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+--- Thread: Iraq: The Sunni-shi'ite Power Play (/showthread.php?tid=8105)
Iraq: The Sunni-shi'ite Power Play - Deen - 11-23-2004
THE ROVING EYE
The Sunni-Shi'ite power play
By Pepe Escobar
Iraqis are not fighting one another - at least not yet: they are fighting
the occupying power, although with different strategies. After Fallujah,
this situation is about to change.
For the average Iraqi, Sunni or Shi'ite - and Americans underestimate Iraqi
national pride at their peril - there's no question: the current Sunni
resistance morally prevails, because they are Iraqis fighting an
invader/occupier. This means the US occupation in essence lost even before
it began. Defining the resistance as "anti-Iraqi forces" - as the Pentagon
does - is nonsense: they are a legitimate popular resistance movement, while
the US-trained Iraqi police are largely identified for what they are -
collaborationists doing the dirty work of Iraqification, the Mesopotamian
version of failed Vietnamization. Hundreds of these US-trained forces ran
away before the battle even started in Fallujah. No wonder: they were
resistance moles. And most of Mosul's police also defected.
The resistance is now spread out all over the Sunni heartland -
contradicting US marine talk that the assault on Fallujah "broke the back of
the resistance". Added proof that the resistance is indigenous is that of
more than 1,000 men between the ages of 15 and 55 who the Pentagon says were
captured in Fallujah - there's no independent confirmation; only 15 have
been confirmed as "foreign fighters", according to General George Casey, the
top US ground commander. And these "foreigners" are mostly Saudis,
Jordanians or Syrians, described by Iraqis themselves as "our Arab
brothers", members of the large Arab nation. The real "foreign fighters" in
Iraq are the Americans.
Anger in Sunni-dominated Baghdad has reached a fever pitch, as an Iraqi
physician told a radio station he has examined bodies of people who seem to
have died of banned chemical weapons: the bodies are swollen, are yellowish
and have no smell. Asia Times Online sources in Baghdad say that people in
Fallujah believe the Americans may have used chemical weapons in the bombing
of Jolan, ash-Shuhada and al-Jubayl neighborhoods. They also say the
neighborhoods were showered with cluster bombs.
The political war
The Sunni Iraqi resistance is battling a political war. For the mujahideen,
the stakes are clear: under the current US-imposed situation, the Shi'ites
will be in power after elections scheduled for January. Saif al-Deen
al-Baghdadi, a hardcore Sunni Salafi and top member of the resistance in
Mosul, has qualified the Iyad Allawi government as representing "the
fundamentalist right wing of the White House and not the Iraqi people".
Apart from the "clash of fundamentalisms" implicit in this observation, the
fact is that for the resistance, softcore or hardcore, the Shi'ites are
being propelled to power by an alliance of fundamentalists - Washington plus
US-backed Allawi.
The Shi'ites are not doing enough to calm Sunni anger. When Shi'ite leader
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani spoke out against the Fallujah offensive, it
was too late. In fact, the one who spoke was Sistani's top man in Karbala,
Ahmad al-Safi al-Najafi, who told thousands at the Imam Hussein Mosque that
Sistani viewed the assault on Fallujah as he viewed the assault on Najaf: he
favored a peaceful solution, he called for the withdrawal of "foreign
forces" (the Americans) and he condemned the death of innocent civilians.
The Sunni-Shi'ite divide is not monolithic. The powerful Sunni Association
of Muslim Scholars (AMS) - founded after the fall of Saddam Hussein - is
closely coordinating with the lumpenproletariat -based movement of Shi'ite
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
But events in Fallujah have set the political landscape on fire - with the
AMS urging all Iraqis to boycott the January elections. At the lavish
golden-and-marble Umm al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad - built by Saddam and
previously called "Mother of all Battles" - the AMS managed to rally 47
political parties, not only Sunni Islamist but eight Shi'ite parties, one
Christian, the Iraqi Turkmen Front and the Communist Party. Their joint
communique condemns the elections as "imposed by the US-backed interim
government and rejected by a clear majority of political and religious
powers"; stresses that "the US raids against Najaf, Karbala, Samarra, Mosul,
Baghdad and more recently Fallujah represent an obstacle to the political
participation in the occupied country"; and qualifies the attack on Fallujah
as "genocide". The whole idea comes from Sheikh Jawad al-Khalissi, a
Shi'ite, who is a descendent of one of the leaders of the 1920 revolt
against the British colonial power. In Iraq, history does repeat itself in
many ways.
