An Iraqi tragedy raises sectarian tension

Aug 31st 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

In the most deadly incident since America’s invasion of Iraq, an estimated 1,000 Shias have died in a stampede in Baghdad, which Sunni insurgents are suspected of causing. Like the row over the draft constitution, the tragedy will worsen sectarian tension

AROUND a million of Iraq’s Shia Muslims were making their annual pilgrimage to the north Baghdad shrine of an 8th-century saint on Wednesday August 31st, when pandemonium broke out. Panicking at rumours that a suicide-bomber was trying to blow himself up in their midst, thousands of pilgrims stampeded across a bridge over the Tigris that leads to the shrine. Many were trampled underfoot; others drowned after jumping from, or being pushed off, the bridge. The Iraqi authorities say as many as 1,000 may have died, most of them women and children.

Catastrophes causing heavy loss of life have become almost an everyday event in Iraq since the American-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in early 2003. But no single incident since then has been anything like this deadly. In a sense, the gathering of such a multitude in a restricted space was an accident waiting to happen. Indeed, great crowds at Muslim shrines have turned into deadly crushes before, sometimes with no obvious cause. But some Iraqi government officials and Shia politicians swiftly blamed the tragedy on Sunni Muslim insurgents who, while incessant in their attacks on American and Iraqi forces, have increasingly targeted Shia civilians too. Their apparent aim is to foment a civil war, making the country even more ungovernable than now and forcing American troops to make an ignominious exit.

Iraq’s interior minister, Bayan Jabor, accused insurgents of deliberately triggering the stampede by spreading the suicide-bombing rumour. Ammar al-Hakim, a leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the dominant party in the Shia-led governing coalition, blamed “terrorists, Saddamists and radical extremists”. The defence minister, Saadoun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni, disagreed, insisting the tragedy was nothing to do with sectarian tensions. However, there were several apparently sectarian attacks on the pilgrims earlier in the day: at least seven people were killed in three separate mortar attacks on the Shias as they marched to the shrine, for instance.

Whether the stampede was a tragic accident or the result of a deliberate attack may never be known for sure. What may matter most is whether Shias conclude that it was sectarian—and whether they decide to react. It would certainly not be the first time the insurgents have attacked a Shia religious festival. In March last year, more than 180 people were killed when suicide-bombers attacked worshippers at the same Baghdad shrine and at another, even more important one in Karbala. More recently, Shia gatherings of all sorts—weddings, funerals and crowds milling around outside mosques—have become vulnerable.

In response, the killings of Sunni leaders and clergy have increased. However, given the level of provocation it is remarkable that the various heavily armed Shia militias have so far resisted the temptation to launch massive reprisals against ordinary Sunnis. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most influential Shia cleric, has restrained the hands of the most militant of the armed Shia groups, such as Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. But the huge toll from the stampede will make this much harder. Even if the tragedy does not trigger an all-out conflict between Iraq’s religious and ethnic groups, some say that a low-level civil war is already brewing. Attacks, or threats of them, have forced Shias and Sunnis living in districts where they are a minority to begin moving out.

The proposed Iraqi constitution, which will be put to a referendum in October despite its rejection by Sunni negotiators, seeks to ease the underlying fears of rival communities and thereby prevent a descent into civil war. Its guarantees of democracy should reassure the majority Shias (about 60% of the population) that they will no longer be dominated by the Sunnis (20% of Iraqis), as they were until the fall of Saddam. The Kurds (also 20%) are guaranteed continuing autonomy in their northern homelands. The Sunnis, based predominantly in Iraq’s central and western regions, are promised that oil and gas revenues will be shared between provinces largely on the basis of population—and not grabbed by the Shia south and the Kurdish north, where most of the reserves are.

In practice, however, achieving this equitable division of oil wealth will depend on negotiations between central and provincial governments; and Sunnis are worried that the constitution allows the southern Shias to form a powerful super-region similar to that of the northern Kurds, with its own security forces, based on existing militias. Thus a weak central government may find it hard to persuade the Kurds and Shias to hand over the Sunnis’ fair share of oil earnings, whatever the constitution says.

Some sort of deal may yet be reached to bring on board enough leading Sunnis to secure a credible yes vote for the constitution. The fresh general election which is set to follow such a vote might then attract more Sunni candidates and voters, finally giving the country a government that all its main groups recognise as legitimate. But it is also quite possible that widespread rejection by Sunnis will undermine all attempts to reach a political accommodation. If so, the insurgency will continue and the slide towards civil war may become ever more unstoppable.

It’s not Vietnam…it’s worse

Whatever the Bush administration may say publicly, it must increasingly be hoping for a period of relative calm in Iraq so that it can declare victory and bring the troops home—even though Iraq’s security forces are still far from ready to maintain order without American help. For all George Bush’s talk about staying the course, the pressure to cut and run is growing. An ABC News/Washington Post poll on Tuesday showed the president’s approval ratings at an all-time low of 45%, owing to concerns over the Iraq war and soaring oil prices.

In a report released on Wednesday, the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy in Focus, two think-tanks critical of the war, estimated that operations in Iraq were now costing American taxpayers $5.6 billion a month. Adjusting for inflation, they reckon this is about 10% higher than the average military cost of the Vietnam war in the 1960s and 1970s. But pulling the troops out at this stage would be a crushing defeat for America, as well as a spectacular victory for the insurgents and their al-Qaeda allies. Iraq might collapse into a religious and ethnic war far more bloody than the conflict has been up to now—and might break up altogether. There is still a chance that such a terrible outcome can be avoided. But whoever it was whose rumour-mongering triggered the deadly stampede has done his best to make it happen.

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