Behind the Sunni-Shi'ite Divide

[alexey]

Somewhat long but very interesting

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1592849-1,00.html

[Riggo-toni]

good article, thanks.

[wskin44]

Very interesting. Given the players and the history, chances are that a civil war in Iraq will rage for years funded and fought by forces outside of Iraq. Kind of like the Civil War in Spain before WWII.

[Larry]

Very interesting. Given the players and the history, chances are that a civil war in Iraq will rage for years funded and fought by forces outside of Iraq. Kind of like the Civil War in Spain before WWII.

Or the Iran-Iraq war.

Face it. In the middle east, a Suni/Shiite war is called "stability".

[JMS]

Bunk.. The shia and sunni's lived peacefully in Iraq for the last fifty years. This devide was created when we went in, and it's all our responsibility. Bunk like this article which attempts to excuse America's responsibility and blame 2000 year old wars as the roots of this mess are bunk. This is all about guys who aren't in power wanting power and creating an artifical devide in order to change the status quote.

[Larry]

Bunk.. The shia and sunni's lived peacefully in Iraq for the last fifty years. This devide was created when we went in, and it's all our responsibility. Bunk like this article which attempts to excuse America's responsibility and blame 2000 year old wars as the roots of this mess are bunk. This is all about guys who aren't in power wanting power and creating an artifical devide in order to change the status quote.

Um, they lived "peacefully" because Saddam would feed people's children into a wood chipper if they got uppity.

And, frankly, Saddam managed to keep the majority of that country in "minority status" for decades.

And he invaded how many countries in how many years? (And never really got punished much for any of them.)

Hardly a stable or desirable status.

(I'm not saying "we were justified to invade because Saddam was Bad". I'm saying "Iraq was not Eden before the American Serpent showed up.")

[Prosperity]

There was no Shia Sunni conflict during the early years of Saddam's reign. This is evidenced by the fact that the military didn't summarily revolt when Iraq invaded Iran, and they sure as hell didn't help Iran during the war, whenever Iran happened to have the upper hand in Iraqi territory. (and Sunni Iranians didn't help Saddam). If Iraq won that war Iraq would probably not have any problems today, but the Baathist's failures had to be blamed on some group.

What I am saying is that modern Sunni Shia strife is fairly new (like past 20-30 years) and that the Iran Iraq war is not a good example of it, thought its consequences may have lead to at least some of the strife we have today.

[JMS]

Um, they lived "peacefully" because Saddam would feed people's children into a wood chipper if they got uppity.

They inter-married and lived side by side. The shia hated Saddam true enough, but they didn't hate the sunni, nor did the sunni hate the Shia. There are no sacrimental differences between the two groups. They believed that a different guy should have taken over from mohomed, but both guys who took over for Mohomed to lead the two factions continued to follow the teachings of Mohomed. So they both essentially practice the same rituals and beliefs moving forward.

And, frankly, Saddam managed to keep the majority of that country in "minority status" for decades.

Your suggesting Saddam was a religous guy. He wasn't. Saddam was a dictator who played on the fear of the minority in order to stay in power. Saddam's acts are not representative of either side of the religous devide.

(I'm not saying "we were justified to invade because Saddam was Bad". I'm saying "Iraq was not Eden before the American Serpent showed up.")

I'm not saying the Shia Suni civil war is not happenning. I'm saying that it was artifically created to exploit the power void we created when we bumped off Saddam and didn't step up to the plate with enough troops to fill that void. Saddam was a bad guys, and Iraq wasn't an eden, but nor did they have Sunni Shia problems under Saddam, or before Saddam's predicessor the king for that matter.

This civil war was created as a power grab, nothing more. It's thousand year old history is irrelivent.

[twa]

Jms, I think you are glossing over a conflict that has been brewing for hundreds of years.

The Shia have been persecuted and ruled over by the Sunni for over 300 yrs.

They can and have lived together in peace,but it will not be from a Sunni minority ruler.

To say Saddam and the previous king did not have problems is wrong as any dissent was crushed.

http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/marsharabs1.htm

The fate of the Shi'a as a target of government repression was sealed following the February 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. The Iraqi government, motivated by fears that revolution in Iran would spur its own Shi'a population to revolt, lost no time in mounting a repressive campaign. At the end of 1979 and in early 1980, thousands of people were arrested in various towns and cities in central and southern Iraq, apparently on suspicion of supporting the Islamic revolution or for having links with the new regime in Iran. Many of these persons have since "disappeared" in custody and remain unaccounted for. Others died under torture or were executed.

