Monday, May 07, 2007
Transcending the Sunni-Shiite division, and not
Hussain Abdul-Hussain, an Iraqi media analyst and former reporter for Lebanon's Daily Star, has an op-ed in today's New York Times that gets to the heart of the split between the Sunnis and the Shiites in Iraq. It starts with a childhood memory:
In 1982, our second-grade teacher at Baghdad’s Mansour school made the following announcement: “The year-end play is about our war with the Persian enemy. The top 20 students in class will play Iraqis; the bottom 20 will play Persians.”
This was at the height of the Iran-Iraq war, and during our first rehearsal the students assigned to play Persians — that is, Iranians — broke out in tears. Although many of the children were, like me, from Shiite families, they insisted that they were Iraqis first, that they loved their Sunni-led country and did not want to play the role of the enemy.
After some negotiations, the girls were spared and only the boys from the lower half were selected to play the roles of the “soldiers of Khomeini the hypocrite.” Their script was scrapped, and instead they were told simply to run across stage as the rest of us, playing the role of the Iraqi Army, mowed them down in battle.
But the play did not end when the curtain fell. Those of us from the Iraqi cast took to bragging and, in the tradition of schoolchildren everywhere, bullying the “Persians.” With tears in their eyes, they repeatedly had to beg the teacher to make us stop.
Abdul-Hussain calls his childhood friend Ayad, a Shiite who, like Abdul-Hussain, was at the top of the class and therefore got to play an Iraqi general 25 years ago. The friend is a different person today:
Ayad owns a hotel in the southern city of Karbala, home to two of Shiism’s most important shrines. His wife and two daughters wear veils. He believes that the violence in Iraq is a Sunni and American conspiracy against Shiites, and he argues that Iran is the best ally of Iraqi Shiites.
Ayad has two elder brothers. One was conscripted during the Iran-Iraq war and received medals for his courageous performance in battle. The other ran away when he was drafted and ended up living as a refugee in Iran. However, he was treated poorly there, living in poverty and under permanent suspicion, so after some years he fled to Beirut. After the Americans ousted Saddam Hussein, he returned to Iraq, and now works at Ayad’s hotel.
“We think America did a great thing by toppling Saddam,” Ayad told me, speaking for himself and his family. “But now they should hand us the country and leave.”
I asked him whether he fears that an American withdrawal might allow the Sunni insurgents to strike harder in Shiite areas. “We outnumber them,” he said. “And with the support of our Iranian brothers, we can take the Sunnis.”
“And then what?” I replied.
“Then the Shiites will rule Iraq.”
Under questioning from his old friend Hussain, Ayad argues that religious identity is more important than national identity. “When we fought the Persians during the 1980s, we were wrong. We’re Shiites before being Iraqis. Sunnis invented national identity to rule us.” At this, Hussain gives up:
At this point, I understood that it was pointless to argue further. When the Baathist regime collapsed, I initially felt that there was a good chance for national unity, that Sunnis and Shiites would band together in the absence of the dictator who had played them against each other. Talking to Ayad, I realized how wrong I had been.
Because our generation will fight over the interpretation of this war for decades to come, the first really good history of the period will have to be written by somebody who today is not politically aware. He or she is probably in primary school somewhere. When that book is written, though, I predict that Hussain's miscalculation will be seen to have been quite common among the Westernized Arabs who informed so much of our understanding of the region before the war.
4 Comments:
By 
, at
Mon May 07, 09:59:00 AM:
The Democrats put "Socialism" over Nationalism; why shouldn't the Iraqis put "Their" Religion over Borders?
By , at
Mon May 07, 11:57:00 AM:
Ayad and his ilk will welcome our going and the Iranians coming until they come to realize what a bad trade they've transacted. Then they will complain bitterly that we should never have left them to that fate and beg us to come save them--again. Probably about the time Joe Biden and John Edwards start complaining about our nation-building efforts in Darfur, Obama will start making the case that we have a moral duty to go back into Iraq. Good luck convincing the neo-cons, people.
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Tue May 08, 07:29:00 PM:
Using a single personal example to try to demonstrate the existence of a phenomenon is flawed. Some Iraqi Shi'ite really do want a theocracy, Iran-style. Most do not. Even those who work with Iran now don't necessarily want to be dominated by Iran; they just want the help.
There's plenty of precedent for this interpretation from the Pelopennesian War to the Roman Empire to the Cold War; ally with a greater to power to achieve your goals. That control by this power often follows is either overlooked or secondary, but is not a goal in and of itself.
In sum; being a Shi'ite nationalist is not the same thing as being an Iranian nationalist.
By Jason Pappas, at
Tue May 08, 10:17:00 PM:
A Marine Colonel returning from Iraq told me he was shocked at the hatred. I said, “Between Sunni and Shiite?” Not just that, he said but between every possible permutation of groupings: religious, regional, tribal, etc. He’s said he’s never seen such hatred anywhere in the world.
Nevertheless, groupings and regroupings continually re-occur between people who say they hate each other today, but join together tomorrow, then stab each other in the back on the next day.
I expect an Arab Shiite Iraq will switch allegiance among the various groups over time as circumstance requires. Expression of hate shouldn’t be taken too seriously; it is just a way of talking in Arab lands.
Al Qaeda is a case in point: Wahabbi who turn against their Saudi government for not being Salafi enough but then offers to fight Saddam in 1991 and yet calls for the defense of Saddam in 2003. Today, they receive help from Iran but attack the Shiite in Iraq as worse than infidels.
How about the Assad dynasty in Syria? They join with Baathis, Sunni, Shiite, Saudi, Iranian, and just about anyone as they need.
Anyone who tries to deduce possible alliances from first principles hasn’t been paying attention. The morale of the story is just don’t turn you back.
