Conquering the divide - Can Iraq's Sunni and Shia Muslims get on?

[La_Serpiente]

Conquering the divide - Can Iraq's Sunni and Shia Muslims get on?
By Juan Cole

The delay over the signing of the "basic law" or interim constitution, finally enacted on Monday, signals continued conflict between the Shia majority and the Sunni minorities in Iraq. The elaborate signing ceremony of March 5 collapsed when five Shia members of the Interim Governing Council refused to participate. They cited Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's reservations about provisions giving a veto over the permanent constitution to any set of three provinces. The Shia majority, excluded from power for centuries, is skittish about allowing Sunni to hold the constitutional process hostage.
The interim constitution contains a clause, insisted upon by the Sunni Kurds, which says the future permanent constitution will be "ratified if a majority of the voters in Iraq approve and if two thirds of the voters in three or more governorates do not reject it". Shia spokesmen complain that some Iraqi provinces are lightly inhabited, with only a few hundred thousand residents. They say it would not be right to allow less than a million people to reject a constitution supported by the other 24 million Iraqis. In contrast, Kurdish Sunni have spoken passionately of the need to prevent a "tyranny of the majority," referring to the likelihood that the Shia, with 65% of the population, will dominate parliament.

Shia sensitivities were reinforced by the horrific bombings of the shrine city of Kerbala and of Shia worshippers in Baghdad on March 2, which were probably intended to provoke violence between Shia and Sunni Muslims in Iraq. The bombings killed nearly 200 worshippers, and wounded nearly 600 more. The leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, immediately called for calm and national unity. In the event, communal violence was avoided, but emotions inevitably ran high.

The day after the explosions, Sunni and Shia clerics jointly led mourning processions to emphasise their unity in grief. In the Sunni strongholds of Adhamiyah in Baghdad and Fallujah in the west, mosque preachers mounted a successful blood drive for the bombing victims. The Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiyah lies just across the river from the Shia quarter of Kazimiyah, with which it has had street clashes for decades. After Saddam's capture, a dozen people had died in rioting between the two. The outpouring of Sunni support showed national unity in the face of tragedy. But Shia may have emerged more determined than ever not to allow their destiny to be dictated by others.

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Conquering the divide - Can Iraq's Sunni and Shia Muslims get on?