The division between Sunni and Shia in Iraq is nowhere near as profound as western commentators — particularly American journalists would have you believe.

As a religion of law, Islam is and always has been inherently involved with governance and is thus innately political. For the majority of Muslims, Islam is “the blueprint of a social order” [Gellner], which:

  1. Postulates a community of believers (the umma).
  2. Contains and transmits a body of legal prescriptions.
  3. Contains and transmits a body of moral injunctions.

For present purposes it is sufficient to understand that the dispute between the Shia and the Sunni is primarily one of governance. a legal one about who is the legitimate successor to the prophet Mohammed. At the time of Mohammed’s death the majority of Muslims favoured Abu Bakr as his successor passing over Ali ibn Abu Talib (Imam Ali). A minority of the Muslim community felt that Ali ibn Abu Talib was the rightful successor and remained loyal to him and to his successors. Indeed the term Shia literally means “the Party” or “the faction” and in early days the Shia were referred to as “Shi’at Ali,” — “The Party of Ali.”

Sectarian bitterness between Shia and Sunni in Iraq intensified under Ottoman rule. The Ottomans were devoutly Sunni and highly militaristic. Their empire wasn’t a state in the way in which we think of a state, rather it was a series of interlocking military commands. that saw itself as a frontier state dedicated to protecting the Muslim heartlands. It saw itself as being surrounded on all sides and under threat on its western frontiers by Christian Europe, to the north by Christian Russia, while the rise of the Saffavid dynasty in Persia (Iran) their military rivalry with the Ottomans and their declaration of Shiism as the state religion intensified the Ottoman feeling of being surrounded. This led to Ottoman oppression of the Shia within their domains.

The dismemberment of the Ottoman empire by the victorious allies at the end of World War I led to the British taking over Iraq.

The British adopted their standard technique for governing their colonial subjects of “divide and rule.” They deliberately fostered divisions by favouring the minority communities such as the Sunni, Iraqi Christians, Iraqi Jews, Assyrians, Shabaks,and Mandaeans, while discriminating against the Shia and the Kurds, and often treating them very harshly.

The British colonial policy of “divide et impera” by fostering sectarian and or ethnic bitterness was notably less successful in Iraq than elsewhere. Iraqis had then and have now, a strong sense of being specifically Iraqi, and referred to themselves as “Iraqis” and the country in which they lived as “Iraq.”

Thus while the British colonialists did manage to deepen ethnic/sectarian divisions to an extent the policy failed to prevent the rise of secular nationalism and their expulsion in 1958. The nationalists successfully appealed to a specific national identity which transcended communal considerations and developed a powerful support for national unity. However the fact that most of the officer corps, civil service, and the business elite were Sunni, meant that under Saddam Hussein the Ba’athist regime quickly turned to discriminating in favour of the minority communities much as the British done.

Saddam Hussein’s secular regime deliberately used emphasising ethnic and religious differences as a strategy of rule. The Saddam regime reserved its worst treatment for the Kurds, who with intermittent support from Iran, Israel and Washington engaged in armed struggle for autonomy.

Saddam’s regime also suppressed a Shiite uprising in the South of the country after the 1991 Gulf War. The Shiites and the marsh Arabs rose at the urging of the American government who promptly abandoned them to their fate.

After the end of the first Gulf war the US and UK seeking to weaken and contain the Saddam regime the established “no-fly zones” over Iraq, ostensibly to protect vulnerable civilians in the mostly Kurdish north and the mostly Shia south. While the protection of the vulnerable was a no doubt welcome side effect that wasn’t the “no fly zone’s” primary function. The primary function was to weaken the regime which was accomplished by effectively dividing Iraq into three areas.

To the north the Kurdish militia — the Peshmerga — became militarily dominant an uneasy alliance between the two main Kurdish parties and their Peshmerga followers led to the establishment of a quasi autonomous regional government. This led to increased Kurdish regional/ethnic separatism a trend exacerbated by the UN’s Oil-for-Food Programme. Under severe American pressure the UN agreed to treat the Kurdish north separately from the rest of Iraq passing monies from the sale of oil to the Kurdish autonomous government. It was at this time that Kurdish politicians started to lobby the American rightwingers pressing for the “Iraq problem” to be solved by creating three distinct nations within a weak federal state.

The US led invasion and occupation of Iraq has dramatically deepened sectarian tensions. The Americans wanted to establish a pro-occupation government that would inter alia:

  1. Request American assistance to “bring order” to the country.
  2. Grant immunity to American military personnel and contractors for crimes committed
  3. Grant permission for the US to establish permanent bases in Iraq.
  4. Sign production sharing agreements with American oil companies.

    and;

  5. Open the Iraqi economy to imports from American companies.

To achieve this it searched for Iraqi political actors to form a local government which would act as an adjunct to the occupation. Local secular political forces were marginalised by the American occupiers who did not want people who it deemed to be too nationalist in the Iraqi government it sought to establish. Instead it sought out religious parties, groupings, and politicians who it believed would be less experienced and more compliant.

Intensifying Iraqi resistance to the American occupation of Iraq strengthened the occupying forces opposition to Iraqi nationalism in all its forms. The US occupiers aggressively promoted a view of Iraqi politics that focussed entirely upon ethnic/religious questions and completely ignored the long tradition of secular nationalism. Moreover the American occupation government ignored except at the crudest of levels the complex ethnic mix and diversity found in many Iraqi cities and regions, such as Mosul, Basrah, Kirkuk, and of course Baghdad. A compliant western mass media in particular the news wire and television services accepted this paradigm without question. When questions were to be asked or interviews to be undertaken a variety of “experts” from right-wing think tanks were available for interview and the production of a snappy soundbite in support of American policies on demand. That many of these pundits had little experience of Iraq and that many of them could not even speak Arabic never occurred to western journalists. Moreover the US occupation’s military tactic, of using Kurds and Shia to police Sunni towns, worsened relations between religious communities thereby seemingly validating the idea that Iraqis were incapable of living together. That many of these local troops, in particular those drawn from the Peshmerga had a revenge agenda of their own never seems to have occurred to most American officers in the field until it was too late.

Sectarian and ethnic differences while heretofore present were not regarded as overwhelmingly important by most Iraqis. However the policies and actions of the American occupation of Iraq dramatically worsened what tensions did exist. Many secular and Iraqis and a large part of the Christian community have now fled. The economic distress, and the violence over which the occupation presides have stoked the tensions. Competing political visions of Iraq are increasingly becoming associated with particular religious parties and the resulting political feuds could easily degenerate into whole scale violence and ethnic cleansing similar to that experienced in former Yugoslavia and Lebanon. This toxic situation is not yet inevitable but a prolonged and violent occupation by the country that has done so much to foster these development will serve only to deepen sectarian division and intensify animosities a hasty departure will give all sides in Iraq the space they need to reestablish a modus vivendi.

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