The AMS is making it very clear to all Sunni Iraqis - and to all Iraqis for
that matter - that Fallujah had nothing to do with "stabilizing" the country
before elections, as the Pentagon and Allawi have claimed. And support for
the AMS is increasing fast, especially after the Americans arrested seven of
its leading members. On a parallel front, the Americans also arrested seven
aides to Sheikh al-Hasani, the leader of a splinter group of Muqtada's
movement. The popular response was swift: this past Wednesday more than
3,000 people demonstrated in front of the Green Zone in Baghdad demanding
their release.
To boycott or not to boycott?
What is Muqtada up to? Hashim al-Musawi, one of his top aides, told a crowd
in front of Kufa's mosque this week that they will also boycott the
elections because in Fallujah the Americans "violated all human values
enshrined in the Geneva Convention". This may be a diversionary tactic. Asia
Times Online contacts in Baghdad confirm that Muqtada is frantically
negotiating with Sistani: the crucial point is how many parliament seats
Muqtada will get if he joins a united list of all major Shi'ite parties in
the January elections. The Grand Ayatollah is putting all his efforts to
consolidate this list. And he is adamantly in favor of conducting the
elections on schedule.
The key question is how extensive a Sunni boycott would be. If the absolute
majority of Sunnis - up to 30% of the population - don't vote, plus some
Shi'ite factions, the elections have no legitimacy. The Kurds are also
extremely nervous. With a boycott, most of the 275 seats will be Shi'ite:
the Kurds would get around 30 - with no Sunni Arab allies to counteract what
many in Baghdad are already defining as the tyranny of a Shi'ite majority.
As for Prime Minister Allawi, his Iraqi National Accord is a mixed bag of
Sunni and Shi'ite ex-Ba'athists. Allawi does not want to be part of the
Sistani list. This may be a blessing in disguise for Iraqis, because in this
case Allawi may not even be elected to parliament: his little party has
scant popular legitimacy. And his "political capital" after Fallujah is
zero: not only did he authorize the massacre, but he installed martial law,
muzzled the press and exacerbated the inherent contradiction of his position
- how to behave as a strong leader when you depend on an occupying army.
It's important to note that not a single party - and especially the Shi'ite
parties - represented in Allawi's "cabinet" condemned Fallujah. Their
collective game is to blame the whole disaster on Allawi alone. But that may
not be enough to placate Sunni anger.
At the moment, with fighting in Fallujah still raging, and the resistance
hitting all over the heartland, this is how Sunni Iraq is reading what the
Americans say: If you fight us, we will kill you. And if you don't
participate in our elections, you go to jail. No wonder the resistance keeps
growing.
To stay or to go?
Imagine a Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government next January having to face a
widespread Sunni guerrilla movement with only a ragged bunch of
guerrilla-infiltrated Iraqi security forces. Who're you gonna call? The
marines?
The Sistani-blessed government may ask the Americans to go. The Bush II
administration will obviously say no. The Sistani-blessed government may
launch selected raids against the resistance: not likely to break its back.
Moreover, in the eyes of most Iraqis, the Sistani-blessed government cannot
even afford to not ask the Americans to pack up and go. Sistani knows
Shi'ites are anti-occupation: nobody will tolerate a Sistani-blessed
government "protected" by an occupying army. Not to mention this would prove
the point now stressed by the Sunni resistance: the Shi'ites are allied with
American "fundamentalists".
This leaves an ominous prospect in place: an Iraqi Shi'ite, Sistani-blessed
government fighting a widespread Sunni guerrilla resistance in a bloody
civil war.