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NEWS & LETTERS, May-June 2005Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BerryIraq: fundamentalism, sectarian conflictThe period after Iraq's January elections has been one characterized by sectarian violence, material privation and a deep skepticism towards the country's new leaders. The unexpectedly large number of people who cast ballots in January had great expectations that the politicians they elected to the national assembly would deliver both the security and the reconstruction projects so sorely needed by Iraq's people. The prolonged deliberations over the makeup of the new government, however, along with the absence of any concrete gains resulting from them, dissipated the feelings of enthusiasm. The outcome of the negotiations did result in one historic achievement. Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, was designated as Iraq's new president. Iraq's large Kurdish minority voted solidly for the united list of Kurdish nationalist candidates in the elections, resulting in a showing second only to the Shi'a list endorsed by the influential Ayatollah Sistani. The election of a Kurd to the presidency brings a symbolic end to the intense strife between Iraq's central government and the Kurdish people that dates back to the aftermath of the 1958 revolution. A prominent Islamic politician, Ibrahim Jafari, was selected by the Shi'a list as prime minister. While Jafari claims that he will not press for Islamic law to be central to the new constitution, the strength of the conservative religious forces in the new assembly ensures that the battle over the role of Islam in the public life of Iraq will be intense. Additionally, the informal Islamicization of the country continues. The southern city of Basra, for example, has been all but turned over by the British army to Shi'a fundamentalist militias. One of these militias carried out an attack on a large university student gathering in a public park in March. The fundamentalists objected to the mixing of men and women. Behind all the political maneuverings in the national assembly, the U.S. military presence remains as strong as ever. In addition to being unable to maintain rudimentary security on the streets of Baghdad or any other Iraqi city, the U.S. continues to cancel or scale back reconstruction plan after reconstruction plan. Energy, water, and waste projects have all been abandoned due to the enormous cost of the military aspect of the U.S. invasion. A recent U.S. Army inquiry exonerated all officers of the torture at Abu Ghraib, effectively sweeping the entire matter under the rug. The issue of prisons in Iraq remains alive though, as a number of riots have swept through the enormous open air prison camps maintained by the U.S. to house the men swept up in their door-to-door anti-insurgent raids. The most serious development since the elections is the steady transformation of the anti-U.S. insurgency into an open sectarian war against the Shi'a majority. Mosque bombings, assassinations and mass killings are beginning to overtake the place of attacks on American troops and convoys in the tactics of the Sunni insurgents. The anxiety and uncertainty surrounding the stadium massacre in Haditha, in which a large number of Shi'a fisherman were murdered, and the Madaen kidnapping event and the subsequent discovery of large numbers of bodies in the Tigris, point to the real possibility of civil war breaking out, a goal perhaps not unwelcome to the insurgent forces. --Kevin Michaels |
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