Last Chance Power Drive

White House advisors who said “Iraquis will greet us as liberators” still employed - Jeffrey Zeldman

Did all the Iraqis want Saddam overthrown?

The Sunni Muslim Minority is Iraq were some of the main beneficiaries of the rule of Saddam Hussein. Despite being a minority, they have held power in Iraq since the days of the Ottoman Empire.

After the breakup of the Ottoman empire, in which power had rested with Sunni Arabs, Shi’ites in south Iraq welcomed the British for having liberated them from the yoke of Sunni Ottoman oppression. But by 1918 it was clear that the British had not come to leave in a hurry. So, led by two sheikhs, Mohammed Taqi Shirazi and Abul Hasan Isfahani, the Shi’ites began their opposition. Fatwas were issued against the appointment of the non-Muslim Sir Percy Cox as the governor of Iraq. The whole Shi’ite south erupted in a revolt when in 1920 it appeared that the British mandate granted by the League of Nations would mean their continued rule. It was subdued with great difficulty and Shi’ites remained implacably opposed to the British, even after they put King Feisel on the throne with a timetable for independence. - K Gajendra Singh

During the 1991 Shia uprising, Sunni officials and their families were killed in great numbers in southern Iraq. But it only became a major fight when the Sunni Republican Guard moved in and killed thousands of Shias. If Saddam’s government is overthrown, the Republican Guard will no longer exist. While a lot of Sunnis in southern Iraq would flee north, there wouldn’t be a civil war. It’s also important to remember that the Iraqis are in no mood for more war. They have suffered under two decades of Saddam’s bloody rule and are well aware of the fifteen year (1975-90) civil war in Lebanon (which is 40 percent Shiite), a war that accomplished nothing and left the most prosperous non-oil Islamic state in the Middle East in ruins. The Iraqi Shias are more interested in running their own affairs, and getting a fair share of the oil money, than in starting a civil war. - James Dunnigan

The people responsible for the murder of thousands or millions of Iraqis, who saw their glorious leader get dug out of a hole, are not happy. But we didn’t go it to Iraq to liberate them. We went to Iraq to liberate the country from them.

Are all of the Shi’a Muslims likely to be happy about the liberation of Iraq?

I think Al-Sadr is extremely pleased that Hussein is out of the way.

Moqtada Al-Sadr was born in 1974, the son of one of the most illustrious Shi’a religious families in Iraq, the Al-Sadr family. His father, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadeq Al-Sadr, was assassinated together with two of his sons by the Saddam Hussein regime in 1999. After the death of his father, Moqtada became a student of Iranian Ayatollah Kadhem Al-Ha’iri. Aside from his native country, Iraq, Iran is the only other country Moqtada is familiar with, and his relations with the Iranian religious establishment invite speculations about his politics. Moqtada Al-Sadr admitted that the situation in Iraq today differs from the situation that prevailed in Iran during the Islamic revolution in 1979. He said: “The political and social nature of Iraq will not allow the repetition of the Iran experiment.” - Nimrod Raphaeli

U.S. officials in Iraq have branded a radical Shiite cleric an “outlaw” after his followers clashed with U.S. troops across Iraq, killing scores of people. L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, used strong language to imply the impending arrest of Moqtada al-Sadr for using his militia to oppose United States and coalition troops. Scores of people were killed and hundreds of others were wounded in Baghdad, Najaf, Amarrah, Nasariya, and Basra. - United Press International

This is a person and followers who are saying: ‘We don’t want democracy and as a matter of fact we’ll decide the course of democracy by the use of force.’ And that is the opposite of democracy. - George Bush

Meanwhile, Sadr is equally intent on denying elections, since it has become apparent that he will lose. His only chance at establishing his theocratic powerbase is to drive the wedge, and to do so before the handover. We knew that there would be islamicist tyrants and that we’d have to fight them, and so now we are where we expected to be, just late. Sadr has volunteered his militia to Hezbollah and Hamas, has praised the 9/11 attacks as a “gift from God”, and is defying the moderate clerics. He’s the freaking posterboy for the conflict we expected. Again, much better to fight him now than later. - Eric Hall

But this is not about his being ungrateful or grateful. It is about his desperate attempt to become a player.

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Last Chance Power Drive

Bartle Bull on the Coming of Shia Iraq

Stirring the Hornet’s Nest

Colonial Warfare pt. 32

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