> On U.S. National Public Radio, one commentator (an ex-pat Iraqi)
> argued that Saddam H. created the Shi'ite/Sunni conflict that now
> rips Iraq apart.
>
> While I think she's exaggerating, I agree that Saddam made this
> conflict larger by privileging the Sunnis. But she said that the
> Shi'ites and Sunnis had been united as "Iraqis" when the Brits
> ruled the roost, united against the Brits of course. Didn't the
> Brits apply their usual divide-and-rule medicine? did pre-Saddam
> Ba'athists do so also?
>
> I would guess that the US occupiers are also applying divide-and-
> rule by favoring the Shi'ites, though it's hard to see the US as
> having enough control of the country to do so at this time.
I was curious about the same question, so I got around to doing some reading about it last night. I found these four articles very intriguing:
Peter Sluglett and Marion Farouk-Sluglett, "Some Reflections on the Sunni/Shi'i Question in Iraq," Bulletin of the British Society for Middle East Studies 5.2 (1978): 79-87. Hanna Batatu, "Iraq's Underground Shi'i Movements," MERIP Reports 102 (January 1982): 3-9. Yitzhak Nakash, "The Conversion of Iraq's Tribes to Shiism," International Journal of Middle East Studies 26.3 (August 1994): 443-463. Amatzia Baram, "Neo-Tribalism in Iraq: Saddam Hussein's Tribal Policies 1991-1996," International Journal of Middle East Studies 29.1 (February 1997): 1-31.
From the Slugletts' and Nakash's articles, one learns that Shiites became a majority in what would become Iraq only in the 19th century. "Nomads constituted as much as 50 percent of the population in the south as late as 1860" (Nakash 444). Nomads were nominally sunnis but barely religious, and their lives were governed more by tribal customs than any religion. What precipitated the change was the Ottoman Empire's settlement and tax policy, which led to a massive conversion of Southern tribes to Shiism: the direct control of the Ottoman that began in 1831, ending the Mamluk period, encouraged nomadic tribesmen to "settle down and take up agriculture" (Nakash 449). The new policy was a consequence of the Ottoman Empire's response to the rise and development of capitalism: the Ottomans, too, wanted to turn nomads into productive individual peasant proprietors and make them pay more taxes to the government than they could in communal nomadic life. This new policy caused a huge upheaval in the lives of tribesmen, which, Nakash argues, made for the distraught tribesmen's new receptiveness to religion, more specifically Shiism, which was perceived to be a religion that emphasized combatting tyranny and oppression more than other schools of Islam. Sayyids, holy men, began to spring up among tribes or migrate from cities to tribal areas for propagation of the Shiite faith in great numbers: e.g., "Among the Shabana marsh tribe, the sayyids constituted as much as 20 percent of the population even in the mid-20th century" (Nakash 452). The Ottomans, alarmed by massive conversions to Shiism, sought to counter the trend by spreading Sunni education, but mostly to no avail, except in Samarra.
The Slugletts argue that the theory of eternal sectarian conflict in Iraq, which the British Empire originally propagated, misses the true nature of divides in Iraq: the divisions were more based on class and urban-rural divisions: "the most important fact here is that the Sunnis constitute the bulk of the _urban_ population, and in particular of the population of Baghdad," supplying "the main cadres for the administration and the army" when the British came, and even in 1957, "the great mass of the Iraqi population . . . illiterate peasants, over four million of the 6.4 million total," played "no active role in politics" (Sluglett and Sluglett 80-81). The British, while drawing upon the skills of educated Sunnis in Baghdad for administration, enlisted the Shiite landowners in the rural south for tax collection: the result is that "tribal revolts in the rural south during the 1920s and 1930s were not so much the assertion of tribal independence against the rule of the Sunni effendi class in Baghdad, but more often struggles for power between different levels of the tribal leadership" (Sluglett and Slulglett 82). At the same time, the British sought to make use of the potential for sectarian conflict for their purpose: "The British authorities encouraged the formation of a Shi'i party, the Hizb al-Nahda, to press for 'Sh'i rights' -- the appointment of more Shi'i ministers and officials and so forth" (Sluglett and Sluglett 83). If Sunni overrepresentation in the officialdom continued after the 1958 Revolution, that is because the new political leaders, petit-bourgeois in class background, came from the army, which was, as mentioned above, "largely composed of urban Sunnis" (Sluglett and Sluglett 84). The ideology of the new leaders, however, was fundamentally non-religious and more nationalist than anything else, and they discouraged tribalism and sectarianism. What mattered was "whether one was a Ba'athist or not" (Sluglett and Sluglett 85). The Shiite poor, when they did become politicized, were more often attracted to Communism than Ba'arthism or any other variety of Arab nationalism, the Slugletts suggest: "the Iraqi Communist Party (IPC) has found the bulk of its support among poor Shi'is in Baghdad and the south" (Sluglett and Sluglett 85).
