The Specter of Sectarian and Ethnic Unrest in Iraq
Nicholas Blanford
January 7, 2004
(Nicholas Blanford is a Beirut-based journalist. He recently spent a month
reporting from Iraq.)
The ominous specter of sectarian and ethnic unrest in Iraq is growing more
visible as the country struggles to forge a new identity and system of rule
in the wake of Saddam Hussein's downfall. Though such unrest did not explode
immediately after the end of the former regime, as some commentators had
predicted, in the past few months, Sunni and Shiite Arabs have clashed in
Baghdad. Tensions are also on the rise between Kurds, Sunni Arabs and
Turkomans in the ethnically mixed and oil-rich regions around the northern
cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. The intercommunal strife is aggravated by the
aggressive counter-insurgency tactics employed by the US military in the
"Sunni triangle" where most attacks upon occupation soldiers have occurred,
occupation policies which seem to favor the Shiites and the Kurds, and the
failure of the occupying powers to restore stability.
Political divisions related to Iraq's diverse ethnic and sectarian
composition are not new. Traditionally, Sunni Arabs have dominated the
central government of Iraq since the country gained formal independence from
Britain in 1932. Sunni hegemony was reinforced during Saddam Hussein's
brutal tenure when the Kurdish and Shiite Arab communities were viewed as
potential threats to the regime and persecuted mercilessly. Nor have
communal tensions necessarily been foremost in the public mind since the
conclusion of "major combat." The complaints heard from all Iraqis,
regardless of faith, creed or ethnicity, concern the frustrations of daily
living -- the lack of security, jobs, electricity and fuel, compounded by
spiraling prices. The ouster of Hussein's Baathist regime and the vagaries
of the US-British occupation, however, have thrown the political future of
Iraq into doubt. In this atmosphere, the often competing agendas and
interests of the various communities are expressed consciously and
forthrightly in sectarian or ethnic terms.
REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
Under Saddam Hussein, Sunni Arab political power was mainly vested in the
Baath Party, the security services and the army. Following the
disintegration or dissolution of these institutions, the Sunnis fear
marginalization at the hands of the Shiite community, the largest sect in
the country. According to most estimates, Shiites comprise 60-65 percent of
the population while Sunnis (Arabs and Kurds) comprise 32-37 percent, with
the remainder made up of Christians and smaller minorities. Some Sunni Arabs
have launched attacks upon the US-led occupation, which they view as leading
to Shiite domination of positions of power. The weakness of the Sunni polity
is evident in the composition of the US-appointed interim Iraqi Governing
Council (IGC). Of the five Sunni Arabs represented on the 25-member council,
only two belong to political parties, neither of them carrying much weight.
By contrast, the main Shiite and Kurdish political parties are
well-represented. The two main Kurdish parties -- the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan led by Jalal Talabani and the older Kurdistan Democratic Party
headed by Masoud Barzani -- enjoyed a degree of autonomy following the 1991
Gulf war in the twin Kurdish enclaves of northern Iraq. After the fall of
the old regime, the Kurdish members of the IGC are pressing for greater
autonomy in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, a position which other
communities perceive as weakening the consensus that Iraq should remain
whole rather than split into ethnic and sectarian statelets. The Shiite
religious parties who sit on the IGC are centered around the traditionally
powerful Shiite clergy. They include the Iran-backed Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which fields a military wing called the
Badr Brigades, numbering about 10,000 fighters, al-Da'wa, one of the oldest
Shiite parties in Iraq, and the Iraqi Hizballah, composed mainly of "marsh
Arabs" living in the south of the country. After decades of oppression, the
Shiites expect a leading -- if not the leading -- role in the country's
governance.
