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Minorities and the State in the Arab World
Ofra Bengio and Gabriel Ben-Dor (eds.)
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
1999
8. Nation Building in Multiethnic Societies:
The Case of Iraq
Ofra Bengio
At the turn of the twentieth century the fate of Iraq seems dubious. Will it survive into the next century as one unified state, or will it break up into three separate entities? Fear of the latter eventuality, or what has been termed the “Balkanization” or “Lebanonization” of Iraq, mounted significantly in the aftermath of the Shi‘i and Kurdish uprisings (intifadas), which broke out almost simultaneously in March 1991. The two spontaneous uprisings rocked Iraq for nearly a month, pitting the Shi‘is and the Kurds—the majority of Iraq’s population 1 —against the central government in Baghdad.
The intifadas appeared to be extremely dangerous because they took place at one of the most difficult moments of the country’s history (immediately after the Gulf War); because they seemed to have united the Kurdish north and the Shi‘i south against the Sunni center; and because they had all the ingredients of a civil war never before witnessed on such a scale in modern Iraq. Yet as surprising and as traumatic as the intifadas were, they illuminated Iraq’s most endemic problem, namely, that to all intents and purposes it remained a country of three minorities acting with cross purposes: the Arab Sunnis, the dominant minority; the Kurds, the assertive ethnic minority; and the Shi‘is, the politically marginalized minority.
This chapter will examine the status of each of the three from a historical perspective after seventy-five years of statehood; the relationships and interaction among the three; their respective role in strengthening or weakening the state; and the extent to which they have attained their own particular goals. The conclusion will attempt to assess to what extent the ideology of nation building, disseminated from the center, has succeeded in galvanizing Iraqis into a single Iraqi nation and to what extent it has remained a fig leaf for extending the Sunnis’ role as a dominant minority over the other two.
The Sunnis: Perpetuating the Anomaly of the Dominant Minority
The Sunni-led Ba‘thi regime that came to power in 1968 was more dedicated than any of its predecessors to the ideal of Iraqi nation building and state building. Its long tenure in power could have been an important contributing factor to the success of such an endeavor. Yet three decades of rule produced the opposite results: Iraq is further than ever from the ideal of a nation-state. Indeed, it is suspected of being on the verge of social and political disintegration and even of breakup into three separate parts: Sunni, Shi‘i, and Kurdish.
Two sets of problems account for this development: the first is systemic, having to do with the very makeup of the Iraqi state itself; the second is occasional, related to Ba‘thi ideology and policies. As for the former it should be recalled that Iraq lacks what political scientists identify as the cornerstones for the formation of a nation, such as common territory, religion, language, and race. Concerning the territorial framework, it is ironic that both the Sunni Arabs and the Kurds have been challenging it since the framework took shape in 1926: the Sunnis because they sought to include Kuwait in it, and the Kurds because they sought to exclude themselves from Iraq. In this regard it is noteworthy that the Shi‘is appear to be the only element not to have challenged the territorial boundaries of Iraq, presenting themselves as the real Iraqi patriots. However, the Shi‘is do present a problem on another score. Because of the Sunni-Shi‘i cleavage, religion has not served to promote common identity and feelings in Iraq; in fact, it has played the opposite role.
As far as language, race, and common history are concerned, the Kurds differ from the Iraqi Arabs on all these scores. Thus, from the very start a conflict developed in Iraq between two nationalisms in the making, an all-Iraqi one and a Kurdish one, or, in other words, between territorial nationalism disseminated from the center and ethnonationalism disseminated in the north of the country.
Sandwiched between the Kurdish minority and the Shi‘i numerical majority, the Sunnis attempted to promote the ideal of a state that would function as a melting pot for forging a new identity and consciousness for all Iraqis. This ideal, however, was marred by the Sunni concept that the new identity should embody Arab Sunni desires, interests, and ideals, and not necessarily those of the other two groups. In other words, the new “Iraqism” would not be the sum or amalgamation of the three components of the society but would reflect only one of them. Thus, Iraqi nationalism turned out to be but a thin cover for promoting the rule of the dominant minority over the other two. Finally, Iraq was kept together not through the voluntary will of all of its partners but mainly by the force of arms of an external power, namely, Britain—between 1920 and 1932 (the end of the British Mandate) by direct means, and between 1932 and 1958 by indirect ones.
Inheriting all these problems, the Ba‘thi regime adopted policies that further complicated their solution. Ba‘thi efforts at nation building were exclusive, contradictory, extremist, and violent. For one thing, by its very nature the Ba‘thi pan-Arab ideology excluded from its vision the separate identities of both the Kurds and the Shi‘is. For another, Ba‘thi practice realized this ideological tenet to the full, at least as far as the Shi‘is were concerned. Ba‘thi attempts to blur Shi‘i identity were manifested, inter alia, by making the term Shi‘i or Shi‘a almost a taboo in Iraqi discourse. 2
The Ba‘thi treatment of the Kurds was much more complicated but equally detrimental to the creation of an Iraqi nation. Although at the beginning of its rule the Ba‘th recognized the unique national identity of the Kurds within the Iraqi state, it ended up unleashing a genocidal war against them some fifteen years later. 3 Such contradictory and extremist attitudes only served to alienate the Kurds from the Iraqi nation and to encourage them to separate themselves from it. The Ba‘thi policy of excluding the Shi‘is and the Kurds from the mainstream of national identity was accompanied by efforts to discourage contacts and cooperation between these two political minorities. The geographical location of the Sunni Arabs in the center of the country only facilitated their role as a buffer between the Kurdish north and the Shi‘i south. Needless to say, this divide-and-rule policy could hardly contribute to the creation of one united Iraqi nation. As it happened, it was only after the Gulf War that the Shi‘is and the Kurds began to cooperate against the Ba‘th, although so far with no great success.
Another characteristic of the Ba‘thi policies was the use of force and violent means to accelerate the nation-building process, instead of letting natural and gradual processes achieve this goal. Thus, the building of a strong army, the strongest in the country’s history, was to compensate for the weak social, political, and national bonds between the different partners in the state and provide the glue for keeping them together. In a way this was a continuation of the monarchical era, when the country was kept together by force of arms.
Similarly, the wars that Iraq initiated, first against Iran and then against Kuwait, might have been designed to evoke patriotic nationalist feelings among Iraqis of different ethnic groups and religious denominations. In his book on the Second Gulf War, Sa‘d al-Bazzaz, in fact, hinted at this aim, saying that Iraqi politicians and social scientists have regarded the role of war as one of rejuvenating society and promoting solidarity and unity among its different members. 4
Even if we accept the argument of political scientists that conflict is one of the most important elements in the final crystallization of a nation, this truism does not necessarily apply to Iraq. Simultaneously with the war against an external enemy, Iran, the Ba‘th also unleashed “wars” against the internal one, the Kurds, with the result that the latter conflict served to enhance Kurdish national identity instead of the desired all-Iraqi national one. Furthermore, it united Iran and the Kurds against Iraq. However, the war with Iran, which the Ba‘th hoped to use to evoke patriotic feelings among the Arab Shi‘is, was problematic for the latter in that it placed them on the horn of a dilemma: choosing between loyalty to their state and loyalty to their religion. The persecutions meted out to them at the hands of the Ba‘th did not make their dilemma any easier.
