There is a MEGA-MOGADISHU brewing...
"The assassination of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim
in Najaf on August 28 is the opening volley in the
coming Iraqi Civil War. The United States will reap
the whirlwind. One of the most consistent and ominous
prewar warnings to the Bush administration by Middle
East experts was that removal of Saddam Hussein
without the most careful political and social
engineering would result in the breaking apart of Iraq
into warring factions that would battle each other for
decades. "
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16684
Iraqi Civil War Brewing
By William O. Beeman, Pacific News Service
August 29, 2003
The assassination of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim
in Najaf on August 28 is the opening volley in the
coming Iraqi Civil War. The United States will reap
the whirlwind. One of the most consistent and ominous
prewar warnings to the Bush administration by Middle
East experts was that removal of Saddam Hussein
without the most careful political and social
engineering would result in the breaking apart of Iraq
into warring factions that would battle each other for
decades.
The hawks in the White House would not listen. They
were so wedded to the fantasy scenario that the
removal of Saddam in an act of "creative destruction"
would result in the automatic emergence of democracy.
They brushed aside all warnings.
Present-day Iraq was three provinces of the Ottoman
Empire before World War I. It was cobbled together by
the British for their own convenience after that
conflict. The British installed a king, the Saudi
Arabian son of the chief religious official of Mecca
(Faisal, of Lawrence of Arabia Fame) and glued the
whole mess together with the resident British Army.
The three regions were incompatible in ethnicity,
religious confession and interests. The Sunni Muslim
Kurds occupied the north. The Sunni Arab Bedouins
occupied the center and Southwest. The Shi'a Arab and
Persian population occupied the South and Southeast.
Of the three groups, the Shi'a were largest, with 60
percent of the population. With oil, an outlet to the
Persian Gulf and good agricultural land, they would be
the natural dominant force in the state the British
created. The Kurds would be important, too, because
they lived in the region of the country with the
largest oil reserves.
However, the British wanted the Sunni Arabs, the
smallest faction of the population, to be dominant.
They wanted this both to reward Saudi Arabians for
helping them fight the Ottomans, and because they had
existing clients in the sheikhs who ruled the Arab
states of the Gulf.
When the British were finally expelled, and their
Saudi ruling family deposed in Iraq in a 1958
nationalist coup, the new Ba'athist Iraqi nationalist
rulers had a supremely unruly nation on their hands.
The only way to keep power in Sunni Arab hands, and
away from the Shi'ites, was through ruthless
dictatorship and oppression. Saddam Hussein was the
supreme master of this political strategy.
Ayatollah al-Hakim's family was victimized by this
oppression. Virtually every one of the Ayatollah's
male relatives was executed by Saddam's regime. He
fled to Iran for years of exile, returning only after
Saddam was deposed by the United States. He became one
of the principal leaders of the Shi'a community, and a
symbol of rising Shi'a power in post-War Iraq. His
triumphant return to Iraq and the holy city of Najaf
was one of the most celebrated events in recent Iraqi
history.
It is still not known who set off the explosion that
killed him at the shrine of Ali, grandson of the
Prophet Mohammad. It could have been Sunni Arab
factions who fear the rise of Shi'a dominance in Iraq,
or it could have been his own Shi'a supporters,
disappointed with him for cooperating with American
policies in Iraq. Or it could have been someone else.
What is clear is that his death will now forever be a
rallying cry for the Shi'ite community against its
enemies.
It is notable that in Shi'ism virtually all
significant leaders have been "martyred." Of the 12
historical Imams of the Ithna 'ashara branch of
Shi'ism dominant in Iraq and Iran (Ithna 'ashara means
"twelve" in Arabic), ten are buried in shrines in
Iraq. Their tombs are ever-present reminders of the
oppression and struggle of the Shi'a. Now Ayatollah
al-Hakim will join them, and with the power of a
saint, will inspire generations of grimly dedicated
young warriors, determined to wreak vengeance and
assert the power of their community. They will be led
by his own paramilitary group, the Badr brigade.
Shi'a fury will be directed at the Sunnis to the
north. It will also be directed toward United States
as the occupying force who both did nothing to prevent
this tragedy, and further continued the British
doctrine of Sunni favoritism by insisting that the
Shi'a religious leaders would never be allowed to come
to power. In any case, the forces of retribution are
about to be unleashed in a manner hitherto unseen in
the region.
Could the United States have done anything to prevent
this tragedy? Of course it could have. As the
occupying power U.S. officials knew acutely about the
danger to Ayatollah al-Hakim. Since Washington opposed
the rise of Shi'a power in Iraq, charges of American
indifference or even complicity in his death will soon
be flying.
The final question Washington must now face is How to
stop this inevitable civil war? When the factional
shooting starts, where does the U.S. army, caught in
the crossfire, aim its own guns?
PNS commentator William O. Beeman is Director of
Middle East Studies at Brown University. He is author
of the forthcoming book, "Iraq: State in Search of a
Nation."