BAGHDAD: Saddam Hussein’s downfall and the dissolution of his Baath Party may have sounded the death knell for a pan-Arab ideology that was alien to many Iraqis.
Now that the Baathist straitjacket has been removed, post-war Iraq faces the challenge of finding a new, inclusive identity in harmony with its diverse ethnic, sectarian and religious mix.
“Arab nationalism as a political project of Arab unity died long ago, but as a set of sentiments, discourse, rhetoric it is still there,” said Iraqi-born academic Sami Zubeida.
Founded by Michel Aflaq, a Syrian Christian, in 1947, the Baath party came to dominate political life in Iraq and Syria, but split into rival wings and never achieved its theoretical aspirations for wider unity in the Arab world.
“The big difference was that in Iraq pan-Arab nationalism has always had a very narrow base, among Sunnis, whereas in Syria it was dominant, it was mainstream,” Zubaida said.
Non-Arab Kurds, who make up about a fifth of Iraq’s 26 million people, felt excluded by definition from the Baath party’s almost mystical notions of Arab nationalism and unity.
Iraq’s Shia are mostly Arabs, but have religious links with mainly Shia Iran. Many felt victimized by Saddam’s coercive brand of Arabism in which Shias were often viewed as a fifth column for Tehran’s revolutionaries — despite the way they fought for Iraq during the 1980-88 war with Iran.
With Shias forming around 60 per cent of the population, the Iraqi Baath drew its core support from the 20 per cent Sunni minority that has dominated modern Iraq, though it is not clear how many Sunnis would still endorse the party’s doctrines.
ISLAMIC IDENTITY: Some Shia leaders see Islam, not Arabism, as the natural glue for Iraq after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam.
“Shias reject the Arab national identity of Iraq from a religious perspective of Islam, which is an international faith,” Adel Abdel-Mahdi, a senior member of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said.
Adnan Shahmani, spokesman of powerful Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, said Arab nationalism had isolated Iraq from the rest of the Muslim world. “The idea was created to fight Islam.”
The collapse of the Baghdad government has not sparked serious fighting between Iraq’s main groups, despite Saddam’s bitter legacy of oppression of Shias and Kurds.
Some commentators see a home-grown sense of Iraqi identity as an alternative to the divisiveness of the past.
“There is a palpable and detectable Iraqi nationalism based on geography and a civic sense born of urbanization,” said Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at Britain’s Warwick University.
Saddam’s forces crushed Shias and Kurdish revolts after the 1991 Gulf War, but the Kurds emerged with an autonomous northern enclave thanks to US and British air cover.
Now the Kurds are anxious, but acknowledge they will have to cede some of their freedom as they rejoin a united Iraq.
“We want to be part of the Iraqi people, but we are not part of the Arab nation or Arab Iraq,” said Hoshyar Zebari, a senior figure in the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
“Iraq is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-national society. We are not part of Pan-Arabism at all.”
Kurds accuse Arab governments of failing to protest at Saddam’s atrocities against them, including the 1988 poison gas attack on Halabja that killed about 5,000 Kurds.
However, they do not object to Iraq’s continued membership of the Arab League, unlike some Shias, such as Shahmani, who said Iraq should pull out of the 22-member body and focus instead on the 56-state Organization of the Islamic Conference.
MORE MODEST GOALS: In Cairo, where the Arab League has its headquarters, analyst Emad Gad, of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said pan-Arabism had evolved away from Baathism.
“Its meaning has changed...We speak now about economic cooperation and a common position towards major international issues but not about political unity,” he said.
Iraq’s US-led rulers have dissolved the Baath party, along with the armed forces and security services that kept it in power. Baathists in senior government posts have been sacked.
In neighbouring Baath-ruled Syria, the demise of the Iraqi Baath party may be seen as a mixed blessing, Zubaida said.
“The Syrian Baath will be delighted to have their Iraqi antagonists eliminated, but it is also the writing on the wall for them. The credibility of any kind of Baathism is diminished.”—Reuters
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