Mindful of the possibility that Sunni-Shi‘i cleavages could be a major stumbling block before the creation of a single Iraqi nation, the Ba‘th emphasized from the start the secular tendency of its regime. Similarly, perceiving tribal loyalties as militating against an all-Iraqi national one, the Ba‘th sought from the start to break the tribes’ power and to erode tribal loyalties. Yet, as we shall see, due to different internal and external developments, the Ba‘th was forced to abandon its earlier course and revert to both “political Islam” and “political tribalism.”
In dealing with its “minorities,” the Ba‘th experimented with all the methods available to the dominant minority, from pluralism to assimilation, oppression, and annihilation. Needless to say, such fluctuations and contradictions in Ba‘thi policies could hardly contribute to the development of a clear-cut Iraqi national identity. 5 Indeed, Ba‘thi policies increased the awareness and self-identity of both the Kurds and the Shi‘is, pushing the Kurds to seek self-determination and the Shi‘is to demand a greater share of power. The following sections will discuss the Kurdish and Shi‘i minority problem from their own perspective and in relation to the state, and will evaluate the balance of power in this triangle of Sunnis, Shi‘is, and Kurds.
The Kurds: Between Annihilation and Self-Determination
The Golden Opportunity
As the end of the twentieth century approaches, the Kurds of Iraq appear at first glance to have attained an outstanding achievement: autonomy under international auspices, something that neither the Iraqi Kurds themselves nor Kurds and ethnic groups in the other Middle Eastern countries have achieved since the late 1940s. A closer analysis of the situation, however, might cast doubts on the importance and durability of this achievement. To evaluate its real importance, one should examine the Kurdish autonomous entity against the backdrop of developments in the domestic, regional, and international arenas.
The idea of autonomy for the Kurds of Iraq is as old as the Iraqi state itself. Only in 1970, however, some fifty years after British-mandated Iraq was first established, was the idea put into practice, when the Ba‘thi government agreed to grant the Kurds autonomy. The maturation of the idea in 1970 was the result of two important coinciding factors: a high degree of politicization among the Kurds, resulting in the crystallization of ethnonationalism among them, and the relative weakness of a new regime that sought to consolidate its grip on power and buy much-needed time via a tactical solution to the endemic Kurdish problem.
Once the Ba‘th managed to alter the balance of power in its favor, it moved to crush the autonomy through a combination of military force and political overtures toward the Kurds’ main backer at the time, Iran. As the Kurds lacked any international recognition, let alone support, the government could crack down on them harshly without any protest from the international community, because the matter, the government argued, was an internal Iraqi affair.
Although the first experiment with Kurdish autonomy was short-lived, lasting only four years, it was nonetheless an important one for a number of reasons: it gave the Kurds a model to which to aspire in the future; it forced the regime into a commitment that it found difficult to negate altogether; and, most important, it further enhanced the separate identity of the Kurds. The contradiction inherent in the Iraqi government’s policy of alternating political concessions with physical annihilation reached its height during the infamous anfal campaigns in 1988, in which approximately 50,000 Kurds were reportedly killed. 6 This, in turn, added another dimension to Kurdish ethnonationalism, which was by now in open conflict with an Iraqi Arab nationalism disseminated from the center of the state, Baghdad.
The second experiment in Kurdish autonomy came some twenty years after the first one against the backdrop of entirely different domestic, regional, and international conditions. For the Kurds, their autonomous entity was established, quite paradoxically, at one of the weakest points in their history, namely, in the wake of Saddam Husayn’s crushing of their uprising in April 1991 and the panicked temporary flight of some two million Kurds to Turkey and Iran. For the regime, too, this development marked one of the lowest points in its twenty-five years of rule and reflected its state of paralysis in the aftermath of the Gulf War. This time, autonomy was imposed on Baghdad, leaving it with a very narrow margin of maneuverability and little ability to undermine it.
Thus, the Gulf crisis initiated by Saddam Husayn, which seemed for a time to be an entirely external affair, had very serious repercussions on the future of Iraqi Kurds and the Iraqi state itself in a number of ways. First, the invasion of Kuwait blatantly challenged international norms regarding the inviolability and “sacredness” of the territorial states formed in the Middle East after World War I. Ironically, it gave the Kurds the opportunity to use this precedent to forward their own political goals at Iraq’s expense. Second, the UN became directly involved in the Kurdish question, as exemplified by the dispatch of a small UN force to northern Iraq. Third, one of Iraq’s neighbors, Turkey, which was its erstwhile ally on the Kurdish issue, openly turned itself into the lifeline for the Kurdish autonomous entity. Most important of all was the fact that the Western countries, in marked departure from past policies, were the ones that initiated and “protected” the Kurdish autonomous entity.
Although caused primarily by the Gulf crisis, the changing attitude of the West seems to have coincided with the thinking regarding the prospective “new world order” in the wake of the end of the Cold War. Part of the new reality was the rise of what has been termed the “third wave of ethnonationalism,” 7 marked by the establishment of no fewer than fifteen new states. 8
Internal Constraints
The Kurdish administration that was set up in 1992 appeared to mark a turning point in the Kurds’ long, turbulent struggle for self-determination. Three points stood out: (1) The modus vivendi and modus operandi reached between the two rival parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (al-hizb al-dimuqrati al-Kurdistani; KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (al-ittihad al-watani al-Kurdistani; PUK), held out the promise of a long-elusive unity among the Kurds; (2) the conduct of more or less democratic elections made it possible to set up an authentic, legitimate Kurdish parliament not imposed by the Iraqi regime; and (3) the Kurds’ political goal changed from autonomy to a federated state with Iraq. 9 But as high as the hopes were, so were the depths after the fall into disillusionment. Barely a year and a half had elapsed since the establishment of the Kurdish autonomous entity when all the underlying latent and deep-seated problems sprang up to militate against the chances of ultimate success.
Most serious by far was the flare-up of internal fighting on a scale not witnessed for thirty years. The fighting started in October 1993 on a local level between the Islamic movement in Iraqi Kurdistan—al-haraka al-
Islamiyya fi Kurdistan (IMK)—and the PUK, but after a few months, in May 1994, it deteriorated into full-fledged warfare between the two main groupings, with smaller parties and groups siding with each camp. According to one source, the fighting, which has been going on intermittently since 1994, pitted 25,000 peshmergas from the KDP against 15,000 from the PUK. 10 It resulted in the crumbling of the Kurdish administration, the death of about 3,000 Kurds, and the division of Kurdistan into three zones of influence: Irbil and Sulaymaniyya under the control of the PUK; Dhok and the districts around Irbil under the control of the KDP; and Halabja and the bordering areas under the IMK. 11 Accordingly, the KDP came to control the oil route in the north—the region’s main source of income—while the PUK controlled the more populous southern provinces. 12 But even this “division of power” did not last long, because in August 1996 the Irbil region became the site of internecine fighting, with the region changing hands between Mas‘ud Barzani and Jalal Talabani three times over. As of 1998, Irbil is in Barzani’s hands.
