Iraq 1920-2007

Ffrom iraqi society to societies in iraq

At the beginning of 2007, two issues have become clear: (1) the notion of an Iraqi national community has hit an all-time low and (2) the day by day situation for Iraq s inhabitants is now determined on the neighborhood, town, region, and community levels.

The British occupation of the area in 1918, which had until then been part of the Ottoman Empire, and the subsequent decision by the Versailles Conference to join the three provinces of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul into the state "Iraq" under British mandate directly caused an uprising in which merchants, clergy, and tribes from all religious denominations and ethnic backgrounds joined together. This "Revolution of 1920" was the seminal event for the genesis of an "Iraqi" national identity.

The development of the Iraqi armed forces under British tutelage in such a way that the officer corps was predominantly of Sunni Arab and the ranks of Shi ite Arab background meant that the principals of the 1958 revolution, like other revolutions of the time carried out by the military, were predominantly Sunni Arab.

However, the Arab nationalist outlook of the Iraqi political leaders, which was shared by the rank and file of the political organizations as well as the overall population, that quickly promoted the idea of Iraq as the cradle and heart of the Arab world made the 1960s and 70s the "golden era" of (Arab) Iraqi nationalism.

While the vision of turning Kurds into Iraqis, following every nation-state s inherent logic that all inhabitants should be members of the nation, may always have been a pipedream



would never have gone away and a harking back to a glorious Arab past held little appeal for Kurds -, among the Arab population the feeling of being Arab/Iraqi first and member of some ethno-sectarian group second developed so far that in greater towns and cities mixed marriages became common and children didn t even know what denomination their parents had. Baghdad, and with it also Iraq, became one of the centers of a secular Arab culture that found its expressions in literature, music, and visual arts.

The Kurds, while not giving up on the goal of attaining an independent Kurdistan at some point in the future, were willing to accept a form of autonomy within Iraq, which eventually may well have developed into a kind of Iraqi-Kurdish civic identity. However, the beginnings of the Arabization project in the early 1970s - answering the Kurdish revolts of the 1960s and trying to counterbalance the 1970 Autonomy Agreement - and the repression after the 1975 Algiers Agreement showed that the central government saw itself as Arab and treated the Iraqi citizens of Kurdish ethnicity primarily as a disloyal (Kurdish) ethnic group within the boundaries of the (Arab) Iraqi nation. Subsequent actions on both sides only hardened the rift and resulted in a complete separation of Kurdish and Arab inhabitants of Iraq - in large part physically, but even in mixed areas (like Baghdad) at least on the level of identification and perception of oneself and others.

Also in 1975, the Iraqi government banned the annual (Shi ite) procession from Najaf to Karbala as part of the policy against the (Shi ite Islamist) Da wa Party, leading to the Safar Intifada in 1977 and the arrest and, in 1980, execution of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, the leading Shi ite religious figure in Iraq. However, while these events certainly protracted Shi ite religious opposition to the Ba th regime, they did not result in a widespread, popular alienation of Iraqi Shi ites. This is best evidenced by the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran War: The Iraqi regime s stylization of the conflict as "Arab vs. Persian", through the usage of such symbols as "The Battle of Qadisiya", seems to have worked as rank and file of the Iraqi army, most of them Shi ites, fought well and there were no instances of "refusal to fight Shi ite brothers." The Iranian attempts to induce Shi ite Iraqis to put sectarian before national identity, such the usage of Shi ite religious symbols like "Karbala", did not produce any tangible results.

By 1991 this situation had clearly changed. General exhaustion from the Iraq-Iran War and the - for Iraqi citizens - surprising collapse of the Iraqi military during the liberation of Kuwait by allied forces paved the ground for the popular support of revolts in the (Kurdish) north and (Shi ite) south of the country. While the uprisings in the South were not couched in religious terms, it was Shi ite Islamist groups (Da wa and SCIRI) who provided organizational structures and leadership. The Iraqi central government, having started to adopt Islamic symbolism (for ex. the phrase "Allahu Akbar" in the flag), treated the 1991 uprisings in the South and Center as Shi ite revolts. Just as Iraqi citizens of Kurdish descent were perceived as "Kurds", now the citizens who happened to fall under the category "Shi ites" were primarily treated as members of that community and Shi ite religious personae were seen and treated as community leaders. This official policy emphasized communal over national or civic identity, enhanced any already existing perceptional differences between the members of various religious communities, and made Iraqis of Shi ite background more susceptible to Shi ite communalist ideas. Saddam s policy of elevating his relatives and others who hailed from the area of his hometown Tikrit to high offices enhanced the Sunni Arab slant of the regime.

