PROTEST IN THE ARAB WORLD -THE CASE OF IRAQ

PROTEST IN THE ARAB WORLD-THE CASE OF IRAQ

By Josef Olmert

After the American invasion of 2003 and the downfall of the Sunni Saddam Hussein regime, and as the country slowly delved into its sectarian civil war, Christopher Catherwood, an adviser to then British PM Tony Blair published his; Churchill’s Folly; How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq.

This was a book referring to how Churchill made a mistake with calamitous consequences and unseen repercussions, claiming that Iraq was an artificial monarchy in which were forced together unfriendly peoples-Arab Sunnis, Arab Shi’is, and Sunni Kurds. Iraq was, for most of its Century of existence, a chronically unstable entity, troubled by Arab-Kurdish war, Sunni-Shi’i conflict, and diminishing Christian population, as well as no Jews after the deportation following the creation of Israel. There was though a period of internal stability, in the heydays of Saddam rule, but it was possible only because it was based on a regime which in its brutality was the closest to Nazi Germany in the Middle East even when compared with notorious other repressive Arab regimes.

As the American invasion seemed to be heading in the wrong direction, with Sunnis, Shi’s and Kurds engaged in fighting with each other, former VP Biden raised the idea, that the solution should be a dismemberment of Iraq into three separate states, along the sectarian lines. Not a bad idea, but one which got derision, rather than a serious discussion. As recently as September 2019, Biden reiterated this idea[The Intercept, 6 September 2019]. This is, of course, the total opposite of ‘’Churchill’s Folly’’, but not really a realistic solution, because if implemented, could unleash a pandora box which will devastate the entire post -WW1 Middle East political order.

This is just one out of many other books and scholarly works which refer to the root causes of instability in Iraq, a state of affairs which has been exacerbated by foreign intervention, precisely what happens when states are in such a shape as Iraq is.

The entire problematic history of Iranian-Iraqi relations is beyond the scope of this piece, but it is relevant to describe the gradual process of Iranian influence in Iraq post-2003, up to the current point. Clearly, one of the unintended consequences of the American operation “Iraqi Freedom’’[somewhat ironic name, isn’t it?…].An Iraqi Shi’i militia, Kata’ib Hizballah[The Hizballah Brigades] was established then, being an Iranian stooge, and later other Pro-Iranian militias were established, like Asa’b Ahl Al Haq[‘’League of the Righteous and Hashd Al Sa’abi[The Popular Mobilization Forces] among others. Iran used its military and financial resources in order to support the Shi’i- dominated Iraqi army defeating ISIS and recover lost territories, particularly Mosul in the North, after 2014. All this was part of a bigger Iranian campaign, whose most important target has been to wield decisive political influence over the Iraqi government, as well as to use Iraqi territory for the purpose of establishing the much talked about Shi’i Crescent, the straight route leading from Tehran to Beirut. This is again out of the scope of this paper, having much more to do with the overall Iranian strategy to become the main power broker in the Middle East and lead the anticipated Jihad against Israel. Shi’i Iraqi leaders at the time made no bones about the crucial Iranian role in helping them defeat ISIS. However, other Iraqis had a different sense of how to analyze the Iranian role. Hadi Jalo, a Baghdad-based political analyst, wrote that “for the Iranians, it is easier to dominate one country instead of three separate states’’[Yahoo News, 31 March 2015]. Jalo, of course, related to the Iranian objection to the idea of dividing Iraq along sectarian lines, objection which showed itself again with the Iranians playing a role in the anti-Kurdish campaign in late 2017. The Iranian supreme interest has been to dominate Iraq by remote control, in order to gain Iraqi and international legitimacy to their intervention there. Iranian policy of subjugating Iraq’s Shi’is to its will, has aroused, however, internal Shi’i opposition in Iraq, opposition which has proved to be of tremendous importance.

This has to do mainly with the fiery Shi’i leader, Muqtada Al Sadr. Sadr[born 1974] is a scion of the most prominent family of Iraqi Shi’i scholars and leaders. Members of his family were executed by Saddam Hussein ahead of the start of the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-1988. His cousin, Imam Musa Sadr, was the leader who started the Shi’i awakening in Lebanon in the 1960’s, a movement which underwent changes after Musa Sadr was assassinated by the Qaddafi regime in Libya in 1979, while visiting the country, and more so after 1982 with the rise of Hizballah in Lebanon. While Musa Sadr was a Lebanese patriot, Hizballah has become a stooge of the Iranian regime, exactly like most Shi’i movements in Iraq. Muqtada Sadr himself led a strong anti-American militia fighting the American occupation after 2003, and later became a significant political player in Iraq, leading the Sadrist Movement. It is important to note that the current supreme religious Shi’i authority in Iraq, hence also a leader who wields enormous political power, is not a member of the Sadr family. This is Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani[born 1930], whose center of activities is in the Holy city of Najaf. Sistani is known as an independent scholar and leader, who is not accepting Iran’s diktat. Because of his relative moderation, Sistani was mentioned a few times as a worthy winner of the Nobel Peace Prize[Thomas Friedman in NYT, 20 March 2005, Colin Freeman, The Daily Telegraph, 4 March 2014, and on 8 March 2014, Tehran Times reported that members of Iraq parliament intended to nominate Sistani. In 2006, a group of Iraqi Christians nominated him]. Sistani and the young Sadr leader, may be opposites in many respects, as the former is a revered religious leader and a man who fanatically keeps his privacy, whereas the latter is a rabble-rouser, politician and military leader, but also one who can be considered as an Iraqi nationalist, and in recent years, as a politician who goes out in public against the Iranian domination of Iraqi politics. He continues to express strong anti-American positions, but also started to criticize Iranian positions, calling for the downfall of Bashar Al Assad in Syria, and expressing readiness to mediate between Iran and Saudi Arabia. As an Iraqi nationalist, he tries to lure non-Shi’is to his movement, Sunnis as well as Christians, though with very limited success. Sadr new posture represents a combination of two factors; First, this is an inter Shi’i power struggle. Sadr wants to be the no 1 Shi’i political leader in the country, and he figures that the image of a nationalist will help him win over also non-Shi’is. Second, there is here a genuine Iraqi Shi’i resentment of the dominant Iranian position in the Shi’i world. Iraq, not Iran, is the birthplace of the Shi’a, and Ali was an Arab, not an Iranian. Be as it may, Sadr’s movement proves to be successful politically, and in the Iraqi parliamentary elections of May 2018, they got 54 seats out of 329 members, but still managed to be the largest single faction among the Shi’is and in the country altogether. A large part of his appeal is his anti-corruption campaign, an issue which is a perennial feature of Iraqi politics throughout the existence of the state, and one which has become even a bigger issue since the downfall of Saddam and the holding of elections. Even under the conditions of limited openness and transparency, enough news about the rampant government corruption does filter out to the general public and has become a major problem.

