Ironworks Gaming Forum - Shiites within Iraq

With one turn of the phrase, Bush Sr. sparked an uprising in Iraq at the end of the last war: he said he encouraged the people of Iraq to overthrow the ruler. Problem: the US pulled out and did not ever come back except to drop food to refugees in the North. That caused a lot of folks who would have embraced the US in 91 to now hate the US - the same way that Cuban immigrants will ALWAYS be Republican to repay the Dems for Kennedy's mistake.

As with Cuba, the promise (even if only implied) of the US supporting a revolution led the citizens to take action. And they were SEVERELY punished at the hands of Saddam. Bush's wasn't the only mistake. At peace talks Swartzkoff said they could fly their planes - and they did... immediately... to quell the sourther Iraq rebellion.

Oh well, no one runs the *perfect* war. Anyway, on with the story - will these people support Saddam in Gulf War Part II or not?

Today's NYTimes
Shiites Pose Threat to Hussein
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

ARBALA, Iraq — The Shiite Muslim clan that oversees the gilded shrine of Abbas, where officials of Iraq's ruling Baath party were hanged during the rebellion against President Saddam Hussein after the last gulf war, recently decided that Iraq's ruler might need reassurance that no sequel was under consideration.

So 50 of them sent him an oversize petition written with their blood.

"We declare that we will volunteer to defend our victorious Iraq and its holy land," read the flowing, two-inch-high maroon script in part. "We give you our commitment as loyal men to stand behind the banner of 'God is Great,' to stand against the evil West, the infidels and international Zionism."

Ever since that last uprising, Mr. Hussein has tried to buttress his popularity across southern Iraq, the heartland of the country's 55 percent majority Shiites. The region holds vast oil fields and Iraq's limited gateway to the sea and is generally considered his most vulnerable point in the event of an American-led invasion.

On one hand, Mr. Hussein has bestowed favors, donating, for example, hundreds of pounds of gold and silver to slather across the domes of the Shiites' holiest tombs. Meanwhile, senior clergyman deemed insufficiently subservient have either died under mysterious circumstances or disappeared.

The south of Iraq bears a passing resemblance to its famous shrines: golden accolades to the government shimmer on the surface; underneath, everyone suspects, are the cracks and the festering wounds of a population who feels that its time is long overdue.

Critics say the first President Bush encouraged the Shiites to rebel after the last war and then left them to be slaughtered. So, there may be some initial hesitancy to rebel, but once assured that a real change of power is under way, the expected uprising of the south could prove more sweeping than the last.

"The Shiites want more power, want their religious authorities to be autonomous," said a Western envoy in Baghdad. "There is no question that this area represents the most dangerous threat to the regime."

Some analysts believe that Iraqi forces would move faster to try to quell any rebellion in the south than they would against an allied invasion. The governors across the south have been changed recently and are called to Baghdad for frequent security meetings, diplomats report.

In October, Mr. Hussein summoned all the tribal leaders in the area to his palace and placed a Koran between their hands, ordering them to swear not to allow a repeat of the 1991 rebellion, according to opposition sources interviewed in London.

There is some concern that the potential scale of any uprising could rip Iraqi society apart.

"What happened in the spring of 1991 was a civilian slaughter that had nothing to do with human rights," said Wamidh Nadhmi, a professor of political science at Baghdad University. "Baathist officials were murdered or burned alive."

"If there was something like that now, it means more bloodshed inside Iraq between Iraqis," he said. "It means both sides are using absolute violence to try to conquer the other."

The 1991 rebellion was sparked by soldiers retreating from Kuwait. The lack of communications in the country, whether radio or television broadcasts, gave them the sense that Mr. Hussein was no longer in control.

The rebels deployed inside the holiest tombs in Shiite Islam. In Najaf, some 50 miles south of here, they took over the tomb of Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law. His son Hussein and his half-brother Abbas have similar shrines just a few hundred yards apart in Karbala; their deaths here in 680 prompted the schism that led to the creation of the Shiite branch of the faith. (Mr. Hussein had his family chart redrawn to prove he is their descendant.)

