The 2003 war and the fall of Saddam Hussein 

The Shiites were largely present in the different political movements that have shaped them since the start of the 20th century: the movement for the constitution of the Ottoman and Persian empires, the jihad of 1914-1918 against the British invasion, the revolution of 1920 against the British mandate, the communist party, the Ba’ath partly whose founder was a Shiite, an often-omitted fact…without forgetting the 8-year war between Iran and Iraq. They were indeed present, but also rapidly excluded from power since the foundation of the modern Iraqi state in 1920 by the British. Despite their political and demographic weight, they were systematically sidelined after each attempt at occupying a political space, as was the case under Kassem’s regime (1958-1963).

Thus, since the 1960s, Shiites leaders of Ba’ath were replaced by Sunnites Army officers. Similarly, the communist party, whose base was predominantly Shiite, became the object of repression by the existing regimes. The communitarian identity is thus centred on religion. This is all the more true since the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 raised hopes of emancipation in Shiite communities throughout the Middle East (Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, etc.). These communities have one thing in common: being socially dominated and politically excluded from power. Khomeini's project, a power dominated by a faqih (scholar in Muslim theology), was supported by a part of the Shiite religious leadership in Iraq notably Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Sadr. Yet, this trend remained a minority among the Shiite Clergy in Iraq.

However, attempts to re-Islamise the Shiite community were quickly crushed by the war with Iran (1980-1988). Saddam Hussein took advantage of this to submit or eliminate the members of the religious leadership that could threaten his power. Mohammad Baqer al-Sadr was executed in 1980. Tens of Shiites ulemas had the same fate. Others were condemned in exile. The Supreme authority was thus represented by Khoi who belonged to the quietist Shiism doctrine and was reluctant to intervene directly on a clearly political ground. After his death, in 1992, his successor, for lack of any other candidates, was Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a figure known by everyone. Shiite parties in exile, such as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) – founded, like the Lebanese Hezbollah, in 1982 in the aftermath of the Islamic revolution in Iran– in addition to Da’wa party, the oldest Shiite party founded in the late 1950s, recognised his religious authority. 

Another popular Shiism, attached to the rituals of devotion, was reinforced in the 1970s. It identified with a young ulema, Moqtada al-Sadr, the only survivor of a massacre perpetrated by Saddam Hussein's regime on February 19, 1999, in which Moqtada’s father Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, and two of his brothers, died. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Sadrist movement became dominant in the religious and political Shiite scene. Claiming to be a Shiism "from within" in opposition to the leadership that returned from exile, this movement was excluded from the Transitional Governing Council appointed by the US on July 13, 2003. The movement also expressed anti-American feelings inside the Shiite community. The sociological base of the Sadrists was the one that made the communist party powerful: the poor neighbourhoods of the big cities. Madinat al-Thawra (the city of the revolution) became Madinat al-Sadr. This acted in competition with Ayatollah Sistani’s marja’iya. 

US Occupation of Iraq

As the guardian power of Iraq, the US did not have any particular projects for the country. First, there was this prolonged chaos that the Americans couldn’t or didn’t want to confront. However, the eruption of a military resistance, as soon as the US had started to occupy Iraq has convinced officials of the urgency of a political reconstruction. Yet, a reconstruction with whom? The political system implemented by the US since July 2003 was very different from the one put in place by Gertrude Bell and founded under the auspices of Sir Percy Cox in 1920. The Shiites had a hidden and close relationship with the occupying power. Those who were calling for independence in Iraq and against the European domination throughout the country’s modern history became US potential partners for the political reconstruction of the country. The unavoidable character of the Shiite community, because of its demographic weight, its old and anchored political traditions, imposed itself with ease over the interim occupation authority in the seat of the  Sunni Arab elites who had lost their monopoly over a failed state, openly defying it.  Orphans of a country to which they identify, Arab Sunnis turned gradually towards Islam and left behind, for the first time in their history, their quasi-secular Arab nationalist ideologies.

The Shiites and the Kurds, that were excluded from the old system, have created a tandem of power1.  Thus, the Americans quickly learned that it is easier to rule over a minority, as the British did in 1920 in their alliance with the Arab Sunni elites, than to rule over a majority that are less flexible because they know of the weight they represent.

