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Iraq: The Middle East's
kaleidoscope
By K Gajendra Singh
"Just you wait until we have democracy in Iraq,
and I'll throw you in jail!" wrote one lifelong opponent
of Saddam Hussein to another at last December's Iraqi
opposition conference in London. Take it as a
graphically verbal illustration of the difficulties that
face the country even if a semblance of democracy is
introduced following the (increasingly likely) exit of
the Saddam regime.
Iraq is like a kaleidoscope,
which must be handled (or better turned) carefully, but
US war plans and the bombs that will rain on the country
take no heed of such nuances.
When a post-Saddam
Iraq is discussed in the US, generally not enough
thought is given to the ethnic, religious and other
differences of the constituents and their tortuous
history that make the country the delicate kaleidoscope
that it is.
Arabs form about 75 percent of the
population, Kurds 15 to 20 percent, Turkman, Assyrian
and others less than 5 percent. The majority religion is
Shi'ite Muslim at 60 percent, then comes Sunni Muslim at
35 percent, Christians 5 percent, Jewish and Yezidi less
than 1 percent. The major languages are Arabic, Kurdish,
Assyrian and Armenian.
Despite being in the
minority, though, the Sunnis hold the reigns of power.
This is an Ottoman legacy: when that empire collapsed
and the Arabs took over Iraq, with British help, power
was vested in Sunni hands, where it has remained. Such a
situation is not unusual in the region. In Syria,
another branch of Ba'athists - the secular nationalist
Shia Alawites - account for 12 percent of the Syrian
population, but constitute the ruling elite. They came
into power in 1963. After independence in 1946, while
the Syrian Sunni majority concentrated on trade,
industry and politics, the downtrodden Alawites became
foot soldiers, and slowly progressed through the ranks
to become middle-level and senior military officers.
Soon there were enough and, led by General Hafiz Assad,
they took over Syria, which they continue to rule.
This raises an interesting question in the case
of Iraq. If Western-style democracy with full elections
were to be introduced, would the Shi'ites, with their
vastly superior numbers, gain power? And would such an
occurrence be able to take place without violence and
bloodshed?
Take an example: Pakistan in 1971.
The Bengalis of East Pakistan won a clear majority in
parliamentary elections, but what followed was massacre
and genocide and the breakup of Pakistan with the
creation of Bangladesh. Take, too, the collapse of
European Yugoslavia and the religious and ethnic
cleansing and the wars that resulted, not only between
Kosovo and Serbia, only but also Croatia and Serbia,
both Christian states.
It is easy to shatter an
ethnic, religious and cultural kaleidoscope (especially
with smart bombs and the like), but the result is shards
of broken glass. The pretension of ushering in stability
and democracy in Iraq and the region will invariably
lead to such destruction. Picking up the pieces - not to
mention counting the cost in lives lost - will be the
hard, if not impossible, part.
Different but
together
Apart from ethnic and other differences,
religious divisions within Islam are deep-rooted, with
the seeds of disunity in the embryonic Muslim
ummah sown as the Prophet Mohammed lay dead.
While his cousin and son-in-law Ali and family were
preparing the body for burial, another clan of the
Qurayesh tribe elected Abubakr as the first caliph.
According to Shi'ites, the Prophet Mohammed had
given enough indications for Ali to be his successor.
Shi'ites, therefore, do not recognize the first three
caliphs. The two caliphs Omar and Othman, who came after
Abubakr's natural death, died violently, as did Ali, the
first rightful caliph and imam according to Shi'ites.
Ali's son Hussein and almost his entire
entourage were martyred by the soldiers of Umayyad Sunni
Caliph Yazid at Karbala in 680, now commemorated every
year as Moharram, when they attempted to deliver Iraq
from the pretender. He remains the most revered imam for
his sacrifice for a cause. Almost all early imams were
maltreated and persecuted by the Sunnis.
For
Sunnis, the imam is only a prayer leader and can be
anyone. But for the Shi'ites, he is a spiritual leader.
The sacred Islamic law Sharia enacted under different
situations and times has many schools among Sunnis, who,
unlike the Shi'ites, have ijtihad, independent
reasoning in Islamic law to meet new situations.
Clearly then, Sunni-Shi'ite differences and
violence are ingrained in Islamic history and psyche.