Analyzing the developments in Iraqi Kurdistan since the Gulf War highlights the intricacies, weaknesses, and constraints at play, most of them legacies of past policies and behavior either of the Kurds themselves or of regional and international players. Most debilitating of all were the Kurds’ internal problems and constraints. The first of these had to do with the failure of the Kurdish community to crystallize into a strong national movement. Although the Kurds had all the ingredients of a separate ethnonational group, including a common history, language, and identity, they lagged far behind the rival Arab national movement in the cultural, socioeconomic, and political domains. Unlike Arabic, the Kurdish language was slow to develop into a symbol of identity and a unifying force for three main reasons: the language became orthographically standardized only in the twentieth century; there were many Kurdish dialects and two alphabets, Latin and Arabic; and the Kurdish language became the victim of the central government’s assimilation policies, or what was termed “linguicide.” 13
Even more divisive were tribal loyalties and ties that continued to dominate Kurdish society, much more than among Sunni Arabs or even among the Shi‘is. Although Kurdish tribal leaders from Shaykh ‘Ubaydallah to Mulla Mustafa Barzani had played key roles in galvanizing and leading the Kurdish movement, tribal loyalties also put brakes on the development of a more general and all-encompassing Kurdish nationalism. 14 During the early 1970s, rivalry and enmity between the tribes led some of the tribes opposed to Mulla Mustafa Barzani to cooperate with the Ba‘th against the KDP, which he led. Worse still, during the anfal campaign, Kurdish tribal leaders acted as accomplices of the army, thus helping to send “thousands of Kurds to their death.” 15 However, tribal leaders played an important role in the uprising of March 1991 because they “defected” from the regime camp and participated in the uprising. 16 Another twist took place during the latest fighting between the KDP and PUK. Aware of the power that tribal leaders wielded among the Kurds, both Mas‘ud Barzani and Jalal Talabani attempted to mobilize the support of particular tribal leaders against each other. It was not surprising, then, that the trigger to the May fighting among the Kurds was a conflict between rival chiefs over land rights. 17
Part and parcel of this social-structural constraint has been the political constraint, namely, the Iraqi Kurds’ lack of unity and common sense of purpose. To a great extent there has even been a decline in their likemindedness since Mulla Mustafa Barzani’s first Kurdish autonomy experiment in 1970–1975: instead of one charismatic leader, Mulla Mustafa Barzani, there were now, in the 1990s, two weak ones, Jalal Talabani and Mas‘ud Barzani, and instead of one dominant party, the KDP, there were two main ones, the KDP and PUK, as well as (according to one source) fifteen smaller parties. 18
The political picture was further complicated by two relatively new developments. The first was the establishment in 1988 of a new group under Iranian auspices—the aforementioned IMK—a new phenomenon on the Kurdish scene. 19 The other development was the vacuum left in Iraqi Kurdistan by the Iraqi army’s withdrawal, which made possible the establishment there of different elements—both non-Kurdish Iraqi opposition forces, such as Shi‘is, Communists, and other opposition groups, and Kurdish groups from other countries, namely, the Turkish radical leftist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Parti Karkaren Kurdistan; PKK) and the Iranian KDP, which increased their respective footholds in the area. 20 These two developments had near-fatal implications for the viability of the Kurdish autonomous entity, for they added a new dimension to the Kurds’ deep-seated tendency toward factionalism and internal strife. The worst of these was the “war of attrition” between the Iraqi KDP and the PKK. 21 In December 1995 the two parties announced a cease fire, but it was broken again in summer 1997.
Another debilitating factor was that the Kurds still lacked a well-defined vision and clear-cut political goals for the future, mixing together at times such various programs as autonomy, federalism, and independence. 22 Several factors may account for this lack of clarity. The fact that the Kurds have never in their long history established an independent state of their own, except for autonomous principalities, means that they did not have a model of statehood to imitate, as the Arabs, for example, had. The Kurds themselves were undecided with respect to their ultimate political goal, altering it depending on changing political circumstances. Thus, when they perceived that the fortunes of Baghdad had declined following the Gulf War, they were quick to raise the more assertive slogan of federation, instead of the previously advocated autonomy. Yet the fear of antagonizing surrounding countries, which had extended varying degrees of support to the Kurds at different periods, played an important part in the Kurds’ reluctance to adopt an overly audacious political stance.
Another very serious constraint is the economic one. Ironic as it might appear, Kurdistan is one of the richest regions in Iraq, with an abundance of water, oil, and minerals. But the Kurds themselves were not able to reap the fruits of these riches. Although Western powers allowed them to build an autonomous administration, they never let them exploit the oil in their soil so as to enable the autonomous entity to achieve economic self-sufficiency. 23 Worse still, the area suffered the impact of a double embargo, both the Iraqi regime’s embargo against it and international sanctions against Iraq as a whole. In addition to further impoverishing the region, this situation turned the control of what little income there was in the area into the main bone of contention between the two warring parties, the KDP and the PUK. 24 Another severe consequence of the embargo was that Iraqi Kurdistan became a regional center for illegal trade in alcohol, drugs, and other goods. Furthermore, the surrounding countries used this economic crisis to increase their infiltration into the area and establish a political foothold there.
The Impact of the Regionalization and Internationalization of the Kurdish Issue
Turning to regional factors, it should be said that the geostrategic constraints facing the Kurds now became more manifest than ever. Baghdad’s loss of control of Kurdistan for the first time in its modern history left a power vacuum that the surrounding countries sought to fill. In fact, these countries perceived in this vacuum both an opportunity and a danger: an opportunity for each to extend its hold in the area but a danger that another country would fill the vacuum first or that the Kurds themselves would become sufficiently independent to have a major impact on their own territories.
As a result of the changing circumstances after the Gulf War, the roles played by the surrounding countries vis-à-vis the Kurdish issue also changed. From the 1960s to the late 1980s Iran had been the major player of the Iraqi Kurdish “card,” in an effort to destabilize its rival and enemy, Iraq. After the second Gulf War, Turkey emerged as the main player. 25 Turkey granted qualified support to the Iraqi Kurds, but for different reasons. Its aim was not to destabilize Baghdad but to prevent a permanent influx of Iraqi Kurds to its territory, to build a Turkish stronghold in Iraqi Kurdistan, and to fight the PKK.
