-Caveat Lector- War analysis http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,926947,00.html
Why 2003 is not 1991 Iraq's Shi'ite majority was thought so hostile to Saddam's Sunni-led regime that they would welcome invasion. Reality is more complex Dilip Hiro Tuesday April 1, 2003 The Guardian When Ali Hammadi al-Namani killed himself and four American soldiers in a suicide attack near Najaf on Saturday, he put the final nail in the coffin of the "liberation" scenario of the Washington-London alliance. The invading Anglo- American forces will now have to keep all Iraqi civilians at bay, treating everyone as a potential suicide bomber - just the way Israel's occupation army treats Palestinians. Earlier, any prospects of an uprising in the predominantly Shi'ite city of Basra disappeared on Tuesday when Grand Ayatollah Mirza Ali Sistani issued a fatwa, calling on "Muslims all over the world" to help Iraqis in "a fierce battle against infidel followers who have invaded our homeland". Sistani is based in Najaf, the third holiest place of Shi'ite Muslims, and it is likely that Nomani, a Shi'ite, was following his fatwa. As the only grand ayatollah of Iraq, Sistani is the most senior cleric for Iraqi Shi'ites, who form 70% of ethnic Arabs in Iraq. Any Anglo-American attempt to devalue Sistani's opposition to the invasion - by saying he's a Saddam stooge, for example - will boomerang because of his status; there are only five grand ayatollah's in the world. By now it is apparent that the Anglo-American decision-makers made a monumental miscalculation by imagining that Iraqis in the predominantly Shi'ite southern Iraq would welcome their soldiers as liberators. It stems from their blind faith in the unverified testimonies of the Iraqi defectors combined with their failure to realise the complexity of the task of overthrowing President Saddam Hussein's regime. The Anglo-American policy makers failed to distinguish between the situations in southern Iraq in 1991 and now; between a civil strife among Iraqis and an armed conflict between invading infidel troops and Muslim Iraqis; between Iraqis' loyalty to their homeland and their fealty to their current ruler - not to mention their failure to fully grasp the importance that Muslims in general and Shi'ites in particular attach to the holy city of Najaf. In their enthusiasm to topple Saddam, the hawks overlooked major differences between the current situation in Iraq and the one that prevailed after the Gulf war. In March 1991, the retreating, demoralised Iraqi soldiers - who had hardly a clue why they had occupied Kuwait in the first place - rebelled spontaneously, and found many civilians joining them. They also knew that they had been put on the run by a coalition in which 13 of the 28 countries were Arab or Muslim. This time, Iraqi soldiers see their country invaded by non-Muslim troops from America and Britain, their old imperial master. Many of those Iraqis who hate Saddam loathe America more. They hold it responsible for the UN sanctions which over the last dozen years have reduced their living standards by 90% and caused them untold misery. They know, too, that it is the Pentagon that has bombed Iraq six times since the end of the 1991 Gulf war. Grand Ayatollah Sistani's fatwa, therefore, reflects a prevalent feeling among Iraqis of both Islamic sects, Shi'ite and Sunni. Their resolve to resist is determined by their loyalty to Iraq. The Bush administration overlooked too the fact that during the eight years of Iraq's armed conflict with predominantly Shi'ite Iran, Saddam managed to retain the loyalty of the Iraqi army, where Shi'ite conscripts formed a majority. He did so by emphasising Islam while extending governmental control over religious sites and sponsoring international religious gatherings. In April 1983 an Iraqi minister told an Islamic conference in Baghdad that all of the nearly 3,200 Muslim religious sites were under total or partial gov ernment supervision. After Iran's offensive in March 1985 had been repelled, Saddam, a Sunni, offered much-publicised prayers at the Shi'ite shrines in Najaf, Karbala and elsewhere. During the holy month of Ramadan he decreed that government officials should hold fast- breaking banquets in public. He went on to publish his family tree, which supposedly showed him to be a descendant of Imam Ali, a cousin and a son-in-law of Prophet Mohammed, entitling him to the honorific of sayyid (lord or prince) accorded to the male descendants of Prophet Mohammed. The authorities distributed millions of copies of Sayyid Saddam Hussein's family tree to emphasise his religious credentials. The caretaker of the shrine of Ali in Najaf has this family tree on the walls of his wood-panelled office. It is one of only three images there, the others being a picture of the shrine itself, and a photo of president Saddam Hussein at prayer inside the shrine's inner sanctum. If there is any "collateral damage" to this shrine by the Anglo-American forces in the course of a battle, it will inflame the feelings of Muslims worldwide. For Ali is revered by both Shi'ites and Sunnis. Shi'ites regard him as the only legitimate caliph after the Prophet Mohammed - ignoring his earlier three predecessors - and Sunnis too invariably address him by the honorific of caliph. By invading Iraq despite the opposition expressed by Muslim and Arab allies of the West, the US and British governments have opened a Pandora's box which will now be hard to close. · Dilip Hiro is the author of Iraq: A report from the inside. 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