Thus, when the 2003 Iraq War started, the country s population was already deeply segregated along communal lines.

After the war, when the allied forces set up a new administration, the issue of communalism could have been addressed. The U.S. and allied leaderships could have promoted unifying, national groups and countermanded centrifugal forces in order to overcome the existing rifts and stem the sectarianist tide. Ethno-sectarian identities were strong, but it was still a far way from there to a civil war.

Instead, the American administration and their allies viewed the Iraqi population through the prism of ethno-religious sectarianism and adopted the notion that Iraqi society is fundamentally made up and thus characterized by a plethora of distinct sectarian groups. Hence, the members of the first Administrative Council were selected according to their ethno-religious identity, in order to achieve full representation of all groups. This cemented the communalist system in Iraq and enhanced the self-perception of Iraqi society as a sectarian one. Political groups working along communalist lines were free to propagate their views, non-communalist groups were sidelined, and those Iraqis who hadn t already subscribed to a sectarian worldview now came to take it up or were forced to follow and abide by this dominant trend. Many of those who did not want to go down that path emigrated.

This period saw the spread of a distinct communalist identity among the majority of the Sunni Arab population. Just as the Shi ite Arabs came to identify primarily according to their "Shi ite-ness" in the 1990s, now the approach towards Sunni Arabs based on their "Sunni-ness" resulted in this group s adoption of the communal marker as the primary identity and the proliferation of a Sunni Arab politics. This was exacerbated by the activities of Sunni Islamist groups who spent considerable energy on convincing their potential constituency of communalism.

In that context, the role of local, regional, and international media in spreading the image of Iraq (and, indeed, the whole Middle East) as a society fundamentally made up of distinct and separate ethno-religious groups, as well as the proliferation of openly partisan mass media should not be overlooked and cannot be underestimated.

The clear and openly sectarian violence, the politics of public communalism, the official treatment of people who are not members of one s own group as "others", etc. - all of this has resulted in today s situation: Sectarianist politics are the dominant, if not hegemonic, force and the vast majority of the population strongly identifies along communal lines. There is, thus, little of an "Iraqi nation" to speak of.

The political structures (executive, legislative) have not been changed to suit a sectarian system, like for ex. in Lebanon. But political activity is de facto proceeding along a Kurdish-Shi ite-Sunni organization of the country.

Political actors and groups do not participate on the national level - the Iraqi parliament, the government, and the central state s administration - with the goal of a "national project" but in order to ensure that one s own community and sub-clientele receives as much as possible from those resources that are (still?) under the aegis of the central government in Baghdad and to protect one s own group against discrimination by others. Thus, the Kurdish representatives in Baghdad are not interested in the future of the non-Kurdish areas, but use their strength in the parliament and government to secure the post-2003 Kurdish autonomy and gain Kirkuk for the Kurdistan Region. Similarly, the Shi ite parties are primarily pushing for a pacification of Baghdad and the solidification of security in the center and south of Iraq. Sunni Arab parties are, at this point, focusing their efforts on avoiding that the regions inhabited by their community will become politically, and thus economically, marginalized.

The communalist violence, which uses ethnic cleansing to create "clean" areas, promotes this situation and further cements it.

For the inhabitants of Iraq the de facto dissolution of the central government and administration translates into the devolution of political organization to the sub-national level. Most, if not all, aspects of life are dependent on local or regional powers: security, economy, political life, personal freedoms, social norms, even jurisdiction. Whatever the Iraqi constitution or national laws may stipulate - absent a central government apparatus that can enforce them and to which citizens can appeal they are becoming irrelevant.

Thus, whereas the international focus is on the parliament and the central government in Baghdad, on the various plans for establishing security and national reconciliation, the reality is that the U.S. and allied troops have become sidelined without any control over the situation and are being played by their own allies to further communalist goals. And in the meantime, towns and regions throughout the country are developing within their own contexts and conditions.

For instance, while SCIRI, Da wa, and Muqtada al-Sadr s movement are the Shi ite groups who dominate the national news, in southern Iraq the Fadhila Party plays a major role and is dominating Basra. Also, throughout central and southern Iraq the political parties exercise control through local elites, who thus have considerable influence on the actual implementation of policy.

Even in the (today seemingly unimaginable) case of a cessation of violence and rebuilding of the country the separation of Iraqi communities on an ethno-sectarian basis will persevere for a long time to come and the fundamental aim of politics will be the protection of communal interests and security.

For all intents and purposes, Iraqi society has become many societies in Iraq.

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