The conflict between Turkey and the PKK had spillover effects on Iraqi Kurdistan, causing the flight of Turkish Kurdish refugees into Iraqi Kurdistan, but worse still triggering Turkish attacks on Iraqi Kurdistan. The largest of these was the invasion of spring 1995—code-named “Operation Steel”—which lasted thirty-six days and involved some 35,000 Turkish soldiers, and the operation of spring 1997, code-named “Sledge-Hammer,” which lasted for more than a month and involved between 25,000 and 50,000 soldiers. Far from uprooting the PKK, however, the invasion exacerbated the plight of the Iraqi Kurds, increased the conflicts between the PKK and KDP, and raised fears (both among the Iraqi Kurds and in Baghdad) of Turkey’s intention to adjust the Iraqi border southward. 26 The ambiguity of the Turkish stance regarding the Kurds of Iraq was also manifested in the tripartite meetings held regularly with Iran and Syria with a view to containing the Kurds.
To the Iraqi Kurds’ chagrin, the struggle for Iraqi Kurdistan now involved not two countries—Iraq and Iran—as had been the case between the 1960s and the 1990s, but all of the surrounding countries as well. Instead of facing one foe, Iraq, the Kurds therefore had to contend with four countries—Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria—each of which opposed the Kurdish struggle for self-determination, while using different approaches and methods to combat the nascent entity. But for the first time in their modern history, the Kurds began to use others in their internal fighting. A case in point was the flare-up of internecine fighting at the end of August 1996, when the KDP used the Iraqi Army against the PUK. Nevertheless, whether this will help the Kurdish national cause is more than doubtful.
Nor was the changing role of the international community more encouraging for the Kurds. Although Western countries, particularly Britain, France, and the United States, were instrumental in setting up the Kurdish “safe haven” in 1991, which later developed into an autonomous entity, their motives and ultimate goals were completely different from those of the Kurds. The three immediate motives of the Western countries were contending with world public opinion on the Kurdish plight; solving Turkey’s severe problem caused by the flight of the Kurds to its territory; and, last but not least, weakening Saddam Husayn’s regime. Having achieved these short-term goals, the brokers of Iraqi Kurdish autonomy were now motivated by different considerations, none of which put the Kurdish cause in the forefront.
First of all, France began early on to seek accommodation with Saddam Husayn’s regime, putting an end to whatever commitment it might have had to the Kurds. As for Britain and the United States, despite all their attempts to weaken Saddam Husayn, they still adhered to the principle of the territorial integrity of Iraq and opposed the emergence of a full-fledged Kurdish autonomous entity in Iraq. Their fear was threefold: that the regional balance of power would tip in Iran’s favor; that a Yugoslav-like syndrome would develop in Iraq, dragging them into the Iraqi quagmire; and that the West’s ally, Turkey, would be hurt by developments in Iraq. Alongside the fears of the new wave of ethnonationalism and its repercussions in the region, the West was also motivated by long-term considerations such as the desire to renew economic and business ties with Iraq sometime in the future. Here, too, France played the leading role. These ambiguities, which characterized all the players on the Kurdish scene, helped complicate the issue even more and render it more intractable than ever.
Assessing the Kurds’ situation in historical perspective, one can say that their role as a card to be played by others has become more manifest than ever. Had they been more assertive and more united, the picture might have been different. For now, however, they can only destabilize the host country, but they cannot reap the fruit of the resulting instability. One can perceive that the Iraqi Kurds have not one, but two, Achilles’ heels. The first was that they did not present a clear-cut political goal around which all Iraqi Kurds could mobilize. The second was that their entity did not serve as a center of gravity for the Kurds outside Iraq’s borders. Consequently, the situation somewhat resembled that of preceding centuries, when Kurdistan was a border area possessing no strong political center of its own, and its fate depended largely on the balance of power between the Ottoman and Persian Empires.
Paradoxically, the very success of establishing the autonomous entity was also the main enemy, as it unleashed all the surrounding countries against the Iraqi Kurds. Meanwhile, the international community was either unwilling or unable to endow the Kurds with what it lacked itself—cohesiveness and unity. In fact, both the countries of the region and Western countries played the Kurdish card against Iraq and not for the Kurds’ sake. The late Mulla Mustafa Barzani once described such cynical treatment by the Shah, saying that he had held the Kurds as if holding a drowning man by his hair above the water, letting him neither drown nor live. 27 It seems that as long as they do not learn to swim by themselves, the Kurds are doomed to such treatment by all and sundry.
The Shi‘is: In Search of Identity or Real Representation?
In contrast to the Kurds, the Shi‘is have been, by and large, quite passive. Thus, in the seventy-five years of modern Iraqi history there have been only two serious initiatives by the Shi‘is aimed at effecting political change in their favor: the “Great Iraqi Revolution” of 1920 and the intifada of 1991. 28 Both attempts failed dismally, and rather than improve the Shi‘is’ political status they weakened it even more. For all the differences between the two uprisings in terms of political goals, leadership, and modes of action, there were certain common denominators at the root of the Shi‘i community’s failure to assert itself as the political majority. In tracing the line of historical continuity between the two events, one can find certain recurring factors that account for the inherent weakness of this community. Surprising as it might seem, the 1920 revolt was far more coherent and effective than that of 1991; this suggests that the Shi‘i community has suffered a continuous decline as a political power.
By far the Shi‘is’ most serious drawback has been their inability to articulate a common political goal that would unify and guide them as a group. This lack of a common goal was inherent already in the 1920 experience. The Shi‘is shared with the Sunnis and others the goal of frustrating the British Mandate, but they did not have a clear-cut goal of their own for the post-
uprising period, such as wresting power from the Sunnis. The Shi‘i intifada of 1991 highlighted to an even greater extent the lack of unity in goals and methods: the intifada was an act of sheer vengeance against a regime that was seen to be crumbling, but it lacked any positive goal or vision for the future. 29 In this sense the Shi‘i intifada contrasted sharply with the Kurdish one. True, the Kurdish intifada, too, had a negative aspect, namely, avenging the past sufferings of the Kurds at the hands of the Ba‘th, but it also had a positive one, the achievement of self-rule. Thus, the Shi‘i intifada was directed against the regime, whereas that of the Kurds was against the state. This point highlighted the great difference between the struggle of ethnic and religious groups in modern Iraq. Although the Kurds could proclaim themselves Kurds and demand Kurdish rights, the Shi‘is could not play the same game.
Inherent Causes of Political Weakness
From the very beginning the Shi‘is were caught in an ideological and political dilemma. They were unwilling to identify themselves as Shi‘is because in modern terminology it would have the immediate connotation of ta’ifiyya (sectarianism). 30 Politically they could not articulate their demands in strictly Shi‘i terms because this might be interpreted as an attempt to jeopardize the unity of the state to which they were committed no less than the Sunnis. In religious terms, they could not act along strict confessional lines, because this would undermine the ecumenical approach that they professed. The only way left for the more politically oriented religious leaders was to articulate their ideology in general Islamic terms and not specifically Shi‘i ones. 31 This constraint was extremely harmful to the Shi‘i cause, as it diluted any central goal they might have had and rendered it amorphous. As a result, the Shi‘i political groupings that did emerge failed to attract the support of either the secular or the religious Shi‘is, who felt that their specific problems were not addressed by these groups.