Apprehensive about the prospect of Shiite dominance, in the last week of
December 2003 Sunni Arabs representing three Islamist trends, as well as
urban professionals and tribal leaders, convened a national consultative
(shura) council. The council aims to present a unified Sunni voice to the
occupation authorities and to fellow Iraqis. "We never needed a body like
the shura council before," Sunni cleric Harith Dhari told the Washington
Post. "But now we need it to look after our political, social and religious
affairs." Spokesmen for the body have declined to back or denounce the
insurgents, though they rhetorically support an Iraqi right of resistance to
occupation. The overtly communal basis of the council finds echoes in other
recently constituted bodies which appear more ready to take up arms. On
January 5, 2004, al-Hayat, a pan-Arab daily based in London, reported that
the Sunni "Clear Victory Movement" plans to establish a militia in response
to the "Mahdi Army" assembled by the young Shiite cleric Sheikh Muqtada
al-Sadr, who has been a vocal critic of the occupation from early on. The
Movement has sworn to oppose the US military presence if the Sunnis are not
better integrated into the existing political order. These events followed
several instances of intercommunal violence in the preceding month.
SHATTERED COMMUNAL PEACE
Simmering hostility between Sunnis and Shiites boiled over in an incident in
the Hurriyya district of western Baghdad which largely went unreported. The
residents of the neighborhood, more or less equally divided between Sunnis
and Shiites, say that the two communities formerly lived in harmony, with
intermarriage commonplace. On December 9, three Sunnis were killed in an
explosion at the Ahbab al-Mustafa mosque. Sheikh Faruq al-Batawi, imam of
the mosque, claimed that two rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the
building from the roof of an adjacent school, killing three men standing in
the courtyard shortly after dawn prayers. He blamed the attack on Shiite
"outsiders," naming the Badr Brigades and al-Da'wa, who spent much of the
1980s and 1990s in exile. "The relations with the Shia have always been very
good here," he said. "Only the Shia who have come from outside Iraq want to
cause problems." The Shiites in the neighborhood had a different take on
what happened. They said that the victims were "Wahhabi" resistance
fighters, referring to the austere branch of Sunni Islam that is prevalent
in Saudi Arabia. Iraqi Shiites often inaccurately describe Iraqi Sunni
Islamists as Wahhabis. The men died, the Shiites claimed, when a bomb they
had manufactured exploded prematurely as they were placing it in a car
beside the mosque.
The two versions were irreconcilable, both sides preferring to believe the
worst of each other. Communal peace in Hurriyya was shattered by one violent
incident. Both Sunni and Shiite clerics urged calm and reconciliation. But
there was little disguising the distrust felt by Sunni clerics toward their
Shiite counterparts, as well as the numbers commonly cited to show Shiite
majority status. "In their [Shiite] mosques, they announce their enmity to
the sahaba [the term given to the companions of Muhammad, used in a
derogatory sense by the Shia]," said Sheikh al-Batawi. "They think that the
Sunnis are a minority in Iraq. But if you connect all the provinces and the
Kurds, we are 64 percent of the country." Reflecting the new sectarian
consciousness of the Sunni Arabs, Batawi went so far as to assert that, "If
there is a sectarian war, the Kurds will side with the Sunnis." He claimed
that similar attacks against Sunni worshippers had occurred in Baghdad in
previous weeks.
Hooded Sunni gunmen wearing identity badges declaring them to belong to the
"Khalid ibn Walid Forces" flooded the district. The morning after the
bombing, the gunmen stormed a husseiniyya, a Shiite prayer house (formerly a
Baath Party headquarters) some 300 yards from the mosque. The gunmen
ransacked the husseiniyya, tearing up pictures of Imam Ali, smashing the
minbar, the black-painted pulpit from which Shiite clerics deliver sermons,
and ripping out the loudspeaker system. Furious Shiites clamored for
revenge. "I am facing a lot of pressure to let my people fight them," said
Sheikh Mahdi al-Muhammadawi, a local Shiite cleric. "But I reject this and
call instead for a peaceful solution because otherwise the results will be
seen in the graveyards and the hospitals." Tensions subsided over the
following days, but the series of events soured relations in Hurriyya and
was indicative of a growing sectarianism on the streets.
