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Sectarian violence that is. Are you baffled by what’s going on in Iraq? Do you wonder what the difference is between a Shiite and Sunni? And do you find yourself asking, what the hell is a Kurd? If you keep reading, by the end of this blog you will understand the conflict between the above mentioned groups in Iraq, why they hate each other so much, and why it’s really all England’s fault.
In addition, you will be the hit at parties (I mean who doesn’t like to talk about Iraq!) and you will probably be more informed than our own President was before he got us into this mess.

Our story begins in 632. Don’t stop reading because you had bad experiences in your high school history classes. You can do this. Think of the parties. That’s when the Muslim prophet Muhammad died. Muhammad did not leave a will, therefore the question of who was to succeed him was left up in the air. Would it be Abu Bakr, adviser and father in law of Muhammad, or Ali, Muhammad’s son in law?  This decision was huge because Islam at this point was only 10 years old! Think Joshua after Moses or Peter after Christ. Abu Bakr became the leader of the community and died a short time later. Followers of Ali wanted it to be his turn. But the initial choosing of Abu Bakr was so contentious, his supporters chose another caliph. When Ali was to get his turn after another Caliph died, he was assassinated by the supporters of members of the deceased Abu Bakr clan who then put their own man in place.

The followers of Ali refused to recognize the new Caliph and thus you have the split of the Party (Shiite in Arabic) Ali from the original Muslims who will from here on out be referred to as Sunnis. Think about how contentious this must have been. Islam at this point is only 29 years old. They were battling for the future of the religion. And by splitting apart, and fighting a couple of wars, they craved out very separate beliefs, traditions, architectural styles and geographies. They even converted different peoples. The Shiites went for the Persians while the Sunnis focused on the Middle East and Central and Southern Europe. There are Sunni Persians (Iranians) and Shiite Arabs. But for the most part, the groups are very much divided by political boundaries.

So how did they all end up living in Iraq?

That’s where the British (and French) come in. Until the late 1800s, the word Muslim was synonymous with the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was ruled by ethnic Turks, but their subjects were diverse and included Arabs, Kurds, Jews, Armenians, Bulgarians, etc. etc. The majority of their subjects were Muslim and they themselves were Muslim. The kiss of death for the Ottoman Empire was picking the wrong side to be on during WWI. The British, in the Hussein-McMahon letters offered Arabs political autonomy if they sided with the British against the Ottomans. The Arabs, to some extent, kept their part of the bargain. However, at the same time or a little after this correspondence was happening, the French and the British signed the Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916 where they divided up the post War, post Ottoman Middle East between the two European states. One of the countries carved out for British mandate was Iraq. Only it wasn’t taken into consideration that in this new state there would be Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, none of which particularly cared for the other. But what the heck? They were all Arabs or Muslims so they’ll find a way to get along? Right? Ha! We’re not talking about Protestant and Catholics, who fought several wars when their religion split 1500 years after it was founded. We’re not talking about Reform Jews and the Ultra Orthodox who went there separate ways 3900 years after their religion began. We are talking about two peoples who split within 30 years of the founding of Islam. They hate each other. You can’t make a country out of people who hate each other.

But the British did and suffered the consequences. The Arabs revolted and demanded the Europeans live up to their words. Eventually the British left Iraq, but only after the civilized nation bombed the hell out of civilian populations in the new state.

So what’s a Kurd? A Kurd is an ethnicity. The Kurds live predominantly in Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The Kurds identify with the Sunni faith but not with the Arab culture. There is no Kurdistan (although they would like one). The Kurds were oppressed under Saddam Hussein’s rule and in Turkey they are not even recognized as an ethnic group. Turks hate Kurds too.

But until the liberation in 2003, the Iraqis have gotten along. Let me correct that. They haven’t fought a civil war because the country was ruled initially by a puppet monarch of Great Britain’s and then by the Sunni Saddam Hussein who suppressed opposition with the use of murder, torture, and chemical weaponry. In Iraq, the majority of the people are Shiites. Therefore, when there were elections in 2005, they won the majority of seats in the new Iraqi parliament. The Sunnis are not happy about this and are now blowing up everything in site, including one of the Shiite’s holiest mosques.

And that my friend is the story of Iraq and why we may see civil war. What could a civil war bring? Well you could have a 10 to 15 year conflict like in Lebanon during the 80s. Or you could have three distinct countries, a Kurdistan, a Shiite Iraq and a Sunni Iraq. Or you could have Turkey, Syria and Iran swallow the three sections after much bloodshed.

Isn’t that what we went to war for? To give Turkey, Syria and Iran more territory? Or to fight the war on terror? Wait, Syria and Iran are terrorist states. This is all very confusing.

To read more about it:

The best coverage and background is from the BBC.

The best reporter covering the war is Robert Fisk.