Nevertheless, Westerners who believe in the use of force
should not forget the Arab belief in brother uniting
with brother against outsiders.
Jihadis,
assassins and terrorists
Perhaps the earliest
jihadis were the Kharijites who first supported the imam
Ali. But when he agreed to arbitration with the
supporters of the murdered third caliph, Othman, after
the indecisive battle of Siffin (657), many left him.
They believed that "judgment belongs to God alone"
(Koran 6:57) and that arbitration would be a repudiation
of the holy book. "If one party rebels against the
other, fight against that which rebels". (49:9)
The Kharijites, mostly from northern Iraqi
tribes, believed that the judgment of god could only be
expressed through the free choice of the entire Muslim
community. Known for their puritanism and fanaticism,
they forbade luxuries, music, games and concubines.
Anyone, even a black slave, could be elected caliph if
he possessed the necessary qualifications: chiefly,
religious piety and moral purity, but he could be
deposed for any major sin.
Any Muslim who
committed a major sin became an apostate and could be
killed. They, therefore, opposed the legitimist claims
of the tribe of Qurayesh (among the Sunnis) and of Ali's
descendants (among the Shi'ites) for the post of caliph.
Current jihadis, barring power-seeking
opportunists and the disgruntled, are inspired by the
Kharijite principles, along with the Imam Hussein's
sacrifice for his ideals, even in a hopeless position.
Therefore, Iraq remains sacred soil for Shi'ites, and it
also has their six major religious shrines, such as
Najaf and Kerbala.
The Kharijites were a source
of serious disruption against Othman, Ali, Umayyad and
Abbassid rulers. Although they were defeated many times,
they persisted. The moderate Ibadiya Kharijites now have
nearly half a million followers in North Africa, Oman
and Zanzibar.
Early second millennium jihadis,
known as Assassins, for centuries terrorized the Arab
caliphs, Turkish Sultans and their high officials,
killing many of them. Operating from their mountain
hideouts in Persia and later Syria, they struck fear
even in far off Karakorum, in the Mongol heartland.
Finally, the Mongols and Baybars destroyed them
and their fortresses in Persia and Syria. The Agha
Khans, the descendents of Assassin chiefs, now do
philanthropic work all over the world, vacation on the
sunny Riviera and breed racing horses.
Mohammed
Atta and the other September 11 hijackers, like other
al-Qaeda cadres and their mutations, are the third
millennium successors of the Kharijites and the
Assassins.
Iraq–Iran relations
When
the Shah of Iran expelled the Ayatollah Khomeini from
Iran in 1964, he was granted asylum in Iraq. Khomeini
soon acquired a large following because of his
theological erudition and idealism in Najaf, a center of
Shi'ite learning.
Iraq's secular Ba'ath
socialist party captured power in 1963, and even though
Shi'ites were allowed into junior positions in
government, the conflict between secular Ba'athists and
the radical Shi'ite clerics was bound to erupt sooner or
later.
It began with celebrations in February
1977 to mark Imam Hussein's martyrdom. There were
massive anti-government demonstrations in Najaf and
Kerbala, with many thousands of Shi'ites arrested after
the police intervened, and eight of their leaders,
including clerics, executed after trial.
At the
Arab summit in Algiers in 1975, Saddam Hussein and the
Shah of Iran made world headlines when they shook hands,
with Iraq agreeing to the middle of Shat al Sharq as the
boundary between their countries.
In 1978, to
quell Shi'ite unrest and to fulfill the Shah’s request,
Baghdad expelled Ayatollah Khomeini, who found refuge in
France. Deportations and suppression of Shi'ite clerics
and the death under mysterious circumstances of
Iranian-born Shi'ite leader Imam Musa al-Sadr led to a
deterioration in relations between Ba'athist Iraq and
Islamic Iran.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed
Saddam for al-Sadr's slaying, saying "the strangulation
of Shi'ite Muslims in that country has reached a
climax". After the 1979 Iranian revolution, more than
35,000 Shi'ites of Iranian origin were expelled from
Iraq.
After 1980, Iran promoted anti-Iraq
Islamic organizations such as Ad Dawah al Islamiyah and
the Organization of Islamic Action, based in Tehran. In
November 1982, Iran helped set up the Supreme Assembly
for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), headed by
Iraqi cleric Hujjat al Islam Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, as
a Shi'ite resistance group to provide opposition to
Iraqi aggression against Iran.
