In Iraq, Is What’s To Come Still Unsure?

by Hugh Fitzgerald (April 2010)











In 1958, colonel Qassem overthrew the monarchy. Feisal, the Prince Regent, was killed. And more important, Nuri es-Said, who had tried to escape from Baghdad dressed as a woman, was found, killed, and his naked body dragged through the streets of Baghdad so that the populace could hit it with shoes, or mutlilate it, or simply, if they were feeling lazy, just enjoy the spectacle. Such things have happened many times before during Arab regime changes, and no doubt will happen many times in the future.








In Iraq, Ba’athism was used to disguise a different sort of despotism. This was not that of the Alawites, but of the Sunni Arabs who had always held power, but whose percentage of the population kept going steadily down. This happened for several reasons. First, the Shi’a in the south, being poorer, had the consolation of larger families than the Sunnis (the better off always tend to limit family size). And, what is also not recognized, the Shi’a were better at proselytizing among the Sunnis than the Sunnis were among the Shi’a, and some tribes that were split between Sunni and Shi’a members saw the numbers of the latter increase. By the time of Saddam Hussein, the Sunni Arabs constituted 20% of the population. It is true that the Kurds in Iraq are largely Sunni, but their ethnic identity works against any solidarity with Sunni Arabs, especially since Saddam Huseein and his Sunni Arabs massacred 182,000 Kurds.











The Bush Administration assumed that the election of 2005 brought genuine democracy into existence in Iraq, that is an election in which voters – including women — could not only vote but find that their votes would be counted. The purple thumbs many proudly held up were taken to mean that the Bush Administration’s effort to “bring freedom” to “ordinary moms and dads” in the Middle East had been validated. True, there was violence, from both Al Qaeda in Iraq, headed by Al-Zarqawi, a “Palestinian” from Al-Zarqa in Jordan, who despised the Shi’a as “Rafidite dogs” and was determined to make sure that they, and their American supporters, were brought low, and there was violence, too, from Shi’a, some working for Al-Sadr and some for the Iranians, and some for other Shi’a groups, and some on their own, to make life unpleasant and dangerous for Sunni Arabs so that they would leave Baghdad, and that is exactly what many Sunni did. But at least there were elections.

















History, and demographics, and Islam itself, are the three factors that will determine the future of Iraq.






But what about the Kurds? Aren’t they mostly Sunni? And doesn’t that mean that they would identify with the Sunni Arabs. No. In his excellent book “The Multiple Identities of the Middle East,” Bernard Lewis notes the tug of various identities – in the main, those of religion or sect within religion, and those of ethnic identity, as opposed to the tug, or claim to loyalty, of the nation-state that is a product of the non-Muslim, and therefore alien, West. For the Kurds, so mistreated by the Arabs, their Kurdish identity – not always, but mostly – is likely to take precedence over the sectarian tug of Shi’a or Sunni Islam. And since the latest mass-murdering of Kurds was ordered by the Sunni Arab Saddam Hussein, and carried out by his military, under the direction of Sunni Arab generals, it is unlikely that the Kurds – they too being history-haunted – are likely to support the Sunni Arabs in any contest over power with the Shi’a Arabs. The forced arabization of lands the Kurds consider their own was based not only on destroying whole Kurdish villages, but in moving into those villages, as a replacement population, Arabs – and these Arabs tended to be Sunni, not Shi’a. In Mosul and Kirkuk, both of which the Kurds consider their cities, the chief rivalry is with Sunni Arabs. That is one more reason why Kurds are most likely to side with the Shi’a. Finally, the Shi’a themselves do not need the oil under the Kurdish-ruled regions. They might not care very much if the Sunni Arabs, their historic tormentors, were to lose Mosul and Kirkuk. They don’t need that oil, for in the south they have their own oil. Given the way that the Middle Eastern kaleidoscope can be shaken to give entirely new alliances – think of Lebanon, where the Shi’a were once on the bottom, and now they threaten not only the Christians but the Sunni merchant class as well, and what’s even stranger, though they are dangerous to the wellbeing of the Lebanese Christians, the Alwaite regime in Syria, which within Syria protects the Christians out of reasons of self-interest, in Lebanon supports the current worst enemy of the Christians, the Shi’a Hezbollah.






The whole Iraq folly has been punctuated by solemn discussions about this or that strategy. In Baghdad, would “the surge” work? What were, according to the lawgivers of Fort Leavenworth, the Five Basic Facts to Lean about Every Insurgency? Were Ahmad Chalabi, Moqtada Al-Sadr, Ayatollah Al-Sistani potentially agents of influence for Iran, or were they Iraqi nationalists, or did they despise the Islamic Republic of Iran for other reasons? What would Talebani do to Barzani, or vice-versa, in Kurdistan? Would the Turks intervene on behalf of the Turcomans, or just to teach the Kurds a lesson? What would happen to the Christians in Basra? In Baghdad? In Mosul? Would the Sunnis participate in this election? Would the Shi’a? Which Shi’a were likely to come out on top? Would Al-Jaafari make a comeback? What about Al-Hakim? Could Moqtada Al-Sadr be a kingmaker? And why did anyone listen to Juan Cole, when real Iraqis knew how little he knew about Iraq. And who cared what Noah Feldman claimed he did in poractically writing the Iraqi Constitution? Hey, and whatever happened to that intelligent bastard, Adnan Pachachi, who five years ago was constantly being quoted as some kind of Grand Old Man of Iraqi politics, since no one else could play that role?




All that is the fog of war, or rather the smog of war-commentary. The only things one need to keep firmly in mind are these: the Sunnis will never acquiesce in the loss of their power, and their wealth, and their status. The Shi’a will never give up the power, and wealth, and status, that the American invasion made inevitable. The Kurds will never give up, having tasted autonomy, their dream of an autonomous region amounting almost to, or possibly becoming, an independent Kurdistan. And the possibility of political compromise in Iraq, which to outside Infidels appears the sensible and obvious course, is small, because those who have been followers of Islam recognize a world of Victor and Vanquished, not a world where differences are split, and enemies make permanent peace, instead of making hudnas with those enemies so as to bide, and buy, one’s time.





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