The rebels used an underground prayer room in the Abbas Mosque to hang 20 to 30 local leaders of the Baath Party. Tanks rumbled into the holy cities to retake the shrines, blasting holes in the domes and tearing the heavy cedar doors off the hinges. Reporters who visited the city shortly afterward said blackened bodies lay in the streets.

The mosques have been repaired. A pleasant, far wider, palm-lined plaza now links the shrines of Hussein and Abbas. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims visit yearly, including some 5,000 a week from Iran under Iraq's attempts at détente with its neighbors.

Officials around here also seem to suffer from a certain amnesia when it comes to those events.

In the immediate aftermath, the officers who helped retake the city admitted that the rebels were soldiers. The accepted version now holds that Iranian saboteurs with perhaps a few Iraqi deserters used the confusion of the time to infiltrate the border and sow havoc.

"I would like to explain to you that in 1991, the Iraqi people did not participate in the violence," said Ahmed Jawad Hassan, the assistant guardian of the Abbas Mosque, talking over glasses of sweet tea surrounded by huge backlighted pictures of Mr. Hussein. Mosques are usually devoid of pictures in the Middle East, but Mr. Hussein's are even hung on the shrine.

Residents interviewed in the presence of an official from the Ministry of Information tend to say they were out of town during the uprising.

"The community did not achieve anything from these events," said one such man selling pastries across from the Hussein mosque. "Stores and houses were looted; the water and electricity were cut off. I hope nothing like that ever happens again."

The 1991 uprising spread even to tiny hamlets, where rebels burned police stations, government identification card centers and other official buildings.

In Baghdad, a man from Karbala, speaking out of earshot of any official, predicted mayhem. All that it will take for the entire Shiite population to rise up, he suggested, will be word that the scion of a venerated clerical family, the Ayatollah Muhammad Bakir al-Hakim, has landed somewhere in the south. The ayatollah, whose family was driven into exile, leads the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Resolution in Iraq, an opposition group based in Iran.

"Don't get me wrong, people respect Saddam as a strong guy, with a brave heart," said the man, wading into the kind of statement that could easily lead to his arrest. "But they are much more aware of who he is now than they were 10 years ago. Now they know he is a criminal. So any uprising will be much bigger this time."

That higher awareness is attributable in no small part to the continued death and disappearance of respected clergymen, many under mysterious circumstances. To begin with, some 105 senior clerics and other religious scholars disappeared in the immediate aftermath of the 1991 uprising.

The United Nations Commission for Human Rights has documented a series of incidents as late as June 2001 in which high-ranking clerics died mysteriously, mostly in auto accidents or assassinations. A recent United Nations report said, "These murders are part of a systematic attack on the independent leadership of Shia Muslims in Iraq."

One of the prominent clerics killed by Mr. Hussein's government was Imam Mohammed Bakr Sadr, a colleague and mentor of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran during the latter's exile in Najaf. The imam was executed for espousing fundamentalism through the underground organization Al Dawa, a Shiite group not unlike Hezbollah in Lebanon. Some analysts believe it still exists, although deep underground, and will emerge once there is renewed warfare.

Officially, Iraqis believe that there is little chance of a repeat, noting that the circumstances of a weak central government have changed drastically since 1991.

"The factors that led to those disturbances are not there now," said Muhammad al-Adhami, the chairman of the political science department at Baghdad University and a member of Parliament. He belittled the idea that the American-supported opposition would stir anyone within Iraq. "They have no basis here. The Americans themselves once described them as useless."

At the Abbas Mosque, the deputy guardian is equally dismissive. "They are living on American and Kuwaiti bread," he says, unfurling the poster-size petition to point out that each of the 50 men had affixed a bloody thumb print next to his signature.

"These men used their own blood," he said. "It is a tradition here. It shows that they have the highest level of commitment."