Another problem accentuated by this lack of clear vision and a unified goal was the extreme weakness and the fragmentation of the Shi‘i political groupings. Analyzing the real causes of this weakness, Muhammad Taqi al-Mudarrisi, a Shi‘i opposition leader, ascribed it to a lack of self-confidence, extreme dependence on outside forces, disunity and fragmentation, weak or nonexistent contacts with the Iraqi masses, and helplessness vis-à-vis the government machinery that sought to crush the opposition. 32 Thus, there was neither a strong leading Shi‘i personality, nor a unified leadership, nor a well-knit organization with followings inside Iraq. 33 This again compared negatively with the 1920 uprising. In the 1920 experience religious leaders had a prominent role; 34 in 1991, their role was marginal. As a result the intifada was leaderless and haphazard. 35
Another point that should be emphasized is that in 1920, despite the differences between the religious and the political tribal leaderships, the former succeeded in mobilizing the tribes for the common cause of fighting the British. 36 In 1991 the two were alienated from each other. Moreover, if one is to believe Ba‘thi testimony, not only did the tribal leaders not join in the intifada, but they proved staunch supporters of the regime, at times even more than Ba‘thi members themselves. 37
Another aspect of the Shi‘is’ weakness in both cases was their inability to sustain their struggle for a long time. For all their tenacity and steadfastness, the Shi‘i religious leaders in 1920 could not carry on their struggle much beyond the revolution itself. Similarly, the 1991 intifada remained a mere episode with no serious follow-up. Notwithstanding their inherent weakness, the Shi‘is appeared extremely threatening to the outside world, mainly because of their supposed radicalism or their link with Iran. Hence, the approach of outside powers toward them ranged from active participation in suppressing them as in the 1920s and 1930s to inaction or indifference to their fate as in the aftermath of the Gulf War. Even the no-fly zone set up in August 1992 to protect the Shi‘is turned out to be a farce, certainly when compared with the safe haven in the Kurdish north.
The causes of Western inaction was a combination of fear of fragmentation of the Iraqi state; the strengthening of Shi‘i fundamentalism in Iraq and its alliance with Iran; and, paradoxically, a lack of confidence in the Shi‘i leadership and its ability to generate a change in the center. Thus, on the face of it, in the 1990s the West appeared to play an opposite role to the one played in the 1930s vis-à-vis the Shi‘is, using the air force against the Iraqi government to protect the Shi‘is and not vice versa. In practice, however, the West used its “umbrella” over the Shi‘is as a pretext for punishing the Iraqi government and protecting Kuwait, but by no means for protecting or supporting the Shi‘is.
Consequently, the combination of objective weakness and an image of strength made the Shi‘is unreliable allies, thereby decreasing support to them from the outside world. It was ironic that during the Iran-Iraq War the Islamic Republic of Iran chose the Kurds as its allies against Iraq and not its co-religionists, the Shi‘is. Similarly, when attempting to destabilize Saddam Husayn’s regime after the Gulf War, Iran once again turned mainly to the Kurds and not to the Shi‘is. 38
The Ba‘thi Onslaught
The Shi‘i intifada prompted the government to act quickly to quell the rebellion and to take additional steps to break the Shi‘is as a political force. 39 The government’s success was due to three main factors: the Shi‘is were a less formidable enemy than the Kurds; the Ba‘th had learned the lessons of its mistaken policies in the northern safe haven, which boomeranged against it there; and, most important, the Ba‘th has kept the initiative in its hands ever since.
In tackling the Shi‘i problem, the regime acted on five levels simultaneously: military, geographic-demographic, political, religious, and ideological. In contrast to the north, where the regime withdrew its forces of its own will, thus enhancing the detachment of the Kurdish area from the Iraqi body, in the south it did the reverse. Despite the no-fly zone of August 1992 that Western forces imposed on Iraq, which prohibited the Iraqi army from flying planes from the 32° parallel southward, the Iraqi army intensified its presence and its activities even in the marshes, where it had never set foot before.
Since the intifada, the marshes have become the stronghold of the Shi‘i opposition, including army deserters, pro-Iranian Shi‘i opposition groups, and ordinary outlaws. As the topography rendered the activity of land forces almost impossible, the Iraqi regime embarked on an ambitious program of draining the marshes. Explaining the strategic motives behind such a policy, President Saddam Husayn’s son ‘Udayy said they were threefold: (1) using the drained marshes to develop agriculture in the area, so as to balance greedy cultivators; (2) “ensuring total security in the area”; and (3) preventing tribal conflicts. 40
The drastic measures taken by the regime to drain the marshes brought them under Ba‘thi control by the end of 1994. According to a study by an international team of scientists, between 1985 and 1992 43 percent of 15,000 square kilometers of permanent lake and marshes “had been transformed into dry land and more has been drained since.” The work was concentrated in the ‘Amara marshes, which, according to one report coordinator, no longer existed as an ecosystem, as 230,000 hectares had been drained in the area. Furthermore, water that had previously fed the area was diverted into a canal that flowed into the Gulf. 41 Even if one were to accept the Ba‘th’s claim that the project was necessary for agricultural reasons, there was no doubt that the strategic by-products were tremendous, for it allowed the regime to pacify an area that had been the main base for the Shi‘i opposition.
Non-Iraqi sources reported that these draining operations dramatically improved the government’s access to the area, making it possible to continue clamping down on the rebels. Thus, a 15,000-strong army division was reportedly operating in the ‘Amara region in early 1994, and about 58,000 Shi‘i Iraqis had reportedly fled to Iran by that time. The Shi‘i opposition, for its part, reported sporadic operations against government troops and personalities. 42 It also tried its hand at psychological warfare, appealing to the army to topple the regime and distributing antigovernment leaflets. 43 On the whole, however, the Shi‘i opposition in the south was on the defensive, with the initiative remaining firmly in the government’s hands. Significantly, the UN and Western powers were well aware of Ba‘thi activities, but they never took any action to stop the draining that caused the destruction of an entire civilization, to ensure food supplies to the population, or to set up a safety zone as in the Kurdish north.
The Ba‘th Plays with Tribalism, Nationalism, and Islam
One of the regime’s most important means of controlling the Shi‘i south in general, and particularly the marshes, was through alliances with Shi‘i tribal chiefs. The Ba‘th’s renewed interest in the tribes, or what one may call the revival of tribal politics, dates back to the beginning of the intifada. It is impossible to prove Saddam Husayn’s claim that the tribal chiefs stood at the forefront of stopping the Shi‘i rebels. However, the uprising did convince him of the need to approach the tribes either to mobilize the more friendly ones to support the regime or to break the reluctant ones. Either way, the regime reached the conclusion that it could not afford to disregard the tribes any longer. 44
In a reversal of policy, which had regarded the tribes as reactionaries and tribal loyalties as a divisive element to be opposed, the Ba‘th now portrayed them as a symbol of patriotism meriting the government’s support and encouragement. Whereas in the 1970s the Ba‘th made anything related to tribes—even the use of names of tribal origin—taboo, in the aftermath of the intifada the tribes and their chieftains gained such wide publicity that they became the media’s heroes. 45 Husayn’s changing approach toward the tribes was manifest in his policy of arming the more loyal tribes, dividing the power in the south between the Ba‘th Party and the tribal leaders to such an extent that one can speak of a kind of dual leadership.