The Fake Iranian neutrality and the marja’iyya

While it officially condemned the US occupation of Iraq, the Islamic republic of Iran did little to hide its euphoria overseeing the downfall of a despised regime. Since the bloody repression of the Shiite Intifada in February-March 1991 and after the defeat of Iraq in Kuwait, Iran and the Shiites Islamist parties in Iraq, were convinced that Saddam Hussein’s regime would not fall unless it was helped by an external intervention. The marja’iyya followed the same duplicity. Ayatollah Sistani's convoluted fatwas, according to which one should neither oppose the Iraqi army nor hold weapons against the occupying forces, attest to this. Since then, the US policy was to “Libanise” Iraq and in this context, to give the Shiites an important representation on a confessional basis. After Lebanon, quota policy (muhassasa) appeared in Iraq. While the Shiite Islamist leaders returned triumphantly from their Iranian exile, the Americans tried to separate Iranian Shiism from Iran, as if centuries-old ties could be wiped away with a wave of a magic wand2.

The Sadrist Insurrection 

The Sadrist, the most anti-Iranian among the Shiites, were not pro-Americans as illustrated by the Sadrist insurrection against the occupier. In July 2003, Moqtada al-Sadr announced the creation of Mahdi Army, that was supposed to protect the Shiites. The show of force with the marja'iyya went as far as to temporarily occupy the holy city of Najaf in April 2004, with a Sadrist ultimatum to Ayatollah Sistani ordering the religious leader to leave the city. Moqtada al-Sadr later reversed this attack on the highest Shiite religious authority and the Sadrist insurgency ended in 2004.

The 2005 Constitution and the Confessional war

In the beginning of June 2003, the US representative in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, pressured the Iraqi parties to quickly form a transitory governing council. On July 30, 2003, Ibrahim al-Ja’fari, a Shiite, became the first president of the Interim Governing Council.  Considered as the most independent member from Iranian influence, the Shiite Islamist party, Da’wa, quickly became the pool from which the majority of successive prime ministers have been drawn from.

In 2005, this concealed confessionalism was not institutionalised in the new permanent constitution. This constitution came as an answer to Ayatollah Sistani’s requests encouraging people to vote in its favour. Iraq became a federal state and the autonomy of Kurdistan was officially recognised yet one would look in vain for any mention of the Shiite-Sunni divide. However, the invoked “tradition” to attribute the most important position, that of the Prime Minister to a Shiite, resembles the Lebanese “formula” (sigha) that is synonymous with the political confessionalism enshrined in constitutional texts and declarations; the 1926 constitution, the 1943 National Pact, the 1989 Taef Agreement. This “tradition” in Iraq attributed the post of Prime Minister to a Shiite often from Da’wa party, the President of the republic to a Talabani Kurd, while the Barzanis reserved the most effective position for themselves, which is the president of the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan, and finally, the least important position, that of the speaker of the parliament, was attributed to a Sunni. Each of these positions had a “vice president” in order to represent the two other big Iraqi communities. 

While the institutions of the new state were being established, the confessional war caused a lot of damage especially among the Shiites who became the daily targets of terrorist attacks. There were hundred thousand victims faced with the Salafist movement that was promoted to the forefront of the Sunni Arab community. Starting with the battle of Fallujah (2004) this bloody war focused on al-Qaeda. The US policy through the Sahwa (awakening) council succeeded in finally restoring a precarious calm from 2008 onwards; it was a clientelistic move to buy the Sunni tribes’ loyalties. The Americans did not hide their objective: to disengage as quickly as possible from the Iraqi quagmire by gradually withdrawing most of their forces.

The Failure of the Arab Spring 

The pause of the confessional confrontations left a space for civil society. Iraq experienced its Arab Spring similarly to other Arab countries, even though it was reduced to a communitarian and confessional one. 

When the Arab spring began in 2011, the Sunni community strived once again to integrate in the existing system. The demonstrations used the same words that the civil society shouted in Tunis, Sanaa, Cairo and Damascus: refusing authoritarianism, corruption, calling for the freedom of expression, reinjecting funds into the public services. As in Beirut, confessionalism was denounced as being the root of all the problems, notably the failure of the state in its core missions. The demonstrators protested against the regular electricity cuts, against the absence of drinking water, against open sewers, and the improper garbage waste management… but, in Iraq as in Lebanon, the confessional character of the claims was not hidden. The response of the Shiite majoritarian government was clear regarding the Sunni protesters: peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations in large Sunni cities were repressed by the army while barrels filled with TNT aimed at the protesters were thrown out of helicopters. There have been three distinct “springs” in Iraq. Whilst Arab Sunnis of Tikrit, Mosul and Fallujah demanded their political integration, the Shiites expressed their rejection of a political class of Shiite majority responsible for the economic crisis that a large majority of them experienced. For the first time, in Tahrir Square in Baghdad, slogans that accused the religious authorities of being accomplices of a discredited elite, were heard. For their part, the Kurds protested in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah against the corruption and authoritarianism of the Barzani clan, without sparing the Talabanis. 

