraq in the earliest [time]."
However, if they chose to stay in Iraq, he added, "[the]
Iraqi nation will resist by any possible means."
According to him, failure to achieve their goal through
peaceful means would make the Iraqis resort to violent
ones. Hence, "We [Iraqis] will take peaceful measures in
this respect at the beginning but we will use force
later."
Hakim's remarks are the first clear sign
of dissatisfaction with the American-British policy
towards Iraq among the Iraqi opposition. As the Iraqi
regime's target of suppression, the Iraqi opposition has
no sympathy for Saddam Hussein, nor does it want to
prolong his regime. This is especially true for the
Shi'ite groups whose constituents have long been
suppressed politically and economically and marginalized
socially by the Sunni-dominated regime, even though they
account for 60 percent of the Iraqi population. The
memory of the Iraqi regime's bloody suppression of their
uprising at the end of the 1991 Gulf War is only too
recent for them to be forgotten.
Given this
reality, Hakim's warning revealed a growing concern
about the long-term objectives of the coalition with a
clear bearing on Iraq's future, in general, and on the
Iraqi Shi'ites in particular. The American government
seems to be planning for a long-term occupation of Iraq
and its direct rule over that country through an
American military administration for an unspecified
period of time.
This is partly a major component
of the American long-term plan for Iraq to ensure its
stability and docility to the US for its own merits and
also for a potential role it could play in preserving
American interests in the Middle East, including the
oil-rich Persian Gulf. This plan also seeks to deny a
regional power, Iran, to influence a post-Saddam Iraq, a
feasible scenario given the ethnic and religious ties
between the two neighbors.
It is also partly a
reaction to the political and social realities of Iraq,
which create an obstacle to an easy, fast and smooth
transition of power from the existing political system
to a pro-American, but not necessarily democratic one.
The Iraqi opposition groups are numerous in number, but
lack a strong social basis inside Iraq. With the
exception of the two major Kurdish groups (PUK and DPK)
and the SAIRI, which have a military wing and a degree
of social support among the Kurds and the Shi'ites,
other groups are mainly small and foreign-based. The
opposition includes a variety of ethnic and religious
groups with different and opposite objectives and
political platforms and subscribe to a variety of
incompatible religious and secular ideologies and forms
of governments.
In the absence of a strong
united opposition enjoying the majority of the Iraqis'
blessing, the long-suppressed ethnic, religious and
political demands will likely emerge in a post-Saddam
era to create barriers to the formation of a
widely-acceptable political system. Briefly, a long
period of American-British occupation of Iraq and an
unpredictable period of American direct ruling over it,
in one form or another, only to be followed by an
American puppet Iraqi regime, seem to be an increasingly
probable prospect of a post-Saddam era.
In such
a situation, the SAIRI has every reason to worry since
its role and that of the Iraqi Shi'ites, from whom it
extracts power and legitimacy, in a post-Saddam Iraq
look quite uncertain, if not grim. Since the outbreak of
the war against Iraq, the American government has
repeatedly warned about its intolerance of any move on
the part of the SAIRI's military wing, the Badr Brigade,
to influence the pace of events in Iraq. That includes
its efforts to expand control on parts of Iraq slipping
out of Baghdad's hands. Based in Iran, this well-trained
and well-armed force has deployed some of its units in
Iraqi Kurdistan, mainly in the areas controlled by the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, with which it is on good
terms. It has not yet made any visible military move to
concern the Americans. However, there is no ground to
suggest that it will remain idle and indifferent to the
rapidly changing situation only to abide by the
American-set rules.
The SAIRI is definitely
pro-Iranian, but it does not necessarily express Iranian
views as it pursues its own interests, which do not
coincide with the Iranian ones all the time. For
example, it has had direct contact with the American
government at least since 1990, and has an office in the
US, a country on hostile terms with its Iranian mentor.
Nevertheless, being the leader of an
Iranian-based and backed Iraqi opposition group, it is
logical to assume that Hakim made his warning after at
least informing the Iranian government about his
intention. That government is extremely concerned about
the prospect of its neighboring Iraq turning into a
hostile pro-American country under American occupation.
Along with many regional and non-regional
countries, such as Russia, Iran has repeatedly requested
an immediate end to the war to prevent its predictable
regional and global dire consequences. Thus, Hakim's
opposition to that war also reflected Iran's view,
although his threat of the use of force does not seem to
be an Iranian-approved policy. Among others, its
implementation would undermine Iran's neutrality, while
giving an excuse to the Americans to attack Iran to
settle their old disputes.
The war against Iraq
has faced fierce Iraqi resistance, which its instigators
did not anticipate. Nor did they expect Turkey's
determination to occupy Iraqi Kurdistan, which, if
happens, will lead to a war between Iraqi Kurds and the
Turks. Added to this, Hakim's warning symbolically
indicated that, even in the case of a quick and
successful military operation, the Americans and the
British should expect formidable resistance by the Iraqi
opposition to their designs on oil-rich Iraq.
Dr Hooman Peimani works as an
independent consultant with international organizations
in Geneva and does research in international
relations.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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