Baqir al-Hakim
commands respect as the son of a much-revered ayatollah,
the late Grand Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim, who was the
spiritual leader for Shi'ites around the world from 1955
to 1970. His large family is said to have lost over two
dozen members to death squads and executioners.
But Baqir al-Hakim is not the undisputed
spokesman for Iraq's Shi'ites, and it should be noted
that many of the Iraqi Shi'ite leaders who have sought
exile - and those who are cowed within it - still remain
loyal to Iraq and harbor strong anti-US sentiment, as
strong as their dislike of Saddam.
Of the many
Iraqi opposition groups based outside the country, few
have carried out military activities inside Iraq. But
the SAIRI has. According to the Washington-based
Federation of American Scientists, the SAIRI "consists
of a general assembly of 70 members which represent
various Islamic movements and scholars. SAIRI has a
military forces called the Badr Corps. It started as a
brigade and developed into a division and then into a
corps. The Badr Corps consist of thousands of former
Iraqi officers and soldiers who defected from the Iraqi
army, Iraqi refugees and POWs."
In December
1996, the Awakening, one of its constituents, attacked
Saddam's eldest son, Uday, who was crippled as a result.
In November 1998, unknown assailants made an
unsuccessful attempt against Izzat Ibrahim, vice
president of the Revolutionary Council and Saddam's
second-in-command.
After the 1979 Iranian
revolution, Qom, a city in Iran, became the home of the
religious political activism now at the heart of Iran's
theocratic regime. In Qom, one can get into serious
trouble if one declares opposition to clerical rule, or
to the theology that underpins it.
However, many
Shi'ites feel that the faith's spiritual home is across
the border in Najaf and Kerbala. If Saddam were ousted,
not only would there be an exodus of Iraqi seminarians
from Qom, but many Iranian clerics might also be lured
by the prestige of Iraq's holy places, and the promise
of a freer political environment in which they could
criticize the theology that sustains the present Iranian
regime.
The majority of Iraq's Shi'ite clerics
remain opposed to Iran's theocracy supervised by
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an unelected supreme leader with
almost draconian powers - and have no desire for a
similar system for Iraqi Shi'ites. New arrivals from
Iran to a "free" Najaf and Kerbala, then, should they be
theocratic diehards, could set themselves up against
Iraq's clergy. Result: More trouble.
This debate
could then bounce back to Iran. Recently, Iran, after
five years of house arrest, released the senior and
respected Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, a critic of
the methods of the all-powerful Council of Guardians in
supervising elections - rejecting potential candidates
and overturning election results. The ayatollah
commented, "Do not abandon your obligations because the
country belongs to the people. The Council of Guardians
has to accept this. If people have freedom to take part
in elections, they will most definitely elect good
people. The people would naturally refrain from electing
wrong or irreligious people."
The SAIRI, at
least in theory, has joined the other opposition groups
in signing up to Western-style democracy. Even the
"Islamist Shi'ites" - Iraqis who are opposed to the
country's secularism, and form around a third of the
population - are said to be opposed to the Iranian-style
of clerical rule. In the Iraq-Iran war (1980-88), they
defended their southern part of the country when Iran
invaded.
At the end of the Gulf War in 1991,
when George Bush Sr asked Iraqis to overthrow their
ruler, the Shi'ite clerics in southern Iraq declared an
intifada, sparking a month-long insurrection which also
spread into the Kurdish areas.
Iran, which had
nervously watched Iraq being pounded into rubble, tried
to turn the rebellion into an Islamic revolution by
sending in the SAIRI, its own Revolutionary Guards and
Iraqi soldiers based in Iran.
Some of these
reports filtered down to Amman in Jordan, where this
writer was then posted. Then followed reports of gory
killings and revenge attacks as Iraq forces crushed the
rebellion, using helicopters gunships, tanks and rocket
launchers. Tens of thousands of people were killed in
the fighting; many thousands died later in captivity.
Unforgivably, the US stood by and allowed this
to happen. So what can Iraqi Shi'ites expect this time
round? Another shattered kaleidoscope?
K
Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served
as ambassador to Turkey from August 1992 to April 1996.
Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan,
Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the
Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies.
(©2003
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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