Baathist-Islamist ties in Iraq: the looming threat
KRT FORUM
By Ehsan Ahrari
Global Beat Syndicate
KRT
NORFOLK, Va.—The violent events of recent weeks in Iraq, including news that foreign Islamist fighters are increasingly joining in attacks against U.S. troops, sabotage of Iraqi infrastructures, and the August 19 bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, has transformed the country into an asymmetrical battlefield between a nexus of Islamist-Baathist forces and U.S. and British occupiers.
In the Middle East, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was largely seen as an unprovoked attack against a Muslim state. That is because the Bush administration did not simply say we went into Iraq to liberate people from the clutch of a tyrant. Rather, U.S. officials made grand proclamations about the U.S. mission to transform the entire Middle East in its own image.
While the Bush administration perceived itself as doing the Arabs and Muslims a great favor by implanting democracy—first in Iraq and then the rest of the Middle East—it was not hard for the Islamists of various colorations throughout the region to label our actions as a “conspiracy” by Western Christian society to impose its cultural predilections over the people of Islamic faith. No Arab or Muslim government to my knowledge has gone on the record to counter the Islamist-jihadist propaganda.
As a result, coalition forces in Iraq are facing in Islamist-jihadist assault of some substance. Whether the onslaught continues depends upon two variables. First, if the saboteurs succeed by piling up a series of major assaults on the Iraqi infrastructures that are being rebuilt, popular anger and frustrations against the occupying forces in general and American forces in particular will grow. This, in turn, will be conducive to further terrorist attacks and sabotage in other parts of Iraq. Second, if Shi’ite opposition to the occupying forces gathers momentum, the saboteurs will build on that that to escalate the widespread chaos into a full-blown civil war if they can.
Although it is the largest group (65 percent) the Shias are not united about the role of U.S. occupying forces or on the issue of the makeup and power of a new Iraqi government. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, as the leader of the “quietist” tradition of Shia Islam, has been largely staying out of politics, but he is said to be feeling “great unease” about the occupation of Iraq by foreign forces and has recently demanded that the Iraqi constitution be written by the elected Iraqis. The Coalition Provisional Authority has not taken that objection into consideration up to this point.
The CPA also remains wary of the fiery rhetoric of the Ayatollah Muqtada al Sadr, son of Iraq’s legendary Ayatollah Sadeq al-Sadr, who was murdered in 1980 by Saddam Hussein. Muqtada al Sadr’s organization, Jamaat al-Sadr al-Thani, is emerging as a major force in filling the gap throughout Iraq created by Paul Bremer’s decision to abolish the Baath party. Even though his ambition to be a major voice of the Shias of Iraq will not go unchallenged from other Shia clerics, the CPA wants to be sure that no major schism develops among Iraqi Shias, because it is bound to get worse fast amid the already chaotic law and order situation in Iraq. Right now, if living conditions in Iraq worsen, al Sadr’s anti-American rhetoric will likely become even more strident.
The ascendancy of Sunni Jihadists would have a profound effect on the Shi’ite Islamic and Islamist groups. The Shi’ite groups may be persuaded to cooperate with the CPA, provided it shows concrete proofs of the Western withdrawal from Iraq in the foreseeable future. But it is not outside the realm of possibility that instead we might face cooperation between the Shia Islamic groups and Sunni Jihadists in efforts to use sabotage and terror to oust the United States from Iraq.
The CPA must have a breathing room to rebuild Iraq, so that an Iraqi government (the new buzz phrase is “Iraq face” or “Iraqi faces”) becomes increasingly visible for the international media and to the Iraqi people. Meantime, Baathist-Islamists of Sunni and Shia coloration will do their best to prolong the delay in efforts to bring calm, law and order to Iraq. Iraq is in the midst of “darkness before dawn. We can only hope for the break of dawn in that troubled country before a huge and dangerous anti-U.S. coalition of former rivals makes our presence there untenable.

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ABOUT THE WRITER
Ehsan Ahrari is a Norfolk, Virginia-based analyst who focuses on Middle East, South Asian and national security affairs.