Sunni, Shia, & Kurds

In one of the comments that were left on a prior post it is mentioned that the technocrats are mainly Sunni because Saddam's regime favored them over the others. I want to mention a few historical facts to try and shed light on a common belief that I believe needs to be fixed. Let me start by saying that Saddam Husain is a tyrannical dictator that would not think twice to kill anyone that crossed him or challenged him or posed any risk to his power. He harmed the Iraqi people, Kurd, Shia and Sunni alike and was ruthless in doing so. Saddam was just in one thing and that was distributing his wrath.

To say that his regime was a Sunni regime however is not entirely true. Of the 55 deck of cards that US forces distributed of the senior Iraqi leadership 35 or 36 were Shia. The majority of the Baath Party members were Shia, one of the largest branches of which used to be named Al-Thawra and which many of you now know as Sadr City. What was overturned in 2003 was not a Sunni regime but a tribal or clan based kleptocracy and what truly changed is the Ottoman system that the original Iraqi State was built upon (the remnants of the Ottoman Empire). This system included the officer corps as well as the bourgeoisie and other classes.

In reality, the reason that many of Iraq's middle class was Sunni is a demographic and historic issue more than a political one. The Sunni composed the majority of urban residents in the center and north who were merchants, officers, politicians, etc. whereas the population in the south have historically been rural farmers and marsh dwellers. This is one of the primary reasons that there are specific classes of people. It is also of note that the secular Shia are the ones that lived in places like Kadhmiyyah who were the well off urban class. I am mentioning this to undermine the somewhat simplistic posture of a Saddam's government was a Sunni one. This is not to say that he did not begin a purge of Shia professionals post 1991 after the Intifadha uprising, which he did sometimes with impunity but simultaneously one of the major problems in the Sunni street is its disarray and that is because Saddam killed off all of its effective leadership and did not allow parties to form or other civil society groups, specifically I recall an incident when he gathered some of the prime sheikhs of Anbar and killed them off because they were perceived to be against him.

In the end, these artificial divisions in the Iraqi population have been entrenched to the degree that instead of looking at professional Iraqis as Iraqis we have to refer to them as Sunni, Shia or Kurd, and so long as we do so we will not realize the dream of an advanced Iraq where all can compete fairly based on their ability and not their sectarian or ethnic identity.