The explosion and the despoliation of the prayer house were not isolated
incidents. On December 16, two days after Saddam Hussein was captured,
Shiite residents of Baghdad's Kadhimiyya district entered the Adhamiyya
neighborhood to celebrate. Sunni residents of Adhamiyya resented the
intrusion and clashes broke out, leaving more than a dozen people dead. On
December 24, four Sunni worshippers were shot dead in a drive-by shooting as
they emerged from a mosque in the Shiite-dominated Washash district. The
Board of [Sunni] Muslim Clerics accused a "foreign power," a reference to
Iran, of engineering the killings "in the context of instigating sectarian
warfare."
IN SEARCH OF BALANCE
Leaders of both communities tend to underplay the depth of sectarian
sentiment in the country. Sheikh Kardom al-Awadi, a Shiite cleric from the
town of Samawa in southern Iraq, ruled out the prospect of sectarian strife
between Sunnis and Shiites. "We get closer to God by loving the Sunnis," he
said. "It's obvious we have been suffering but that doesn't mean that we
want to get the better of others." Sheikh al-Awadi is a close aide to Sheikh
Muqtada al-Sadr. Despite assurances from the Shiite community, Sunnis remain
wary of Shiite political aspirations. "If it happens that the Shia and Kurds
rule Iraq, the country will never be safe and stable, not for hundreds of
years," said Sheikh Abd al-Karim al-Qubaysi, a prominent Sunni cleric in
Baghdad. "This is not a threat. The Sunnis are not declaring war. We always
call for brotherhood and dialogue. But we will not allow anyone to cancel
out our role in Iraq. Just as Iraq needs Shia clerics and leaders, so Iraq
needs Sunni clerics and leaders. There must be a balance between the two.
Iraq will never calm down unless the two sides are equal."
The main reason for Shiite magnanimity toward the occupation forces is the
expectation that they will reap the rewards in the new Iraq by virtue of
their superior numbers. Indeed, it is only the powerful Shiite clergy that
is keeping the community in check. The average Iraqi Shiite has as little
regard for his occupiers as his Sunni countrymen. It would be a serious
mistake to assume that Shiite quiescence is a sign of approval for the
occupation. "Patience has its limits and we are waiting because we are tired
of seeing tanks and soldiers and listening to the sounds of explosions,"
Sheikh al-Awadi said. "The existence of the Islamic clerics exerts a
spiritual control over the people. If these people were released, there is
no one that could stop them. The wisdom of the hawza [the highest institute
of Shia religious learning] is holding the people back."
Shiite political ambitions are on a collision course with Sunni Arab fears
of being left out. If the Shiites fail to receive what they feel is their
due and if the poor state of basic services is not drastically improved,
there is a very real risk of a Shiite resistance emerging. That would
effectively sound the death knell of the foreign military presence in Iraq.
While the current insurgency may be fragmented and ad hoc, the
well-organized Shiite groups -- some of which were trained by the Iranian
military and have combat experience -- would make the occupation untenable.
Yet an Iraq in which the Shiites have a greater say than the Sunnis will
feed the latter's fears of isolation and possible persecution, undermining
any motivation to cooperate with the new order. The Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) and their bosses in Washington and London are aware of this
dilemma. Following Saddam Hussein's capture on December 14, British Prime
Minister Tony Blair made a point of addressing Iraq's Sunnis. "To the
Sunnis, whose allegiance Saddam falsely claimed, I say there is a place for
you playing a full part in a new and a democratic Iraq. To those formally in
Saddam's party, there by force and not by conviction, I say we can put the
past behind us," he declared.
PARAMILITARIES IN PLACE
Yet the policies of the US-British occupation have to some extent served to
reinforce ethnic and sectarian tensions. In northern Iraq, elements of the
peshmerga, the militias of the two Kurdish parties which number 35,000 men
in total, conduct security operations with the US military, usually against
Sunni Arabs. The Kurds remain staunch allies of the occupation authorities,
who view them as a useful ally against Sunni militants. But there is a price
to be paid. The northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, both of which have
mixed Sunni Arab and Kurdish populations, as well as minorities of Turkomans
and Christians, have witnessed spurts of ethnic violence in the past six
months. In early January, several Sunni Arabs in Kirkuk were killed in
clashes with Kurdish militias, furthering resentment among the local Sunni
community which fears Kurdish efforts to incorporate the city and its
petroleum-producing environs into a partially autonomous Kurdish entity.
In early December 2003, US troops accompanied by Kurdish militiamen sealed
off the town of Hawija, 35 miles west of Kirkuk, arresting residents,
seizing weapons and partially bulldozing the house of a suspected militant.
The Sunni Arab residents of Hawija viewed the day-long operation in ethnic
terms, arguing that the Kurds were seeking to incorporate the town into the
Kurdish area. At times, the occupation authorities can appear surprisingly
oblivious to the consequences of their actions. For example, in December,
the US military announced a plan to establish a new battalion composed of
volunteers drawn from mainly Shiite and Kurdish militias to conduct
counter-insurgency operations. The militias slated to participate in the new
battalion include the Badr Brigades, the peshmerga of the two main Kurdish
parties, and the military wings of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by
Ahmad Chalabi, a Shiite businessman close to the Pentagon, and the Iraqi
National Accord of Iyad Allawi, another Shiite and former exile with ties to
the CIA and the State Department. The leaders of all five parties sit on the
Iraqi Governing Council.
Back on August 31, 2003, Chalabi had written an editorial for the Washington
Post urging the US to put INC and Kurdish paramilitaries to work helping the
Marines find what were then still known as "regime remnants." The idea was
summarily dismissed at the time, but five months later, the US adopted it.
This plan immediately came under fire from Sunnis who viewed the
Shiite-Kurdish military unit in sectarian terms. "This organization put
forward by the political parties is a bomb that could explode at any time,"
said Sheikh Abd al-Karim Qubaysi, a Sunni cleric. In fact, the battalion
would probably have a negligible impact on the insurgency. But its planned
creation unnecessarily reinforced Sunni Arab fears of isolation and
persecution.
VICIOUS CYCLE
The US military's counter-insurgency tactics in the "Sunni triangle" north
and west of Baghdad is having a similar effect. It is not lost on the Iraqis
that the US military has embraced some of the tactics used by the Israeli
army in the West Bank and Gaza. Massive displays of firepower, sealing off
villages with razor wire, mass arrests and bulldozing houses of suspected
militants have become commonplace. Sunni mosques have been raided and senior
clerics detained. While those tactics have helped temporarily reduce the
number (if not the lethality) of attacks against US troops in the "Sunni
triangle," they have only increased the sense of resentment among Sunnis
toward the occupation. The Americans are falling into the same vicious cycle
that ensnared the Israeli army in south Lebanon in the early 1980s: cracking
down on the guerrillas fuels support for the resistance, which leads to more
repressive measures, and on and on. The US army views its counter-insurgency
efforts largely in military terms. However, political measures are equally,
if not more, important for diminishing the violence of opposition. The
efforts of the CPA are concentrated on the quite different goal of managing
the transition to an indigenous interim government, selected by complicated
caucuses, on the White House's electoral timetable. But the new Sunni shura
council has echoed the demand, widespread among the Shiites, for direct
elections.
Unless Sunni Arabs feel they have a stake in the new Iraq, it is difficult
to see how their various kinds of resistance to the military occupation and
its political program can be defeated. The signs for the future, as the
Sunnis organize explicitly under the sectarian banner, are not encouraging.
Juan Cole of the University of Michigan voiced the worries of many Iraq
watchers when he observed upon the announcement of the Clear Victory
Movement: "That's all we need, another communally based militia."
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For background on the sectarian-ethnic composition of the Iraqi Governing
Council, see Raad Alkadiri and Chris Toensing, "The Iraqi Governing
Council's Sectarian Hue," Middle East Report Online, August 20, 2003.
For background on Shiite aspirations, see Juan Cole, "Shiite Religious
Parties Fill Vacuum in Southern Iraq," Middle East Report Online, April 22,
2003.
