Tanbir Uddin Arman :
The ‘cradle of civilization’ is a common term used for the area comprising the present-day Iraq as it was home to the earliest known civilization; the Sumerian civilization. It was Iraq where the world’s first writing system was born. However, the Shiite-Sunnite sectarian conflict in today’s Iraq often takes us by surprise how a region which was commonly known as the ‘cradle of civilization’ transformed into a ‘hell of ghosts’.
This Shiite-Sunnite dichotomy, more like the divide between Christian and Protestant, dates back to the death of the Prophet Muhammad and the question of who was to take over the leadership of the Muslim nation. Although the origins of this split up were violent, Shiites and Sunnites lived together relatively peacefully for long periods of time. In 1920, Britain occupied the Iraqi land following the defeat of the Ottomans, and subsequently established the Kingdom of Iraq, appointing Sunnite Arab elites as the heads of the government and the ministry offices. Having been independent from the British control in 1932 , Iraq was not to go through any critical juncture until the mid 1970s with exception of the transitions of power form one ruler to another, sometimes through the means of military coups. However, following the death of General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Saddam Hussein’s adoption of the power in late 70s was a colossal turning point in the political scenario of Iraq.
Although the divide between Shiites and Sunnites was a historical construction, it was Hussein who exasperated and infuriated this sectarian divide by marginalizing the Shiites and Kurds in the country. Much about his ethnic and political discriminations against the Kurds and Shiites is well known. In 1978, he even got his government to issue a memorandum decreeing that anyone coming into conflict with those of the Sunnite led- Ba’athist Party leaderships would be subject to execution. Most of Hussein’s targets were ethnic Kurds and Shiite Muslims.
However, the 2003- Iraq War was another turning point that brought about major political and domestic transformations in Iraq. Hussein was killed and the majority Shiites took over the political control in the country. Nouri al-Maliki has been made the Primer of the country from the Shiite community under the auspices of the US. The US invasion of Iraq had again exasperated the Shiite- Sunnite divide, adding fuel to the fire. However, today’s ongoing crisis is mostly an upshot of dithery use of the power and discrimination between the sects by Maliki who was supposed by the US and the West to bring up and nurture democracy in a war-torn country. He discriminately pursued a policy to keep the Sunnite Muslims who previously led the Shiites out of the administrative structures, marginalizing them along lines of political and other basic rights.
Being deprived of political rights and gainful positions in the Maliki administration, the members of Hussein’s Ba’athist party and his elite Republican Guards had quickly come forward to making a force which formed the root of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant( ISIL) along with the Sunnite rebels coming from Syria and other neighboring countries.
The ultimate aim of this Sunnite led -ISIL which has already seized control of several northern cities and is driving through Mosul all the way to the immediate vicinity of the capital -Baghdad, is to establish a radical Islamic caliphate both in Iraq and Syria. The radicals even rubbed out the boundary lines between Iraq and Syria so as to lay foundation of their future state. Although the government forces are making stab at crippling the ISIL’s move, their efforts are in most cases conking out. Things do not end there. The ongoing crisis also helps the Kurds further build foundation for independence of Kurdistan in the east of Iraq, which they have long been struggling for. So, it is now apparent that Iraq is split into three areas – the east and far north are under the Kurds, north and northwest under Sunnite militia -ISIL , and Baghdad and southern parts under the Shiites.
Iraqi leaderships are very well cognizant of the fact that the government’s poorly trained forces and inadequate military logistics would be running low in combating the insurgents.
Upon the request of Bagdad for military assistance, the US has sent some 300 military advisers to provide training to the Iraqi forces and report thereto where to operate drone attacks. Yes, there is not much doubt that applying large-scale US air strikes and other military logistics would slow the advance of ISIL, but it is unlikely that the US would re-engage in a direct military operation in Iraq. Because following the 2001- Afghan War and 2003-Iraq War, the US could very quickly empathize in the right way with the mistakes in the Bush administration’s so- called ‘preemptive doctrine’; a doctrine employed to justify US’s right to invade other sovereign countries which are suspected to aid and harbor terrorists posing political threats to the US. However, the US and its citizens are now much more aware of the costs and fatal consequences of directing military fights in foreign countries.
On the other hand, gone are the days of the US’s dependency on the oil of the Middle East when maintaining stability in the Persian Gulf was mainly deemed necessary for letting the global and US economy operate uninterruptedly. The US itself is now on a path to energy independence in the next decade. It has now energy partners in Latin America, North America and in Europe. So, the Persian Gulf oil now implies less importance for the US to get involved in direct military fights in the region than it did even in the last decade.
However, on last 26 June, President Barack Obama has called on Congress to authorize $500 million aid package to assist the Syrian Sunnite rebels fighting Basher al-Assad’s military over the last three years. The US’s policy of new assistance to the Syrian rebels who are part of ISIL appears to be at odds albeit it is not getting involved in a direct war on ISIL in Iraq. The US has now got itself involved in a triangular crisis in the region. On the one hand, the US is stirring up Sunnite rebels in Syria to topple the Shiite regime of Bashar al- Assad , on the other hand it is providing military assistance to help prop up the Iraqi government that disdains Sunnite and Kurd oppositions, and simultaneously exerting pressures on Shiite majority – Iran on its allegation of nuclear weapon developments. The current scenario is that if the US does not support Baghdad, then Iraq will be a harbor of the Sunnite militants who would pose threats to the US’s sovereignty. If the US provides the Iraqi forces with military aids, it will be seen as cooperating with Bashar al- Assad and Iran. Consequently, any rapprochement with Bashar would paradoxically weaken the Syrian Sunnite rebels who the US is backing up against the Bashar regime. This is what results from the paradoxical and incoherent American foreign policy. However, the Obama administration may be heedful of the possibility of slipping the assistance to the Syrian Sunnite rebels into the hands of the ISIL extremists. But where do the commitments of the opposition fighters lie? It can be said pretty much surely that the any US aid to the Syrian rebels would very quickly end up in the hands of Sunnite militants who hold firm to set up a radical Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
Some argue that Iran and Syria can play a constructive role in extenuating the ongoing onslaught in Iraq, but their involvement would contrarily open up a Pandora’s Box of worsening the already existing sectarian resentment as they would come on behalf of the Shiites against the Sunnites. And thus their engagement would ultimately result in a scourging ravage and more civilian deaths.
As this is the circumstance, the crisis should be seen more as an outcome of the Sunnites’ identity crisis caused by the Maliki regime’s continued discrimination against and marginalization of them than a militancy problem. Any unilateral action by the Iraqi government with the assistance of the US or of Iran and Syria against the Sunnites may be working out in diluting the crisis for the time being , but in the long run it would sow the seeds of retaliation and future conflicts among the sects. So, there is a strong need of long-term domestic and political solution to the crisis. The days of centralized power in Baghdad are gone as the Shiites, Sunnites and Kurds each are powerful in their own orbits. So, whoever comes into the power in the days ahead, the best solution to the crisis may be either empowering equally all of the ethnic communities of the country giving them real place at the administrative levels and in political processes or reinforcing the existing federal state system , viz, with real as well as equal distribution of autonomy among the state governments.
(Tanbir Uddin Arman is Research Assistant, Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies (BIPSS), Email: [email protected] )