Muqtada Sadr was quick to detect the popular sense of outrage, and has positioned himself as the leading fighter against corruption-a seeming winning political formula

On 26 February 2016, Sadr led a one-million strong demonstration in Baghdad against the rampant corruption and thus ignited the protest movement which has come to a head in recent weeks. Whereas the early stages of the protest were characterized by non-violent activity, sit-ins and peaceful demonstrations, not so the wave of protest erupting in October 2019, claiming hundreds of lives. The most symbolic event, one which bears historic connotations, is the attack by thousands of Shi’is on the Iranian consulate in Karbala, leading to a mini massacre of over 20 demonstrators. This is Karbala, the birthplace of Shi’ism, where THE KARBALA MASSACRE OF 680 AD took place when Hussein, son of Ali, and his followers were massacred. In Iraq, the current massacre was an event of much significance, probably also in other centers of Shi’a Islam.

When dealing with corruption, tales of corruption in Iraq dwarf anything that is understood in the West.  A public survey from Transparency International of 2017 ranked the country 169th place out of 180 countries. In 2018, the same report showed some improvement, as Iraq was ranked ‘’only’’ 168 out of 180. The corruption is all-pervasive, and includes complete disbelief of the public in government, judiciary, the military, and the business community. Al Sadr had ample ground for protest, and he took it to the streets. Currently the government charged with corruption is led by Adil Abdul -Mahdi, a Shi’i politician who is considered to be in the pocket of the Iranians, in particular, being ‘’guided’’ by the notorious General Qassem Suleimani, the Commander of the Al-Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, the man considered the architect and executioner of Iran’s aggressive regional policy. It is therefore obvious, that by leading the popular protest against an Iranian-led government, Sadr consolidated his image as the new type of Iraqi national leader. The corruption protest is gaining added urgency by the worsening climatic conditions in Iraq. Draught has become an existential danger to the country. In simple terms, the rivers of Iraq, above all the Tigris and Euphrates are drying up. It is a climatic disaster, but also a symbolic mirror image of the overall sense of decline and doom prevailing in the country, the country between the rivers[Aram Naharayyim in Hebrew, Mesopotamia in Greek] which led to the outbreak of the violent riots of recent weeks with their mounting human cost.

There is however one highly significant feature of the situation which has to be emphasized and analyzed in order to have the full picture of the situation, and this is the role of sectarianism, the problem which has plagued the independent Iraqi state from its very inception. This article exclusively referred to the role of Shi’is in the Iraqi protest, and not because the existence of a strong Arab Sunni minority in the country[about 25 %] was forgotten or ignored. It is because the Sunnis do not take part in it. Here is, in a nutshell, the Sectarian problem in Iraq-can the Iraqis overcome sectarianism and develop a political entity based on a sense of shared nationalism, rather than being divided by religion [and in the case of the Kurds by ethnicity]. Can they overcome sectarian rivalries in order to form a united national front against a corrupt regime? The Iraqi analyst Ghassan Al Atiyya claimed that the riots show, that Iraq protests “have overcome sectarianism’’[Al Jazeera , 4 November 2019], but is providing a non-convincing explanation, according to which, the Sunnis do not participate in the protest because ‘’they were weary of their participation in the protest being interpreted as based on a Baathist or ISIS agenda’’.[IBID.] This is a somewhat technical explanation that still fails to address the question raised here about the role and centrality of sectarianism. The fact that the struggle in Iraq is within the Shi’i community, and in this instance, not between the Shi’is and other communities, does not mean that it is not a sectarian struggle. The control in the Shi’i community will lead the victors in the struggle for control over Iraq. This is not, therefore, the struggle that Sunni Arabs and Kurds feel is THEIR struggle to win. Muqtada Al Sadr may pose himself as an Iraqi nationalist, but he believes that Iraq is his to be the leader of, exactly because he claims to represent the Shi’i majority.

It is in the context of the power struggle INSIDE the Shi’i community that the current struggle can be resolved, at least temporarily. Sadr and his rivals, with strong Iranian involvement, can come to a new power-sharing arrangement. Whether that will happen remains to be seen, but even if they do, does that mean a solution to the fundamental problems of Iraq as discussed here? Does that mean the end of the after-effects of Churchill’s Folly? Maybe yes, most probably not.

Dr. Josef Olmert is a Senior Fellow at the Palm Beach Center for Democracy and Policy Research and an adjunct professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina