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VILLAGEAugust/September
I
RAQ came shuddering back into the
news this summer after the spectacu-
lar conquest by ISIS (The Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant, now preferring the term
‘The Islamic State’) of Mosul, the country’s
second city. This was closely followed by the
fall of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s birthplace,
and threats to a petrified Baghdad itself. As
Village went to press it was being reported
that of the majority ethnic Kurds had
been slaughtered in Sinjar with some bur-
ied alive and women kidnapped as
slaves. The region is bracing itself for fur-
ther US and possibly British intervention in
defence of displaced and murdered minori-
ties, including many stranded on the slopes
of Mount Sinjar. The scale of the carnage
is untold. The New Yorker quotes an Iraqi
named Karim: “In one day, they killed more
than two thousand Yazidi in Sinjar, and the
whole world says, ‘Save Gaza, save Gaza’.
ISIS has laid claim to global leader-
ship of the Muslim ‘Umma’, declaring its
elusive leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi the
new caliph, a position relinquished by the
Ottoman Emperor in . The organisa-
tion also sought to repudiate the nefarious
Sykes-Picot Treaty, long viewed by
Arabs as the first, among many, betrayals
by Western powers of the region’s right to
self-determination. Sykes-Picot was a secret
Anglo-French agreement signed during
World War I which agreed to the dismem-
berment of the former Ottoman Empire and
its apportionment between the British and
French at the expense of their erstwhile
Arab allies.
The violent contagion of Syria’s internal
conflict spread beyond its borders, reviving
Iraq’s seemingly immutable sectarian divi-
sion between Sunni and Shi’a. But simplistic
Western analysis of these conflicts often
serves to reinforce destructive sectarian
identities.
In Iraq as elsewhere, identity is plastic.
% of Iraq’s population of over million
is Arabic-speaking with Kurds constituting
the bulk of the other ethno-linguistic groups
including, for example, , Yazidis.
Muslim Arab Iraqis may in different cir-
cumstances define their identity as Arab
in common with other Arab people. They
could also assert an Islamic identity but
this is complicated by the division between
the Shi’a majority and Sunni minority. They
could also claim to be simply Iraqi in com-
mon with those living within the borders of
Iraq. To complicate matters further many
Iraqis actually identify most clearly with
their tribe. The artificiality of Iraq’s borders
has made the task of maintaining the integ-
rity of the Iraqi state a bloody business.
ISIS seems to be skilfully forging an
Arab-Islamic identity more focused than
Al-Qaeda’s global pretensions. But ISIS is
unlikely to advance much further in Iraq due
to the presence in that country of a substan-
tial Shi’a majority.
In terms of the Sunni-Shi’i divide a survey
of Iraqi history reveals shifting allegiances.
The foremost historian of early twentieth
century Iraq, Hanna Batatu records how
“under the Ottomans Iraq consisted to no
little extent of distinct, self-absorbed, feebly
interconnected societies”. This social strati-
fication was given legal recognition by the
Millet system of communal representation,
though unlike Jews and Christians the Shi’a,
INTERNATIONAL IRAQ
Isis
crisis
No solution to Iraq,
but recognition of the
complexity of history
and demography
would be a start.
By Frank Armstrong
the
meaning
of terror
August/September VILLAGE
who were considered heretical Muslims,
were not accorded this privilege, and were
forced to operate under Sunni sharia law.
Nonetheless, firm social bound-
aries divided the Sunni and Shi’a
communities: “Socially they sel-
dom mixed, and as a rule did not
intermarry. In mixed cities they
lived in separate quarters and led
their own separate lives”.
After the First World War, the
British became rulers of the new
state of Iraq whose borders were
an artificial construct born of
imperialist designs on the coun-
try’s oil reserves, and cloaked by
a League of Nations Mandate.
The first colonial administra-
tors regarded the Sunni as a more
rational branch of Islam and a
Sunni King, Faysal, was installed
as king after independence was
finally granted in . According to the
historian David Pool it was believed that
“the result of Shi’a involvement in political
office could only be theocratic, fanatical,
xenophobic rule”. The British thus carried
over Ottoman social stratifications into the
post-colonial era by keeping the Shi’a at a
remove from the resources of an increas-
ingly oil-rich state.
As a result, despite amounting to per-
cent of the population, during the monarchy
the Shi’a filled a mere percent of govern-
ment posts, while only four of of Iraq’s
prime ministers were Shi’a. Moreover, invis-
ible obstacles were mounted to exclude Shi’a
from membership of the Military Academy
making it impossible for them to become
officers.
But despite the persistence of Sunni domi-
nance Iraqi society was moving away from
the legacy of empire and colonialism: by the
s Sunnis were giving their daughters in
marriage to Shi‘a “when only a few decades
before the impediment to such intermar-
riage seemed insurmountable”.
