-Caveat Lector- http://www.iht.com/articles/91200.html
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com A Shiite resurgence could shock region Joseph Fitchett/IHT International Herald Tribune Thursday, March 27, 2003 Risk for Sunni-dominated nations? PARIS Although no key leader wants to say so publicly, a successful insurrection in Basra would send a shock wave to Baghdad, and through neighboring Arab nations, by signaling the end of a long period of political subordination for the Shiite Muslim majority in Iraq. After years of simmering hostility and sometimes bloody revolt by Basra against Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party, which is dominated by Sunni Muslims, a revolt by the city's Shiite population seems bound to explode, a Bush administration official said privately this week. Already, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said Wednesday that "there was some limited form of uprising" in Basra during the previous 24 hours, but this initial outbreak seems to have been put down quickly by Iraqi troops and special security units inside city, which is the political center of southern Iraq. "Don't expect the kind of scenes evoked by the phrase 'popular uprising' - you know, revolutionary crowds surging through the streets and building barricades with their bare hands until Saddam is dead or his local enforcers are wiped out," the U.S. source said. Once Saddam's grip cracks in Basra, the "decades of Shiite quiescence in Iraq will be over for good," said Reuel Gerecht, a former U.S. government specialist. The sight of Shiites staking their claim to power over their corner of Iraq is bound to cause alarm throughout ruling Iraqi circles, especially commanders in the army, who historically have been fearful of the risk of seeing Iraq break into pieces controlled by Shiites in the south, Kurds in the north and Sunnis in a smaller middle region around Baghdad. For neighboring Arab states, many of which have restive Shiite minorities, the Shiites' emergence in Iraq would raise new questions about the domination of Sunni Muslims during centuries of Turkish rule in the Ottoman Empire and even the Arab states carved out of it after World War I. Throughout the postcolonial era, Shiites saw Arab nationalism, including its Iraqi incarnation under Saddam, as a disguised form of Sunni domination, according to an Arab ambassador in Paris, who is himself a Sunni Muslim. This subordination, called the Arab world's secret "social contract" by Fouad Adjami, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, is targeted for change by U.S. planners eyeing a new order in the Middle East. Historic change seems to be at hand in Iraq, where "the Shiites are going to have more power than at any time in the history of the nation," the Bush aide said. The postwar upheaval, according to Gerecht, will enable the Shiites to gain "a political and military role that their numbers and social, cultural and commercial prominence have long warranted." According to CIA statistics, Shiites account for at least 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people, but Sunnis, comprising less than one-third of the population, have commandeered most of the controlling positions in the ruling Ba'ath party, armed forces, industry and media. The prospect of seeing the Iraqi Shiites breaking the mold "makes a lot of people nervous in status quo nations in the Gulf," according to an Arab ambassador in Paris. Among the world's 800 million Muslims, Sunnis outnumber Shiites by 10 to 1 - and they dominate every Arab country ranging from Morocco to Egypt and Iraq. But the Shiite minority concentrated in the Gulf sits atop many key oil- producing regions, including southern Iraq and nearby Saudi Arabia's petroleum-rich eastern province. Most importantly, Iran, while not an Arab country, is a Shiite nation run by radical clerics embodying the zealous fervor often associated with the Shiite schism in Islam from the dominant Sunni orthodoxy. Because of Iran's proximity, Iraq's Shiites have often been suspected by Arab leaders of being a potential fifth column for Tehran, but the decadelong Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s showed that Iraq's Shiites, who are Arabs, feel no bond with their Iranian fellow-Shiites, who are Persians. Still, the "sensitivity around the whole issue of an emergent Shiite role in Arab politics explains why nobody wants to bring it up in public, especially the Iraqi Shiites themselves," according to Gerecht. For example, Ahmed Chalabi, one of the most charismatic and sophisticated Iraqi opposition leaders outside the country, is a Shiite, but he always phrases the ambitions of his cause in terms of liberation for all Iraq's religious and ethnic groups. Now, as the conflict heads into a showdown in Baghdad, an uprising in Basra could have a political impact on the elites among Iraq's Sunnis, pressing them to hasten Saddam's demise or risk seeing breakaway Shiites start to dismember Iraq by tearing away their oil-rich region around Basra. For the allies, it remains a subtle problem to foster Shiite rebellion without alienating Iraqi national opinion. A spokesman for British forces, which are handling the political-military operations in Basra, avoided the word Shiite in comments early Wednesday about signs of a revolt in Basra. In pledging support, he said that the rebellion stemmed from "resentment of the population" in Iraq against Saddam's regime. "We will do all we can to support it," he said, apparently starting with British Marines' raids into Basra. The first unrest in Basra was reportedly quickly stamped out by Saddam's forces still in the city, and Shiites can be expected to be cautious in choosing the time to take to the streets. Shiites in Basra are scarred by memories of massacres 12 years ago when their uprising, after the Gulf War, was put down by Iraqi Republican Guards. Thousands of Iraqis, most of them rank and file Shiite troops who turned their guns against the regime, were slain by helicopter gunships that the United States allowed Saddam's forces to operate after Baghdad's surrender to the U.S.-led coalition. Shiites reportedly have been systematically transferred out of military units in the Basra region, but this time the civilian Shiite leaders in the city have had U.S. assurances that their cause will not be betrayed by a decision in Washington, at the behest of Arab allies, to leave Saddam in place at the head of a Sunni-run Iraq. In addition, the Shiites have quiet support from pro-Western Arab regimes, notably Sunni-populated Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which once eyed them with suspicion. In contrast, in 1991, these U.S. allies hoped to see the Iraqi regime crumble gradually, leaving Sunni power intact to resist any Shiite separatist temptation. Key factors have changed, including the evident determination in Washington now to eliminate Saddam, and rising levels of confidence in Arab capitals that Iraq can be kept together. "This time all the concerned Arab governments want Saddam's regime to fall as fast as possible, so they recognize the advantages of a Shiite rising," according to Abdel-Karim Abul-Nasr, a prominent Arab columnist. In partly justifying the attack on Iraq as a way of ushering in political reforms in the Arab world, recognition of the rights and role of Iraq's Shiites, as a community, should be a U.S. priority in any postwar Iraqi system of government, according to a former U.S. official involved in the planning. Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune Forwarded for your information. 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