Daesh’s rise to power and Ayatollah Sistani’s call for Jihad 

The most brutal use of force against the protesters in 2011 convinced the last Sunnis who still toyed around with the idea of being integrated into the political system. A group of Salafists and Jihadist, including al-Qaeda, had labelled themselves as the Islamic State in Iraq since 2006. They then added “in the Levant” (Daesh) in 2013. Unfortunately, this group attracted a number of former Baathists, tribe leaders and city neighbourhoods where the Sunnis were the majority, then adopted its rhetoric. They no longer begged to integrate in the system, but to destroy it. 

In January 2014, Fallujah, which is situated 80 kilometres west of Baghdad, fell to Daesh. On June 10, the latter conquered Mosul, Tikrit and the biggest part of Al-Anbar without firing a single shot: what explains that is the defeat of the army and receptive inhabitants that had felt abandoned for a long time by the state. The jihadists combatants occupied thus one third of the Iraqi territory mainly in Sunnite areas. Consequently, Iraq became divided into three zones: the Shiite, the Kurdish, and the Arab Sunni.

On June 13, 2014, facing the threat of Baghdad falling to ISIS, Ayatollah Sistani, the highest Shiite religious authority, called for a jihad against Daesh. The popular mobilisation forces (Hashd sha’bi) was created by Shiites militias often armed by Iran, with hundreds of thousands of volunteers enrolling into the recruitment centres. In August 2014, a vast anti-Daesh coalition was formed by 22 countries and led by the US and western countries. It was this collaboration between the pro-Iran Shiite militias and the western- mainly US- bombing campaigns, that enabled them to recapture the cities held by Daesh, one by one. Daesh’s military defeat was also that of a community that joined them out of desperation. The ruins of Mosul’s historical centre shows the ferocity of the fighting and bombing.

The Militia Regime and Iran 

The militia regime, already well established in Iraq, became dominant among the Shiites. It was because of the popular mobilisation who rescued the existing system on the ground with the help of the US coalition’s air bombings. The popular mobilisation became the principal armed wing of Iran in Iraq, when the US reiterated its desire to leave the country already expressed in the late 2000 and made possible due to Sahwa policy. However, it was delayed due to the eruption of Daesh. After the defeat of the Jihadist organisation, nothing seemed capable to oppose the invasive Iranian influence. 

The divorce of the system's sponsors: pro and anti-Iranians

It was this vacuum, which was in danger of being filled by neighbouring Iran, that sparked the explicit divorce of those whom it is not exaggerated to call 'the sponsors of the system': Americans and Iranians. It is necessarily to remember that the existing political system in Iraq would never have seen the light nor lasted without the implicit cooperation between Washington and Tehran. But now nothing works. Americans cannot expect to see their place in Iraq taken by the Iranian revolutionary guards that train and provide weapons to the popular mobilisation forces as well as act in Iraq as if it was a conquered territory.  The rupture led to the assassination of Qassem Soleimani by a US drone, when he was visiting Iraq on January 3, 2020; the leader of the Iranian revolutionary guards has since then been considered a martyr by the Iranian authorities and by the popular mobilisation forces.

The divorce of the system's sponsors: pro and anti-Iranians

For a moment overshadowed by the war against Daesh, protest movements resumed in 2019 in an unprecedented scale. They reached their peak in November 2019 when 1 million protesters were gathered at Tahrir Square in Baghdad. It was felt that the time for illusions about reforming the current system has passed. The portraits of alleged candidates for the Prime Ministry were crossed in red. “Not him!” Shouted the crowd. They blamed the whole political class as being incapable of reforming itself. Ayatollah Sistani tried to offer an ultimatum to the government to start the reforms. It was a waste of time! The protesters also targeted the religious authority by widely using the slogan “Bism al-dîn bâgûna al-harâmiyyin!”. (In the name of religion, the robbers stole from us!) From his side, Moqtada al-Sadr tried to look as if he was the sponsor of the protest movement before then reintegrating himself into the Shiite confessional inner sphere in a U-turn that Iraqis are now used to. Only COVID-19 pandemic was able to empty the streets and only momentarily.