The government’s growing awareness of the important role of the tribal leadership was manifested in an article in Babil that called for re-establishing tribal councils ( majalis). The councils, it maintained, would deal with various security, economic, and social issues. These would include supervising various agricultural activities; resolving conflicts among tribes; organizing the mobilization of the tribal youth for the army; and, finally, supervising security affairs in their areas and on local highways to prevent actions by gangs of thieves that the “official authorities alone could not check or control.” 46
Mobilizing the support of the tribes turned them once again into the tools of others. In the nineteenth century and early 1920s they were the tools of the religious leaders, 47 in the 1930s those of various politicians in Baghdad, 48 and in the 1990s those of the Ba‘th regime. However, strengthening certain tribal leaders as a means of controlling the Shi‘i south could boomerang. Thus, one of the results was the renewal of the intra-tribal conflicts that were so rampant in the 1930s. Though not to be compared in their scale and intensity with the older ones, these conflicts had the potential of becoming intractable and seriously destabilizing for the regime. In one such case reported by Babil, the conflict became so severe that the commander of the 7th Army Corps had to intervene to put an end to it. 49 Moreover, by early 1997 the clash between tribal and state interests became so strong that the government had to call on tribes to give national interest first priority. 50
Husayn’s appeal to and appeasement of the tribal leaders was motivated by yet another important consideration: driving a wedge between the Shi‘i masses and Iran on the one hand, and between them and the Iraqi ‘ulama on the other. One way to do this was to break the power of Shi‘i religious leaders systematically through surveillance, arrest, and even physical liquidation. In a report to the UN on human-rights violations in Iraq, UN investigator Max van der Stoel expressed concern about the disappearance of Shi‘i religious leaders after the March 1991 uprising: “There were 10,000 clerics last spring before the uprising in Iraq,” he wrote, “barely 700 after; and now hardly any can be seen anywhere.” 51
A gentler way to divest the Shi‘i clergy of their powers was to “confiscate” the conduct of religious affairs from them and to bring about the nationalization of religion in Iraq. Among the Ba‘th’s steps in the last few years was the appointment of Muhammad al-Sadr as the al-marja‘ al-a‘la (supreme religious authority) of the Shi‘is instead of Abu Qasim al-Kho’i, who died in August 1992. The appointment of the young and inexperienced al-Sadr was not only a breach of all Shi‘i religious norms but also a blatant interference by the Sunni government in a purely Shi‘i internal affair. To further increase the state’s monopoly over religious affairs, Saddam Husayn made the Ministry of Religious Affairs and awqaf directly connected to the president, and the only ministry with a separate budget of its own.
Another move was the June 1994 decision to establish the Authority for Management and Investment of Awqaf Properties. The authority, which intended to open up branches in the governorates “in light of the size of religious trusts in each governorate,” was to manage all awqaf properties with the exception of those under private management. 52 Divesting Shi‘i clergy of the awqaf they had managed for centuries could deal a death blow to their religious, economic, and political influence among the Shi‘i rank and file.
The other side of the coin was the regime’s attempt to don the mantle of Islam, in a reversal of the policies of the 1970s, when strict secularism was the order of the day. Thus, Saddam Husayn now ordered the establishment of two Islamic universities, as well as colleges and schools for teaching Islamic subjects. The graduates of these universities and colleges were later to be employed in various government-sponsored religious posts.
The largest and the most publicized project to disseminate the government “religion” was the “national campaign of faith” ( hamla wataniyya imaniyya ), embarked upon in the summer of 1993 and carried on throughout 1994–1997. The aims of the campaign were to teach selected parts of the Qur’an, with a view to propagating “the correct ( sahih) religious preaching and guidance” among the people so as “to immunize them against the deviant trends and to expose some sick social phenomena.” 53 By the end of 1995 some 20,000 teachers and five million students of various ages were said to have participated. Moreover, the campaign came to include judges, prisoners, and women, as well as Ba‘thi members, a “revolutionary” phenomenon in itself, considering the secular character of the Ba‘th. Moreover, in September 1997 a new radio station, “The Holy Qur’an Radio,” was inaugurated. 54 Meanwhile, the general public, too, was allowed a greater dose of Islam, through televised Friday khutbas and other religious programs.
All these activities were to have the effect of severing the traditional link between the Shi‘i masses and their religious leadership, as well as disseminating a more “neutral” brand of Islam. As the regime came to control all religious issues from Islamic curricula to religious posts to public sermons, it is not improbable that it had in mind an attempt to “Sunnize” the Shi‘is. As confessional issues remained the dividing force between Sunnis and Shi‘is and as previous attempts to secularize the state had failed, it was hoped that propagating the “Ba‘thi brand of Islam” might ultimately turn it into a unifying factor between Sunnis and Shi‘is.
To counter the propaganda emanating from Tehran and various Iraqi Shi‘i opposition groups, the Ba‘th sought to appeal to the Shi‘i sense of Iraqi patriotism and to invoke their pride in their Arabism. Saddam Husayn repeatedly lauded the Arabs for their “leading role in conveying religion and its meaning to all mankind,” including to Iran. Yet he warned that “Iranian Shi‘ism” has always been “alien to the Arab mentality,” seeking “to tarnish the Arabs and their history.” 55 Similarly, the Iraqi media put growing emphasis on such ideals as Arab honor, valor, and loyalty. They also portrayed the 1920 revolution as the most important event in modern Iraqi history and the symbol of Iraqi patriotism and unity. 56 Invoking that revolution as a counterweight to the intifada was to have the effect of strengthening the Shi‘is’ sense of patriotism, their affinity with the state, and their commitment to its unity and survival. Raising the specter of the partitioning of Iraq was yet another device for emphasizing the common fate of the Arabs (Sunnis and Shi‘is) as well as driving a wedge between the Shi‘is and the Kurds, who stood to jeopardize Iraqi unity. 57
In assessing the status of the Shi‘is in Iraq the following points should be highlighted: so far the Shi‘is have failed to change their status from a numerical majority to a political one. If anything, since the establishment of the Iraqi state, their power as a political community has been on a steady decline. Conventional wisdom puts the blame for such an anomaly on the British and foreign forces. Although these certainly played a role, the main factor may have been the historical balance of power dating back to Ottoman times, if not earlier, between the Sunnis and the Shi‘is, and the latter’s inability to change it in their favor. The Shi‘is’ feebleness stemmed not only from their inability to seize the centers of power in the state, such as the army and the security services but more important from a lack of esprit de corps; the absence of a clear and common goal for the community as a whole; and the virtual disappearance of their leadership, both religious and secular. The Shi‘is have never challenged the Iraqi state. Moreover, secession from the state is not an option for them at all. As they form the majority in the country and in Baghdad itself, they might endanger the regime but they will not jeopardize the unity of the Iraqi state.