As for the Saddam Hussein era, Hanna Batatu emphasizes that Hussein sought to make use of a two-pronged tactic on religion after Da'wah and the Mujahidin, encouraged by the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79, switched to the strategy of guerilla struggle that attacked the police, the army, and the Baath Party: kill Islamist leaders who had mass appeal, such as Sayyid Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr, and Baarthists who criticized this iron-fist policy; and spread money to religious institutions: "At the same time, Saddam Husayn showed greater deference to the Shi'i 'ulama'. and went out of his way to win them over to his regime. In 1979 alone, he spent as much as ID 24.4 million on shrines, mosques, _husayniyyahs_, pilgrims, and other affairs of religion, dispensing funds impartially to both Shi'i and Sunni establishments" (Batatu 7). For him, religion was merely a tool, and he had no preference between Sunnis and Shiites. The Sunnis who rebelled against his rule -- including his sons in law -- were as ruthlessly eliminated as Shiite opposition leaders; and Shiites who worked for him received patronage in the same way as Sunnis did.
Amatzia Baram argues that a new policy turn that is more significant than religious appeal is a turn to neo-tribalism, especially after the uprising in the South in March 1991. Hussein took careful note of which tribes rose up against him, which supported him, and which stood aside, and rewarded or retaliated against them depending on each case, regardless of sects.
Both the tribal and religious turns generated great discontent among Baathist old-timers who favored the early party tenets and became alarmed by the party's increasing reliance on religious and tribal patronage. Baram notes signs of criticisms in _Babil_, "the daily newspaper belonging to his [Hussain's] son 'Udayy, and in the party daily": "Most notable in that respect was an article entitled 'The Red Line: "No" to the Damaging Traditions (al-taqalid al-darra)," by a researcher at the Center of Gulf Studies at the University of Basra. In the article, the author lashes out against the tribal policy of the regime in a way that makes one wonder who is calling the tune in Iraq. After paying the unavoidable lip service to the 'The Ingenious Leader Saddam Hussein, may God preserve him," he wrote, in a totally unexpected about-face, that party 'strugglers' must point to areas of weakness in the president's policy. Some tribal shaikhs believe that the leadership supports them due to the weakness of the party and the state apparatus, he said, and this encourages them to follow 'harmful tribal inclinations.' Rather than encouraging the unity of the [Iraqi] people," these inclinations are "sowing . . . the seeds of division . . . inciting one part of it against the other . . . providing protection . . . annulling the law and depreciating legal justice.' Thus, when a teacher reprimands a pupil, the tribal shaikh intervenes and forces him to retract. When a clerk is disciplined by her boss, the next day she summons her tribe to intimidate him. A gun-toting man enters a police station, threatens the guards, and demands the blood of his tribal enemy, who is detained there pending trial, as his inherent right to carry out 'tribal revenge' (al-tha'r al-'asha'iri). A cab drivers' trade union sacks three of its officials because they try to impose state regulations on tribal members and, in the process, clash with the tribe. Heavily armed tribal patrols are terrorizing the citizens, 'and dozens of other examples.' If a soldier or a policeman kills a tribal criminal while on duty, tribal tradition has it that the tribe will not intervene. 'Yet now,' the author complains, 'the criteria have changed, and the tribe seeks revenge for the blood of the criminal . . . attempting an armed assault on your home when you had simply fulfilled your duty.' And the author exclaims, not very convincingly: 'the armed tribal inclination will never be allowed to return!'" (Baram 17).
In conclusion, while the Baath Party's loss of control meant that the party was turning more to religion and tribalism, what's clear is that Iraq today is the most sectarian in its entire history, including its pre-history.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>