This campaign of arrests was swiftly followed by another, more ambitious campaign: the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Shi'a Muslims to Iran, the official justification being that they were of Iranian origin (taba'iyya). More than half a million Shi'a Muslims, at the very least, were systematically expelled over the course of the 1980s. They included large numbers of women, children, and the elderly. The male heads of these families, together with other younger male relatives, were arrested and imprisoned indefinitely without charge: most remain unaccounted for today. These measures were accompanied by the promulgation of discriminatory legislation against Shi'a Muslims, the introduction of retroactive death penalty legislation for membership in a Shi'a Muslim opposition group Islamic Call (al-Da'wa al-Islamiyya), and the execution in prison and targeted assassination of prominent religious leaders and scholars.

Another wave of repression followed an abortive March 1991 uprising in southern Iraq after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf war. Civilians across the country, as well as some armed opposition forces, had taken part in widespread anti-government activities. Iraqi authorities rounded up thousands of people suspected of having participated in the three-week insurrection in numerous cities, towns, and villages across southern Iraq. As Human Rights Watch described it in a 1992 report: "In their attempt to retake cities, and after consolidating control, loyalist forces killed thousands of unarmed civilians by firing indiscriminately into residential areas; executing young people on the streets, in homes and in hospitals; rounding up suspects especially young men, during house-to-house searches, and arresting them without charge or shooting them en masse; and using helicopters to attack unarmed civilians as they fled the cities."3 The fate and whereabouts of many of those who "disappeared" in custody remains unresolved to date.

Tens of thousands of army deserters, political opponents, and others who had sought shelter in the southern marshlands were systematically and relentlessly pursued by security and military forces following the Iraqi government suppression of the uprising.4 In the ensuing months, arbitrary arrests, indefinite detention of suspects, and killings continued unabated. The government also launched an unprecedented attack on the Shi'a Muslim faith and culture. The authorities destroyed and desecrated holy sites and shrines, and demolished libraries, mosques, and centers of religious instruction (hussainiyas). The closure of Shi'a centers of learning obliged students to transfer their studies to universities and institutions elsewhere in Iraq where Sunni rather than Shi'a theology was taught. Shi'a religious rites and practices were restricted, printed material was strictly censored, and religious broadcasts were banned.

[twa]

Another good read on the history.

http://anewerworld.org/?p=275

[portisizzle]

Bunk.. The shia and sunni's lived peacefully in Iraq for the last fifty years. This devide was created when we went in, and it's all our responsibility. Bunk like this article which attempts to excuse America's responsibility and blame 2000 year old wars as the roots of this mess are bunk. This is all about guys who aren't in power wanting power and creating an artifical devide in order to change the status quote.

Never seen the term "bunk" used so often in a paragraph...

[The Nations Team]

THE SHI'ITE HAS HIT THE FAN!!! :laugh:

[PeterMP]

Bunk.. The shia and sunni's lived peacefully in Iraq for the last fifty years. This devide was created when we went in, and it's all our responsibility. Bunk like this article which attempts to excuse America's responsibility and blame 2000 year old wars as the roots of this mess are bunk. This is all about guys who aren't in power wanting power and creating an artifical devide in order to change the status quote.

At best, we caused a situation that was going to happen sooner or later anyway. Eventually, Saddam would have died, and the situation would have deteriated. We've probably actually improved the situation some.

[Riggo-toni]

Shiite, Sunni, Druze, and Maronites all lived not only peacefully, but in great prosperity for decades in Lebanon. A combination of changing demographics (Shiites were in the minority when the constitution and its power sharing allotments were put in place, but bred faster than their Sunni and Christian counterparts, and thus felt entitled to a greater voice in the gov't), and becoming the victim of a proxy war in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They ended up slaughtering each other for nearly two decades until the Syrians took over. I don't think that makes the Syrians saviors.

Iraq without Saddam is much like Yugoslavia without Tito. Yugoslavia had numerous civil wars during the 20th century. Tito invited all the prominent leaders of all the various ethnic groups for reconciliation talks after WWII, then lined them all up against the wall and had them all shot. Sarajevo for centuries was one of the most tolerant places on earth. Jews fled there to escape the Spanish inquisition, and prospered. This is why Serb and Croat nationalists went to the greatest lengths to terrorize other ethnicities and destroy cultural landmarks there. Those who feed off the myth that different peoples can't co-exist will go to whatever lengths necessary to inflame ethnic rivalries and incite retaliatory measures. We're seeing the same thing now in Iraq, something which was completely foreseeable and predictable to anyone with an understanding of that part of the world, but was nonetheless apparently unimaginable to Rumsfeld, Bush, and Wolfowitz. This is one reason I've been saying from the VERY BEGINNING that if we were to invade Iraq, we should only do it if we were willing to let the country break off into separate countries or autonomous zones, just as the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia broke up. Everything about our plans for the invasion was based on the folly that Saddam was the root of all Iraq's troubles, when in fact people like Saddam or Assad are the products of ungovernable states.

