I-raq of Ages

Even under the post-WWII Hashemite monarchy, through the series of military-led coups and even under the pre-Saddam Hussein Ba’athist, socialist takeover, Shiites and Sunnis – both with strong and often violently differing views on the interpretation of the Qur’an – lived harmoniously, side-by-side, in Iraq. Hussein, however, made it brutally clear when he ruled that the 20% minority Sunnis were in charge, and the Qur’an-is-a-mystical-holy-book Shiite 60% majority were second class members of Iraqi society. While much of the nation is clearly divided into areas of Shiite (southeastern and coastal Iraq), Sunni (a smaller, landlocked region in the southwest bordering Syria) and Kurd (the north) dominance, the capital city, Baghdad, was and is a town where at least Sunnis and Shiites lived together. The fall of Hussein destabilized the entire nation, but that harmony in the capital was particularly vulnerable.

Shiites, angry from decades of Sunni repression (Hussein actually repressed everyone, but he favored his fellow Sunnis), began attacking pockets of Sunnis, and Sunnis reacted with car bombs, suicide bombers and random attacks against Shiite mosques, neighborhoods and businesses. Pro-Sunni al Qaeda sensed an opportunity and lent fighters and weapons to the minority Sunni cause. Shiite militia countered, and the country erupted in a bloodbath, focused particularly in areas where Shiites and Sunnis overlapped, notably Baghdad. Because the United States fostered regime change and majority rule, it imposed a constitutional democracy that basically handed control of the country to the majority Shiite population.

With most of the Islamic world (80%+) practicing some form of Sunni faith, the Iraqi Shiites found affinity with the only country in the world with a massively large majority Shiite population, neighboring Iran. Their politics, political preferences and willingness to accept aid of all kinds (including support for Iraqi militia that were willing to destabilize the American-imposed government) from Iran began to move Iraq rather deliberately into the Iranian sphere of influence, a factor banged home when literally days after the last American troops left the Iraqi theater, the government issued an arrest warrant for Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, the nation’s most power Sunni leader, on charges of terrorism while at the same time inviting back Sayyid Moktada al-Sadr, who with his Shiite-militant Mahdi Army had sought refuge in Iran, and with a wink and a nod indicated that his militia should become part of the normalized Iraqi forces. We’ve always considered al-Sadr a terrorist.

The collateral damage appears to be in those Baghdad neighborhoods where Sunnis fled in fear for their lives at the height of the anti-Sunni purges by Shiite militia, and vice versa… upon their decision to reclaim their homes in what they hoped would be a resumption of that once cordial détente, perhaps even entente, that allowed Sunnis and Shiites to live side-by-side before the 2003 American invasion. And they are coming back in droves: “In 2011, the number of returnees to Iraq soared by 120 percent from a year earlier, to 260,690, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. They were drawn back by improving security and larger government payments to Iraqis registering as returnees. It was the most since 2004, when the fall of Saddam Hussein opened the gates for thousands who had fled his brutality, forced relocations and a decade of crushing sanctions…

“But as [many returning] refugees have discovered, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis now seeking to go back to areas they fled during the bad times, going home again is never as simple as it seems. Instead, they find themselves perched along the next front in Iraq’s seemingly unending turmoil: the battle of return… Across the country, near-record numbers of displaced families are pouring back, but instead of kindling a much-needed reconciliation they are in some cases reviving the resentments and suspicions created by bloody purges that carved Iraq into archipelagos of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds after the American-led 2003 invasion.” New York Times, March 24^th.

Instead of peace and tranquility, returning citizens face militant check-points, and bomb blasts have become a daily part of life in Baghdad for warring factions. Legions of innocent Baghdadis have perished. One example of that new landscape is the Al Adel section (administrative district) of Baghdad: “In Arabic, Al Adel means justice. After the 2003 invasion, it became a base camp for Sunni insurgents in western Baghdad. They carried out torture in seized houses and battled Shiite militias who had control of a nearby neighborhood. Nearly every Shiite family moved away, and residents estimated that 300 people were killed in a neighborhood of about 1,500 to 2,000 families.…Today, Al Adel blooms with loud markers of the Shiites’ return and ascent. Along the main streets fly black, green and red flags of Shiite mourning and martyrdom. The faces of Shiite clerics, living and dead, stare down from billboards. A new mosque for followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has opened.

“For Shiite Muslims who have returned over the past few years, these are footholds of identity. But Sunnis say they get the message: it is religious Shiites who now hold sway from Al Adel to the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. ‘They see us as a threat,’ said Mohammed al-Ani, 35, a Sunni government worker. ‘They are putting us through the same things that the Shiites suffered. Now, as a Sunni, I am afraid when I am home. I keep thinking that they will come and arrest me.’” NY Times.

The Americans are gone now and highly unlikely to return and fix the damage they created. It’s their problem now. Iran is laughing at our stupidity, but silently grateful that we handed them a unique new ally (Saddam had once waged war against Iran), the largest pocket of pro-Iranian Shiites outside of Iran herself… as we watch Iraq slip away from anything resembling gratitude for our restoring power to the majority Shiite population. Perhaps the collateral damage, much like the new hatred our war in Afghanistan has stirred up against us all over the Muslim world, is really on the United States of America.

I’m Peter Dekom, and having by far the most powerful military on earth does not mean that we remotely know how to use it to our advantage.