Conclusion
Like many other countries in the Middle East (and in the rest of the world), the Iraqi state was born with a built-in minority problem. However, the Iraqi case is much more complicated than the Egyptian or even the Algerian one, for example, for two main reasons. First, Iraqi society is extremely heterogeneous and fragmented. In addition to the three minorities discussed in this chapter, there are smaller religious and ethnic minorities, including the Turkmens, the Assyrians, and the Yezidis. Second, a minority has ruled the state since its inception. The combination of the two factors has had far-reaching implications for the Iraqi polity as well as for Iraqi state building and nation building. 58
The urge of the Arab Sunni minority to retain its monopoly on power has unleashed a process whereby the regime has become even more totalitarian. Any democratization or opening up of the system was bound to loosen the Sunni hold on power and hence to put an end to Sunni hegemony. Accordingly, force and coercion were needed to keep the Kurds and Shi‘is under control, and these, in turn, increased the separate identity of each of the two groups.
The process of nation building and state making was also affected by the two aforementioned inherent problems. If in the 1990s the idea of an Iraqi federation composed of the Sunnis, Shi‘is, and Kurds began to gain currency among Ba‘thi opponents, this was not a sign of the strength of the Iraqi state. 59 On the contrary, it reflected the identity crisis that Iraqi society as a whole was undergoing and that found its expression in the rising trends of tribalism and Islamism. At the same time, it reflected the failure of the ideology of nation building disseminated from the Sunni center and the concurrent increasing forces of fragmentation among the Shi‘is but mainly among the Kurds. In fact, the general picture emerging from the earlier discussion is, paradoxically, one of weakness of all three components simultaneously. Still, it must be emphasized that in this “triangle of weakness” the Sunni government remained the strongest of the three minorities as it continued to hold all the centers of power (army, bureaucracy, etc.). The net result of this mutual weakening, however, was a further fragmentation of Iraqi society.
One question still remains: What are the chances of the formation of such a federation or its viability? First, the Shi‘is do not appear to be natural candidates for such a plan, because they are the majority even in Baghdad itself and because they are intermingled with the Sunnis, with no “natural” boundaries between them. Second, the Kurds might have been suitable candidates for a federation, but they have three main enemies: themselves, the other partners in the state (both Sunnis and Shi‘is), and, most important, all the surrounding countries. Finally, the lack of democracy in Iraq and the intense opposition of the Sunni center to such an idea is bound to nip it in the bud.
To conclude, without generalizing about the correlation between multiethnic societies and the process of nation building, in the Iraqi case the correlation was negative. Iraq is as far as ever from the Sunni-Ba‘thi ideal of a cohesive nation-state.
Endnotes
Note 1: In the early 1990s the Shi‘is were estimated at about 55 percent and the Kurds 22 percent of Iraq’s total population. Richard Tapper (eds.), Some Minorities in the Middle East (London: Centre of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, 1992), p. 87. Back.
Note 2: When reference to the Shi‘is could not be avoided, the government preferred the more neutral term Ja‘fari madhhab. As President Husayn said, “Our people are one, not two, peoples. They incorporate . . . Sunni Muslims, Ja‘farites and others” (Radio Baghdad, 8 September—Foreign Broadcasting Information Service: Near East and South Asia, Daily Report [DR], 9 September 1992). Back.
Note 3: See Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993). Back.
Note 4: Sa‘d al-Bazzaz, Harb talid ukhra: Al-ta’rikh al-sirri li-harb al-khalij (Amman: Al-ahliyya lil-nashr wal-tawzi‘, 1992), p. 14. Back.
Note 5: For such an effect on the Shi‘is see Hasan al-‘Alawi, Al-Shi‘a wal-dawla al-qawmiyya fil-‘Iraq, 1914–1990 (n.p., 1990), p. 39. Back.
Note 6: Middle East Watch, Genocide, p. 13. See also Kan‘an Makiya, Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World (London: Penguin Books, 1994). Back.
Note 7: Fred W. Riggs, “Ethnonationalism, Industrialism and the Modern State,” Third World Quarterly 15, no. 4 (December 1994), pp. 583–611. Back.
Note 8: John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith (eds.), Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 11. Back.
Note 9: Voice of the People of Kurdistan, 5 October—DR, 7 October 1992; al-Manar al-Kurdi, November 1992. Back.
Note 10: Turkish Daily News, 8 March—DR, 13 March 1995. Back.
Note 11: Economist, 10 August 1996; Mideast Mirror, 29 August 1996. Back.
Note 12: New York Times, 26 August 1994; Milliyet, 24 February—DR, 1 March 1995; Turkish Daily News, 8 March—DR, 13 March 1995. Back.
Note 13: Amin Hassanpour, Nationalism and Language in Kurdistan, 1918–1985 (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1992.) See particularly chapter 5, pp. 102–148. Back.
Note 14: Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State: On the Social and Political Organizations of Kurdistan (Rijswijk, Netherlands: Europrint, 1978), p. 10. Back.
Note 15: For their role, see Middle East Watch, Genocide, pp. 161–166. Back.
Note 16: Sixty thousand pro-government Kurdish auxiliaries who acted on behalf of the government reputedly took part in the intifada; Agence France Press (AFP), 12 March—DR, 18 March 1990. Back.
Note 17: Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 5 May 1994. In 1994 Baghdad attempted once again to reactivate Kurdish tribal forces against the antigovernment Kurdish Peshmerga. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 11 April 1994. Back.
Note 18: Voice of the people of Kurdistan, 5 January—DR, 10 January 1995. Back.
Note 19: Watha’iq al-idana (Damascus: PUK publications, 1994), p. 9. Back.
Note 20: The best known of these groups was the Unified Iraqi National Congress (INC), which was established in 1992 with the aim of unifying the different Iraqi opposition forces and ousting the Ba‘th from power. Internal conflicts both within the INC and among the Kurdish groups themselves proved fatal for the success of such a plan. Back.
Note 21: For the causes of the conflict, see The Middle East, no. 250 (November 1995). Back.
Note 22: The Kurds are not the only group whose movement pursued different goals; the same has occurred among national movements in Africa, for example. Benyamin Neuberger, National Self-determination in Postcolonial Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1986) p. 63. Back.
Note 23: Kurdish attempts to produce their own oil by establishing the “Kurdoil” company were nipped in the bud. Back.
Note 24: The KDP controlled the main source of hard currency as it collected fees on goods crossing the border point in Zakho. Its income was estimated at $100,000 daily. Al-Safir, 2, 3 August—DR, 10 August 1994; al-Hayat, 1 October 1994; International Herald Tribune, 8 April 1995; The Middle East, no. 250 (November 1995). Back.