The excessive Failure of electoral lists that advocated for exiting  confessionalism

In 2010 and then in 2021, the lists that represented those who opposed confessionalism and advocated the end of quotas had received strong support through votes. This was the case of Al-‘Iraqiyya led by Iyad Allawi, a Shiite close to the US and the then Prime Minister of the Iraqi interim government in 2004-2005, and then Dawlat al-Qanun (the rule of law), led by Nouri al-Maliki, another Shiite, former Prime Minister for several times, and member of Da’wa party, who tried to capitalise on the rejection of the system. In 2010, several Sunnis broke their boycott of the elections to vote in favour of Al-‘Iraqiyya list. Nonetheless, the communitarian reflex led the Shiite lists to unite in the face of the Sunni “danger”. Another attempt failed in 2021: Moqtada al-Sadr first called for the boycott of the elections before retracting once he has noticed that his list had attracted the Shiites hostile to Iran, meaning that he now found himself first, a chance that couldn’t be wasted. The Dawlat al-Qanun list won an excellent score, illustrating the criticised link denounced by the voters, between confessionalism, the country's political and economic crisis and systemic corruption. In May 2022, no government was formed because the different Shiite lists divided between anti and pro-Iran couldn’t agree. 

Shiites against…Shiites

The Shiite community finds itself today divided as it rarely was in the past. The two leading blocs, the Sadrist list and the list close to the popular mobilisation militia refuse to negotiate. Moqtada al-Sadr, the biggest winner in the last elections, refuses to share power, a solution called for by the pro-Iranian list, which came second. This division has left a space for a population witnessing repetitive crises to express their rejection of the political class while the failed Shiite militias accuse the 2021 legislative elections of being fraudulent.  If the confrontation is between pro- and anti-Iranians, the former benefiting from the support of militias who take advantage of their victory against Daesh, the division seems endless. The militias close to Moqtada al-Sadr left the popular mobilisation and the Sadrist movement has already experienced splits such as the Basra-centred Al-Fadila party.

The impossible Shiite power

Is there a Shiite power today in Iraq? The answer is no if we are referring to the existing system that is neither the wilayat al-faqih system adopted in neighbouring Iran nor the confessional agreement between the Shiite lists. Since the early legislative elections in 2021, Iraq is without a president, a Prime Minister and a government. The religious authority of Ayatollah Sistani, which had given its blessing to the confessional system, is directly affected. 

The fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 had taken with it the first Iraqi state. Established in 1920 by the British, the state was engulfed in permanent state of war with the society itself even if it managed to survive for more than 80 years at the cost of successive repressive campaigns and wars. We cannot deny the Sunni Arab elites’ monopoly of power who truly represented their minority community, even though these elites were renewed after the fall of the Hashemite monarchy in 1958. Ex-officers, ex-functionaries of the Ottoman empire, sheikhs of Sufi brotherhoods, tribal sheikhs all worked for the good of their community in the name of a large Arab world where Sunnis were the majority. Arab nationalism was encouraged by the British as a weapon against the Ottomans, then against the Shiites who were treated as if they were a minority although they were Iraq’s majority. This majority/minority relationship along the borders explained the dominant "Iraqi" conceptions among the Shiites who were reluctant to be integrated into an Arab world where they were a minority. The Communist Party and, to a certain extent, the Ba'ath Party in its early days, represented this "Iraqism" (embodied by Kassem's regime) in the face of a Nasserism with an assertive Sunni coloration.

The actual power does not represent the Shiites as the Sunni elites represented the Sunnis. Knowing that it is a minority, the Sunni Arab community has always avoided going too far in the divisions, whereas the Shiites today feel betrayed by their elites, be they political or religious. This split is seen in relation to a process of secularisation where, following the example of neighbouring Iran, the concern of religious men is to 'protect religion from politics'! Twenty years after its foundation, the new system is in its death throes and the majority that is supposed to be in power does not see any benefit in this unacknowledged confessionalism... an important difference with the Lebanese confessionalism where the system, which only addresses minorities, can still claim a protective role.

In Baghdad as in Beirut, the trap is the same…political confessionalism, whether official or unacknowledged, is a vicious circle that annihilates all public space and prevents common citizenship. It is very easy to enter it, but very difficult to leave it peacefully3. The question inevitably arises as to the legitimacy of the state as it was reestablished between 2003 and 2005. The elections within the existing system are directly confronted with the question of their democratic legitimacy.