March 27, 2003	Thursday	Muharram 23, 1424

LONDON/TEHRAN: It has been a central assumption of American and British plans that war against Saddam Hussein would eventually trigger an uprising of the country’s Shias. On Tuesday, six days into the conflict, came signs that it might be happening in Basra.

With the shrines at Najaf and Karbala, Iraq’s two holiest Shia cities, now within range of US tanks and artillery, reports from the port city provided the first hint of mass resistance to government forces, though its extent was unclear.

Many analysts had predicted this was unlikely to happen because of the bitter memories of how Baghdad brutally crushed the popular armed rebellion that followed the allied victory in 1991. And what happens in Basra will not automatically happen elsewhere.

The US and Britain have been extremely anxious to persuade ordinary Iraqis that this time they mean business. Tony Blair repeated emphatically the other day that President Saddam would finally be overthrown — a clear attempt to overcome the deep mistrust of 60 per cent of the country’s 24 million inhabitants. “This time we will not let you down,” he pledged solemnly.

“They cannot be sure in their own minds yet that we mean what we say,” the prime minister admitted on Monday. “In their own minds, they have to be very circumspect until they’re sure the regime’s gone.”

And in Qatar, echoing General Tommy Franks, a US military spokesman attributed the lack of resistance to the Baghdad regime in the south to intimidation by Ba’ath party officials, Republican Guards and others — but confidently predicted change as these elements were progressively “neutralized.”

President Saddam and his core supporters, from the northern area of Tikrit, are Sunnis, a minority in Iraq.

For all the rhetoric from Washington and London about liberating Iraq, and weeks of radio and leaflet propaganda about the post-Saddam future, Shia sources have argued that it will be hard to overcome strong opposition to the US and deep concern to avoid being seen as American stooges.

Iraqi Shias have not forgotten the hostility of the US, from CIA attacks on the Lebanese Hezbollah — retaliation for its suicide bombing attack on US marines in Beirut in 1983 — to its unwavering support for Israel, and of course, in the past, for Saddam Hussein. Washington’s close relations with Saudi Arabia are also seen as approval for extremist Sunni movements like the Afghan mujahideen.

Iraqi Shia groups agreed earlier this month to “exploit any American action”, but then to resist occupation.

On Tuesday one of the most prominent of them, the Iranian-backed Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, issued a warning telling US-led forces to leave the country or face resistance.

“Coalition forces are welcome in Iraq as long as they help the Iraqi people get rid of Saddam’s dictatorship, but Iraqis will resist if they seek to occupy or colonise our country,” insisted the group’s leader, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, speaking to reporters in Tehran.

“The world does not approve of any colonialism and occupation and we will take peaceful measures in this respect at the beginning but we will use force later,” he said.

HOLDING BACK: Other Iraqi opposition figures had said they were actively discouraging their supporters from taking on the regime until the outcome of the war is clearer.

“It may yet take a long time to control Baghdad,” said Abdel Majid al-Khoei, the head of a Shia charitable foundation in London. “If Baghdad is still in Saddam’s hands then his people in the other towns — the Ba’ath officials or the mukhabarat (secret police) will still have power. If the capital is cut off, then it will be easier to act elsewhere.”

But Iraq’s Shia do not speak with a single voice, and have always been seen as politically weaker and less organized than the Kurds of the north. Da’awa Islamiya (The Islamic Call), one of their strongest organizations, operates underground.

What they do have is a collective memory of oppression and brutality in modern Iraq.

Some leading Shia clergymen have issued declarations of support for the regime. Sheikh Mohammed Khalqani of Najaf on Tuesday published a fatwa urging people to “fight the aggressors and stand against the invasion” in a statement broadcast by al-Jazeera TV. But Iraq watchers insist such statements are made under duress. “They have no choice,” said one. “Their families would be killed if they did not say those things.”

President Saddam’s record of oppressing the Shia is beyond dispute. From the first Ba’ath coup of 1968, the most senior Shia religious scholars were persecuted, executed and expelled, often to Iran. Shia schools were nationalized and religious ceremonies deliberately organized.

But Iraqis say the main reason for the passivity of the Shia in the past week is the haunting memory of what happened in 1991, when the allies liberated Kuwait but let Saddam Hussein crush the subsequent intifada, or uprising, as their aircraft watched from above. Thousands died.

“It is a combination of anxiety and mistrust of the west,” a well-connected Shia exile said. “People felt really let down in 1991, because the south was in the hands of the rebels but Saddam was able to use his helicopters to crush them.

“Many say that if the Americans are really going to do the job this time, then why should we try? And the Americans will not be able to rule Iraq, though it looks very much like they have a taste for it now.”

Concerns are growing about post-war arrangements, with the belief that most Iraqi Shia would prefer to see a broad-based government, but uncertainty about US plans is fuelling worries.

Further back, many Shia also remember how the US helped Saddam Hussein, supplying weapons and intelligence to prevent an Iranian victory in 1986 during the war against Ayatollah Khomeini. The betrayal of 1991 and the legacy of 12 years of UN sanctions that have impoverished ordinary Iraqis are part of the same suspicion of Washington’s motives.

“People have suffered under the sanctions and they blame the Americans as much as their own regime,” said a British Middle East analyst. “It’s not enough to say, as the Americans do, that it’s all about goons and the secret police and Saddam’s Fedayeen and the Ba’ath party. There are people who have been co-opted and buy into the regime.”

Iraqis also say they fear being linked to the Americans because of general hostility to the US elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world.

Ayatollah Hakim said he was consulting other organizations about the future government of Iraq. “All Iraqi opposition groups have agreed that the future government in Baghdad will be a national, federal, democratic government representing all ethnic and religious groups and will reject any other solution imposed from outside,” he said.

The war, he argued, was the result of the failure of the international community to help the Iraqi people peacefully rid themselves of Saddam Hussein.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.