Note 25: For the Turkish role, see Kemal Kirisci, “Provide Comfort or Trouble: Operation Provide Comfort and Its Impact on Turkish Foreign Policy,” Turkish Review of Middle Eastern Studies 8 (1994–1995), pp. 43–67. Back.
Note 26: Middle East International, 12 May 1995; The Middle East, no. 250 (November 1995). Back.
Note 27: Relayed to the author by a person who wants to remain anonymous. Back.
Note 28: On the 1920 revolution, see Pierre-Jean Luizard, La Formation de L’Irak Contemporain: Le Role Politique des Ulemas Chiites a la Fin de la Domination Ottomane et au Moment de la Construction de l’État Irakien (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1991), pp. 381–414. Back.
Note 29: See, for example, Alif Ba, 27 March 1991; Financial Times, 15 April 1991. For Shi‘is’ own description of these acts, see al-Wasat, 3 January 1994. Back.
Note 30: For a discussion on ta’ifiyya, see Ofra Bengio, Saddam’s Word: Political Discourse in Iraq (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 100–103. In his book, ‘Alawi blamed the Sunnis of being sectarian, al-Shi‘a wal-dawla, pp. 257–285. Back.
Note 31: Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, a leader of one of the Shi‘i groups, repeatedly declared the intention of establishing “a greater Islamic republic” in post-Saddam Iraq but never mentioned specific Shi‘i demands. Quoted, for example, in Frankfurter Algemeine, 29 July—DR, 31 July 1992. Back.
Note 32: Muhammad Taqi al-Mudarrisi, Al-‘Iraq wal-haraka al-Islamiyya (London: Al-Sifa lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzi‘, 1988), pp. 32, 41–42, 77, 81–83. Back.
Note 33: For Shi‘i self-criticism on this issue, see al-‘Iraq al-Hurr, 19 February 1992. The proliferation of splinter groups reached its height in 1993 when there were reportedly eighty-eight opposition groups of both Shi‘i, Kurds, and other Sunni groups. Al-Hayat (London), 15 February 1993. Back.
Note 34: Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 66–72; Luizard, La Formation de l’Irak, pp. 403–413. Back.
Note 35: There are contradictory reports regarding the role played by the Shi‘i Grand Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim al-Kho’i. Even if he did lead the intifada, however, as claimed by a Shi‘i opposition leader in exile, or give it his blessings, as al-Wasat claimed, by mid-March he was in the regime’s “custody,” denouncing the intifada on television. Iraqi News Agency, 20 March—DR, 23 March 1991; al-Wasat, 3 January 1994; al-Majalla, 25 January 1995. Back.
Note 36: Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 66–72. Back.
Note 37: President Saddam Husayn in Radio Baghdad, 7 October—DR, 8 October 1992. Back.
Note 38: The KDP blamed the alliance between PUK and Iran as the trigger for the fighting between the two factions. Al-Wasat, International Herald Tribune, 14 October 1996; Mideast Mirror, 18 October 1996. Back.
Note 39: On the campaign unleashed by the Ba‘th against the Shi‘i ‘ulama, mosques, and institutions in the aftermath of the intifada, see Al-Milal wal-nihal, wal-a‘raq, 1995 report (Cairo: Ibn Khaldun Center, 1995), pp. 47–52. Back.
Note 40: Babil, 17 February 1993. Back.
Note 41: Middle East International, 10 June 1994. Satellite photographs later showed that about 90 percent of the marsh region has disappeared. Wireless File, 14 June 1995. Back.
Note 42: Voice of Iraqi Islamic Revolution, 15, 22, 26 January—DR, 18, 24, 26 January 1994; Middle East International 4 February 1994; Wireless File, 22 March; al-Hayat, 2 April 1994; Rahim Francke, “Race to the Finish Line,” Middle East Insight (May–August 1994), p. 40. Back.
Note 43: Voice of Iraqi Islamic Revolution, 29 January—DR, 1 February 1994; Babil, 2 February 1994. Back.
Note 44: Although political tribalism became manifest mainly after the Gulf War, many argued that it never disappeared. The Moroccan intellectual al-Jabiri suggests that tribalism has been part and parcel of Arab political history since time immemorial and that it was the main cause for their inability to develop a civil society. Muhammad ‘Abid al-Jabiri, Al-‘Aql al-siyasi al-‘Arabi (Beirut: Al-markaz al-thaqafi al-‘Arabi, 1991), pp. 373–374. Back.
Note 45: President Husayn granted hundreds of these people medals of valor and published their names in the media, for example, al-Thawra, 28, 30 June 1995; al-Jumhuriyya, 2, 4 July 1995. Back.
Note 46: Babil, 4 June 1994. Back.
Note 47: During the 1920 revolution the tribes received their orders from the ‘ulama. Luizard, La Formation de l’Irak, pp. 406–409. Back.
Note 48: Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 118–119. Back.
Note 49: Babil, 10 October 1993. For earlier reports on such clashes see, Babil, 17 May, 21 October 1992; al-Jumhuriyya, 1 November 1992. In the summer of 1995, the mainly Sunni tribe of al-Dulaymi in the al-Anbar governorate, northwest of Baghdad, staged open riots against the regime. Ofra Bengio, “Iraq,” Middle East Contemporary Survey (MECS), vol. 19, 1995, pp. 312–315. Back.
Note 50: Al-Thawra, 2 April 1997. Back.
Note 51: Wireless File, 26 March 1992. Back.
Note 52: Al-Qadisiyya, 11 June—DR, 12 June 1994. Back.
Note 53: Al-Jumhuriyya, 22 January 1994. Back.
Note 54: Al-Jumhuriyya, 8 March, 8 October 1994, 10 July, 2 August 1995, 7, 21 May, 8 June 1997; Babil, 23, 24 April, 16 June, 9 July 1994; al-Qadisiyya, 1 September 1994, 8 May 1995; al-Thawra, 9, 11 November 1994, 26 July 1996, 25 September 1997. Back.
Note 55: For example INA, 12 May—DR, 14 May 1987; Alif Ba, 13 May 1987; al-Jumhuriyya, 28 January—DR, 5 February 1988. Back.
Note 56: Thirty-seven Iraqi books were written about the 1920 revolt. Al-Thawra, 27 June 1989. Back.
Note 57: For example, Babil, 7 March, 25, 26 August 1992; al-Thawra, 4, 10, 25 October 1992; al-Jumhuriyya, 2 September 1992. Back.
Note 58: For a recent study on the subject see Khaled Salih, State-Making, Nation-Building and the Military: Iraq, 1941–1958 (Goteborg, Sweden: Goteborg University, 1996). Back.
Note 59: Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 7 September 1995; Jordan television, 26 September—DR, 27 September 1995; Newsweek, 30 October 1995. See also Pierre-Jean Luizard, “The Iraqi Question from the Inside,” Middle East Report 25, no. 2 (March–April 1995), pp. 18–22; Ofra Bengio, “Iraq,” MECS, vol. 19, 1995, pp. 330–332. Back.
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