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THE MYTH of a unified
Iraqi identity may have finally been laid to rest.
More clearly than any other measurement since the
United States-led invasion in 2003, preliminary
results from last month's parliamentary elections
show Iraq as three lands with three distinct
identities, divided by faith, goals, region, history
and symbols.
Iraqis of all stripes say they are the descendants
of Mesopotamia, the glorious great-grandchildren of
the cradle of civilisation. Iraq, they point out,
gave birth to law and the written word. And asked
their faith, Iraqis often testily answer with the
refrain: "There is no Sunni. There is no Shiite. We
are all Iraqi."
But the preliminary election results, which have
trickled out through a series of haphazard leaks and
news conferences and remain disputed by all parties,
show a nation starkly fragmented into ethnic and
religious cantons with different aims and visions.
Nine out of 10 Iraqis in the Shiite Muslim provinces
of the south voted for religious Shiite parties,
according to the early results from the Independent
Electoral Commission of Iraq. Nine out of 10 Iraqis
in Sunni Muslim Arab areas of central and western
Iraq voted for Sunni parties. Nine out of 10 Iraqis
in the Kurdish provinces of the north voted for
Kurdish candidates. Nationwide, only about 9 per
cent voted for tickets that purported to represent
all Iraqis.
The results were like a bracing splash of ice water
for US officials, who had predicted that a secular,
centrist Iraqi government would emerge after the
invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Many longtime
observers of Iraq had hoped the vote would foster
national unity by bringing to power moderate
politicians who might help draw down a minority
Sunni Arab-led insurgency against a Government now
controlled by the country's majority Shiites, and
stanch Kurds' secessionist tendencies.
Instead, more than 240 of the 275 legislators, who
will decide the composition of the future
government, will probably be Shiite Islamists, Sunni
Arab sectarians or autonomy-minded Kurds. The
Shiites, who make up about 60 per cent of the
nation's population, will hold by far the largest
share.
Though Iraqis often speak lovingly of golden ages
when they were one big happy family, Iraq has been a
shaky proposition since its 1920s founding. Rather
than sharing a history, the paths of Iraq's Shiites,
Sunni Arabs and Kurds diverged from the beginning of
the nation's inception as a product of British
colonialism.
Sunnis collaborated with the British, who supported
the Sunni Arab monarchists. Shiite insurrectionists
heeded the calls of their clergy and fought a jihad,
or holy war, against the British, who crushed them
and reaffirmed their second-class status. Kurdish
nationalists unsuccessfully sought independence,
first by diplomatic channels, later by the gun.
Iraq's post-World War II order was no less divisive.
Sunni Arab nationalists forced their pan-Arab
ideology on the diverse country following Britain's
departure. Saddam's Sunni-run government magnified
discrimination to the point of mass killings, with
Shiites and Kurds punished not so much for who they
were but for refusing to accept the Baath Party's
version of Iraqi identity. Nonetheless, Saddam's
authoritarianism was the glue that held Iraq
together for decades. Now that he is out of power,
the nation's troubled identity has again been cast
into flux.
Does the nation continue to bow before the
philosophy of Arab nationalism, or that of Shiite
mysticism? Is Iraq's national hero Saddam or the 7th
century Shiite caliph Imam Ali? Or, for that matter,
is it the late Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani?
A further erosion of Iraqi identity could pave the
way for a partitioning of the country, with
unpredictable results.
Kurds, already soured on the idea of Iraq, could
bolt the union, taking the oil-rich city of Kirkuk
with them and realising the worst fears of Turkey
and Iran, each with sizeable and restless Kurdish
minorities.
Shiites, too, unified by their religious
iconography, have begun seriously talking about
setting up a nine-province, oil-rich southern
region. That would leave an angry and resentful
Sunni Arab centre and west of the country determined
to continue staging an insurgency that could inflame
passions throughout the Middle East.
Many Sunni Arab nationalists and former Baath Party
adherents blame Iran and the United States for
interfering in Iraq's internal affairs and whipping
up sectarian and ethnic passions. The US, they say,
started the troubles by doling out seats on the
initial post-invasion Iraqi Governing Council
according to ethnicity and sect rather than who was
best qualified. Iran, they say, has flooded the
country with religious imagery and propaganda,
bolstering the fierce sectarianism of the country's
Shiite majority to achieve its own ends.
Regardless of the cause, the very idea of Iraq may
be slowly fading, politicians and common Iraqis
acknowledge, often sadly.
Even the Iraqi flag seems to appear only in the
posters of politicians bankrolled by US-funded aid
organisations. Government buildings such as the
ministries of education and health are often
festooned with posters of bearded and turbaned
Shiite clerics instead of the red, white and black
flag of Iraq.
In the Kurdish cities of Erbil and Dahuk, the Iraqi
flag is nowhere in evidence, replaced by the red,
white and green flag of the ill-fated Mahabad
republic, the Kurdish state briefly established in
northern Iran by rebellious Kurds aided by the
Soviet army in the chaotic aftermath of World War
II.
Many also blame politicians and clerics who have
courted supporters with symbols of faith and
ethnicity. Iraq remains a religious and tribal
society where codes of honour and loyalty are deeply
ingrained.
Some Iraq experts compare the situation with the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.
In times of crisis, they say, people tend to seek
out their own kind and stick close to them, just as
citizens of former communist countries sought refuge
in religion and ethnicity, catalysts for wars in
Chechnya, Yugoslavia and Tajikistan.
But Iraq's situation is by no means hopeless. In
some quarters, Iraqi national identity remains
strong, said Juan Cole, a professor of history and a
leading authority on Shiite Islam at the University
of Michigan. He argues that with the collapse of
Baathist-imposed Arab nationalism, Iraqis need to
work out a new identity that includes all Iraqis,
just as Canada managed to accommodate the Quebecois
and Britain the Scots.
In the worst-case scenario, questions of Iraqi
identity will be resolved on the streets by the
AK-47s each Iraqi household seems to have stashed
away. In the best-case scenario, Iraqi identity will
be renegotiated passionately yet peacefully in
courts, classrooms and legislative chambers.
Even Saddam's continuing trial on charges involving
the killings of 146 Shiite villagers in 1982,
divisive though it is, can serve as such a forum. At
times last month, the trial resembled not so much a
legal battle as a dysfunctional family — a Kurdish
judge, a Shiite prosecutor and Sunni Arab defendants
— squabbling at a holiday dinner over traumatic
events two decades ago.
Some Iraqi leaders have taken first steps to avert a
break-up of the country. Under heavy US pressure,
they've begun exploring the creation of a
broad-based coalition government that includes
Iraq's different segments. Others have begun
publicly acknowledging the divisions within the
country and urging moderation.
With many of the country's tribes and families
divided between Sunni and Shiite, the increasing
identification with one or the other inspires
revulsion among some Iraqis even as the divisions
deepen.
The politicians "talk in a vocabulary that separates
us", says Ali Abdul Salman, a 25-year-old Oil
Ministry worker in Baghdad. "That is horrifying."
Born to a Sunni Arab mother, Shiite father and
Kurdish grandmother, Abdul Salman said he couldn't
help but still believe in an Iraqi identity. "We all
carry the same identity card, which says we are all
Iraqis. When I leave the country, what I will carry
is my Iraqi passport, and it doesn't say Sunni,
Shiite or Kurd."
www.theage.com.au
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