Where is Iraq going?

The western political elites are shocked at the insurgency of a section of the Shi’a Muslims in Iraq. They are asking: what does the violence mean, and how can we suppress it? Why do the Shi’a appear as discontented as the understandably aggrieved Sunni Muslims, and is this the start of a civil war?

The winners, the losers – and the disappointed

What does the uprising led by Muqtada al-Sadr really mean? While elements of the Shi’a community are his core constituency, the significance and maybe some of the solutions lie in its political and socio-economic characteristics rather than its religious status. He draws his support from those excluded from the political process, disenchanted by unemployment, dependent upon his organisation’s welfare system, drawn to the comradeship of his Mahdi Army, and otherwise seemingly excluded from participating in the project of creating the future of Iraq.

These characteristics are what makes him a dangerous factor in Iraq today, and what makes the coalition’s reaction to him so important.

It is a valid generalisation to say that any large-scale political upheaval involves three broad groupings – the winners; the losers; and the disappointed. At a certain stage in political transformation, the experience of the third group is often the most critical for its future.

The disappointed are those, often a majority of the population, who believed they would benefit from the change in political systems but who find that one elite has been exchanged for another and that they are still at the bottom of the pile. Many will just continue their lives as they always have done. But if the more radical elements among the disappointed find common cause - even unconsciously - with the losers, the alliance that results may be especially threatening to the emerging order.

Muqtada al-Sadr represents the disappointed. He may personally desire a more radical form of Islamic state than many Shi’a, but his real strength is in his ability to connect with those Shi’a who thought that there would be a shift in economic benefits and political power from the Sunni elites to the poor Shi’a majority – and are now bitter at its absence. The possibility of such a shift happening within a one-year period is unrealistic, even in the best of circumstances. But in any case it is the perception as much as the reality of continued exclusion that is providing the young cleric with a raft of disinherited, unemployed young men looking to him to help them claim their rights.

Al-Sadr has articulated his aims on two levels. His proposal of an Islamic political structure appears the greater worry for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), but it is his second platform – Iraqi nationalism - that is the real cause for concern.

As with earlier crises, there is speculation about whether this uprising may result in civil war. This, in my view, is completely to misunderstand Iraq. I have never believed that Iraq would be consumed by sectarian violence, but rather have warned of a possible common cause across the religious divide that may unite the disappointed and the outright losers. The momentous result could be an apparently strange – but historically not unprecedented - alliance between the disenfranchised Shi’a and their Sunni counterparts.

Sunnis, Shi’as – and Iraqis

The “Iraq revolt” of 1920 is remembered and celebrated among later generations of Iraqis as the founding moment of modern Iraqi nationalism.

In many respects, the circumstances were similar to today. Then too, an “occupying force” (imperial British), attempting to establish a liberal democratic model in Iraq in the aftermath of the fall of the former (Ottoman) regime, was initially welcomed by the Shi’a of the southern provinces, who believed that they would be liberated from Sunni control in Baghdad.

The British, nervous of some of the more extreme elements of the Shi’a, avoided building relationships with them. In frustration at their persistent activities, British forces arrested a group of Shi’a clerics. This sparked regional uprisings against British governance in the Shi’a-dominated regions.

The Sunni who had been the dominant community under the old system of Ottoman suzerainty, and aggrieved at its own loss, found common cause – and timing – to launch their own series of uprising across the middle and north of the country.  This was not in rivalry with the Shi’a but in cooperation with them against both the British and the latter’s appointed local elites.   And to compound any similarities, one of the leading Shi’a of the Independence Guard, was a Muhammad al-Sadr.

While the British were eventually able to crush the revolt, it had cost 6,000 Iraqi lives and manifested itself across the country - including in the northern, Kurdish regions whose people used this period of instability to advance their own claims to self-government.

The cost of the revolt was in much more than lives. Iraqi nationalism was born in bitterness against foreign ownership, influence and - at its extreme – occupation. The British, realising that their overt presence was not sustainable, were forced to handover power and withdraw much more quickly than they had planned.

Eight decades, seven regimes, and four wars later, what choices are now available - both to Iraqis and to their foreign occupiers and putative partners - to allow them to avoid repeating the most destructive elements of this history? On the Shi’a side, moderate elements are advising the CPA to negotiate with Muqtada al-Sadr rather than confront him. They believe that to arrest him would further enhance his influence and legitimise a fringe, extremist element of the Shi’a, thus undermining their own position.

On the occupiers’ side, the use of force to quell the uprising – from mass arrests to helicopter gunships – is likely to prove counterproductive. Street-battles in Shi’a districts (like the significantly renamed “Sadr City” slum area of Baghdad) is now encouraging the poorer Sunni to mobilise. Political opportunists who see centralised power as threatening their power base may also join the loose but growing coalition of the disappointed and the losers. And with military attention focused on the flashpoints, local militias may mushroom, further fragmenting sources of authority across the country.

Neither sociology nor history quite answers the question: why now? Why has the Shi’a insurrection arisen at this moment, just three months before the proposed transfer of power from the CPA to (albeit designated and approved) Iraqi authorities? Could it be that radical religious groups, aware of the secularist instincts of the Iraqi majority, have seized an opportunity to polarise the incipient political space by making the attitude to occupation its defining feature, thus narrowing the ground for peaceful democratic argument? At the same time, Muqtada al-Sadr (like his Shi’a rival, Ali Sistani) had been pushing for democratic elections as soon as possible, and the closure of his newspaper by the coalition authorities gave grounds for him to rally his supporters across the country.

The current pattern of events, serious as it is, does not mean that a new “Iraq revolt” on the 1920 model is inevitable. But dissatisfaction on three fronts - economic, security and political – has the capacity to encourage nationalist sentiments that are broader than religious divides and lie deep within the Iraqi psyche. This is where good judgment and careful, sensitive decision-making by those in authority can still make a real difference.

In February 2003, a month before the war that toppled him, Saddam Hussein himself made a connection between the imminent US action and the Iraq revolt of 1920: “We hope that the British would tell the Americans about their experience in Iraq in 1920.”

Is it this seed of Iraqi history that Muqtada al-Sadr may be attempting to nurture?