It's true Shiites fought against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, but Arabs and Persians have hated each other for centuries. There is a hierarchy of loyalties in the Middle East. First to one's extended family, second to one's ethnicity, third to one's sect, and lastly to one's country. Only Iran, Turkey, and Kuwait have a tradition of being a nation - the other countries were mostly artificial creations of western nations concerning themselves with dividing up the spoils of the collapsed Ottoman empire. The Ottomans divided Mesopotamia into 3 separate republics. It's one of the great tragedies of modern history that Lloyd George feared an independent Kurdish state would ally itself with the Turks and upset the balance of power.

[wskin44]

Iraq without Saddam is much like Yugoslavia without Tito. Yugoslavia had numerous civil wars during the 20th century. Tito invited all the prominent leaders of all the various ethnic groups for reconciliation talks after WWII, then lined them all up against the wall and had them all shot. Sarajevo for centuries was one of the most tolerant places on earth. Jews fled there to escape the Spanish inquisition, and prospered. This is why Serb and Croat nationalists went to the greatest lengths to terrorize other ethnicities and destroy cultural landmarks there. Those who feed off the myth that different peoples can't co-exist will go to whatever lengths necessary to inflame ethnic rivalries and incite retaliatory measures. We're seeing the same thing now in Iraq, something which was completely foreseeable and predictable to anyone with an understanding of that part of the world, but was nonetheless apparently unimaginable to Rumsfeld, Bush, and Wolfowitz. This is one reason I've been saying from the VERY BEGINNING that if we were to invade Iraq, we should only do it if we were willing to let the country break off into separate countries or autonomous zones, just as the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia broke up. Everything about our plans for the invasion was based on the folly that Saddam was the root of all Iraq's troubles, when in fact people like Saddam or Assad are the products of ungovernable states.

QUOTE]

Very insightful Riggo. I'm reading "Paris 1919" which is about post WWI peace settlements. The Serbs wanted their own country and so did the Croats, Slavs and Bosnians. They banded together to create Yugoslavia and presented themselves to the allied powers in Paris. Wilson and the French and British really didn't know much about those peoples and granted them their wishes. The Serbs then ruthlessley dominated their "buddies". In reality those groups were very different culturaly & religiously (Serbs: Russian Orthodox; Croats: Roman Catholic; Bosnians: Moslems) and there was much historical hatred, rape, murder and destruction between the groups. Only a strong Serbian dictatorship, and Tito after WWII kept them together.

Your statement that dictators like Saddam are the products of ungovernable states rings true. And it would seem that these patchwork states that may seem under control today are Pandora's boxes waiting to be opened by the ignorant who would topple dictatorships under the false belief that everyone will get along as soon as they have a democracy.

[JMS]

At best, we caused a situation that was going to happen sooner or later anyway. Eventually, Saddam would have died, and the situation would have deteriated. We've probably actually improved the situation some.

Saddam repressed the Shia, he repressed the sunni. He did both in the name of Saddam and not in the name of the sunni Islam. Saddam was a secular leader not a religous leader. Saddam and the Bathists were a revelutionary party that had wide appeal and assumed power across the arab world. They ruled Egypt, Syria, and Iraq under saddam. They were GODLESS communist allies. They apealed across the religous devide.

Again, Saddam was not about religion he was about Saddam.

Iraq has no history of suni on Shia violence. Not in decades prior to Saddam.

The Shia and Sunni inter - marry in Iraq and live next to each other in peace and have done so for hundreds of years. Suggesting historic "roots" of shia sunni troubles is at the root of the current problem makes as much sense as suggesting that the Canadian American fishery problems in Washington State is related to General Arnolds and General Wolfs battles of the late 1700's.

What is going on here is Saddam loyalists, Al Quada, and lower Shia mullahs are bombing folks to destabalize the status quoe in an attempt to move themselves individually into more powerful positions. They can only do this because of the vacume of power created by the US's failure to properly staff the occupation.