In a bloody coup King Faisal II,
along with other members of family, was
executed. The resolution of Iraq’s internal
contradictions seemed to express itself in
the half-Arab-Sunni, half-Kurdish Shi‘i par-
entage of General Qasim, prime minister of
Iraq from -. This period, however,
represented a false dawn as the genuine and
widespread hopes for a radical break with
the past and for the creation of a more open
society that were awakened by the events of
were gradually disappointed in the
following decade.
During the monarchy and beyond, many
Shi’a had identified with the pan-Arab cause.
Arab Nationalist parties contained Shi’a. So
did the Ba‘th Party, which as late as
had a majority of Shi’a in its top command
and probably among its active
membership.
However, the prevalence
of Shi’a membership of the
Communist Party was taken by
many Sunni propagandists as
evidence of their opposition to
the pan-Arab cause. The popu-
larity of Marxism was connected
to the decline in religious partic-
ipation in the s among the
Shi’a. This decline can be dis-
cerned in both the ‘popular’ and
the ‘juristic’ forms of the reli-
gion; with the decreased fervour
of the ritual Muharram observ-
ances, and a drop in the numbers
of religious scholars.
Under Qasim there was
evidence that the state was taking a ‘sec-
ularising’ path: family law reform, which
included equal inheritance for women and
the imposition of monogamy, for example,
was a shock to the clerical class and con-
servatives in general. Thus, the demise of
the monarchy threw the clerical class into a
headlong encounter with secular change in
social, economic and legal areas. Moreover,
some of Qasim’s socialist measures were to
the detriment of Shi’a landed interests, giv-
ing rise to a convergence of interest between
certain politically minded clerics (the
ulama) and wealthy Shi’a. The politicisation
of the ulama was also linked to the exam-
ple of the stand of Ayatollah Borujerdi (the
supreme Shi’a authority at the time) against
the Shah’s land reform in Persia. It was in
these circumstances that the Shi’a Da’wa
Party emerged in .
The bloody overthrow of General Qasim
eventually gave way to the era of the ‘Arif
brothers who ruled Iraq from -. This
epoch witnessed a reassertion of vested
interests, as the ‘Arif openly relied on estab-
lished systems of patronage.
Thus the politicisation of religion and
the open sectarianism of the government
created the climate for political allegiance
based on religious adherence, and it was
the Dawa party, among other Shi’a political
movements that provided the main oppo-
sition to the Ba’th under Saddam Hussein
who formally came to power in after
almost a decade being the power behind the
throne. Political Islam was given further
impetus by the rise to power of Ayotallah
Khomeini in neighbouring Iran.
However, the sectarian divide was never
entirely straightforward. Thus, rates of
Shi’a desertion from the army during the
Iran-Iraq were probably little different
from those of their Sunni compatriots, and
considerably less than those from largely
Kurdish units. This has led Batatu to argue
that the war brought the Sunni and Shi’a
closer together “if only by dint of their com-
mon suffering, and assisted the progress of
Iraq towards national coherence”
During the s and into this century
Saddam’s regime attempted to connect with
a general rise in popular piety, that led to the
launching of faith campaigns. In Baghdad
alone, more than grand mosques were
built for a starving nation, under sanctions.
However, religion is a difficult instrument
of power to control, and once the genie had
been let out of the bottle it derived an ener-
getic life of its own. Nonetheless, with many
mixed marriages and areas a sectarian
clash was not inevitable after the invasion
of Iraq.
To explain Iraq’s continued troubles it is
worth examining more pertinent failures in
the aftermath of the American invasion that
replicated the damage caused by Britain’s
colonial policy. Reversing the British policy
of supporting the Sunni, the invasion was
styled as a liberation of the Shi’a as opposed
to of all Iraqis.
Moreover, the anarchy that resulted from
insufficient troop numbers left a power
vacuum that religious leaders such as the
Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr were only too
happy to fill. Also, a failure to
address Sunni grievances after
rapid de-Ba’thification created
the conditions for the arrival of
leaders such as Al-Zarqawi and of
Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the descent
of Iraq into horrific sectarian
conflict. ISIS is exploiting these
tensions and offers the promise of
a radical re-drawing of the Middle
Eastern map under the rule of a
divinely-ordained caliph.
But it seems highly unlikely
that any re-drawing of borders
will be allowed to occur if only
because of US political sensi-
tivities. Maps of course are also
generally re-drawn in blood.
No obvious solution exists to
Iraq’s continued troubles, but at
least Western observers should recognise
the complexity of Iraqi society. It is also
apparent that without resolution of the
Arab-Israeli conflict the role of Western
powers, the US in particular, will continue
to be viewed with suspicion. The manifold
Israeli abuses in Gaza, undeterred by the
US, will not help. •
Reversing the
British policy of
supporting the
Sunni, the 2003
US-led invasion
was styled as
a liberation
of the Shi’a as
opposed to of
all Iraqis
“
It seems highly
unlikely that
any re-drawing
of borders will
be allowed to
occur if only
because of
US political
sensitivities
“
