IRAQ: Iraq's senior Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has warned of "genocidal war" if the current high level of violence continues. The risk has increased because insurgents who had been targeting Iraqi police, troops and military installations have begun to hit Shia civilians as well.
The rise in attacks on civilians began in May, after the formation of the elected government dominated by the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shia parties allied to Iran.
A majority of those killed and wounded in insurgent operations against the security forces have always been Shias, who constitute Iraq's largest community and have flocked to the security services. But Shias did not see such attacks as being directed against their community until assassins, kidnappers and bombers stepped up attacks on Shia mosques and neighbourhoods, as well as Shias travelling to the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala in the south.
The resistance, largely comprised of Sunni Baathists, nationalists and Islamists, bolstered by Islamist foreign fighters, views the post-war rise of Shias as a threat to Iraq's identity as an Arab country. During the 450-year reign of Arab nationalists and Baathists, Sunnis and Shias were brought together under a secular nationalist umbrella. Shias predominated in the Communist party and made up half the members of the Baath. Although the former president, Saddam Hussein, surrounded himself with fellow Sunni family and clan members, his regime retained the secular nationalist ideology.
The challenge to secularism was mounted by the Shia Islamic Dawa movement, formed by the Shia clerical establishment between 1957 and 1958 to combat "atheism" by curbing the enlistment of Shias in the Communist party. During the 1970s, Dawa clashed with the Baathist government and, after the 1979 Iranian revolution, Dawa formed a military wing which carried out assassinations, bombings and sabotage in Iraq. Dawa was banned in 1980 and many of its members fled to Iran.
Dawa's militia sided with Iran against Iraq during the 1980-1988 war but the majority of troops in the Iraqi army who fought against Iran were Shia conscripts whose Iraqi Arab identity was said to have been reinforced by this war. Nevertheless, Dawa and its offshoot, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), were able to raise a Shia revolt at the end of the 1991 US war, prompting Sunnis to reiterate the claim that Shias owed allegiance to Iran, not Iraq.
Following the ousting of the Baathist regime in 2003, the US occupation authority rejected the secular model and established a Governing Council comprised of representatives of Iraq's ethnic and religious communities.
Since then, Iraq's three governments and two assemblies have been constituted in accordance with sectarian/ ethnic formulae which have divided rather united the country. Appointments in the civil administration and the security services have been by communal affiliation rather than suitability. The Shia-Kurdish alliance established ahead of the January election has excluded Sunnis from power.
Sunnis, who ruled Iraq since the advent of Islam, are now convinced the Shias, backed by Shia Iran and motivated by sectarian ambition, intend to transform Iraq into a Shia theocracy by imposing Shia clerics, religious forms, political ideology and social strictures on the entire populace. This Sunni view has been strengthened by the deployment of Sciri militia against insurgents and by the imposition of Shia militia rule on Basra and other southern towns where there is a mixed Shia and Sunni population.
This week's visit to Iran by Ibrahim Jaafari, Iraq's prime minister and Dawa's spokesman, is likely to enhance the impression among Sunnis that Iraq has been taken over by politicians they refer to as "Iranians".
