The Hindu : Focus on Basra

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 14, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Focus on Basra

By C. Raja Mohan

The global image of the American war in Iraq is likely to be shaped quickly and decisively by the popular response in Basra, one of the first cities that is likely to fall to the advancing U.S. troops once military operations begin within the next few days.

If the Shias, who dominate the southern province of Basra, welcome the invading forces as ``liberators'', the international perceptions of the war are bound to change dramatically. If the welcome, however, is hostile or chaos ensues in the province, the audacious American invasion might begin to falter at the very outset.

Basra, which is barely 50 km from the Kuwait border, is expected to be seized by the units of U.S. and British Marines while the rest of the allied troops launched from Kuwait in the south race towards Baghdad. In the best case scenario for the U.S., Basra is expected to fall within 24 hours.

There are no indications that the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, is putting up too many military hurdles to the American arrival at Basra, which is the sole Iraqi outlet to the sea. His strategy would be to draw the Americans in, and wear them in a prolonged conflict.

The U.S. is banking on a positive response in Basra that will transform the nature of the war. But as Washington applies the hammer to the powerful Baathist state in Iraq, it would be unleashing long suppressed forces. And few can predict the consequences of the destruction of the Iraqi state and the new date with history for the Iraqi Shia.

Basra is one of the three regions from the collapsing Ottoman Empire that was stitched together into the Iraqi nation at the end of the World War-I. The Arab Shias have long seethed under the oppression of Mr. Hussein and his Baath party.

The Shias are said to constitute nearly 60 per cent of the Iraqi nation. Just as the British sought to retain political control over Iraq in the 1920s with the support of the minority Sunnis who hold sway in Baghdad, the narrowly-based Baath party continued with its discrimination and active oppression against the Shia in the south as well as the Kurds in the north.

On March 3 1991, the Shia in the south rose against Mr. Hussein immediately after the Gulf War. But the U.S. refused to back them, fearing a collapse of the Iraqi state. This allowed Mr. Hussein to brutally put down the revolt. Since then there have been occasional uprisings in Basra province which is also the home to the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.

A large numbers of Shias have fled the country over the decades. Among the well-known exiles are Ahmad Chalabi who heads the umbrella organisation — the Iraqi National Congress based in London — and Bakr al Hakim who heads the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq which has its offices in Teheran.

Both of them have been accommodated by Washington in an interim council that is supposed to have an advisory role during the administration by the U.S. of an occupied Iraq.

The SCIRI, backed by Iran, is supposed to have considerable support within Iraq. It has endorsed the U.S. efforts to overthrow Mr. Saddam Hussein's regime. Iran, which shares the same religion with southern Iraq will be quite happy to see Mr. Hussein go and the Shia Arabs gain their share of the political pie in Baghdad.

While the Shia might welcome the Americans initially as liberators, and Iran may go along, there is no reason to believe either of them will support even a short-term U.S. occupation.

Historically, Iraqi Shias have been cosmopolitan in their world view and have been part of many political trends from communist to democratic and Islamist. No single political trend can claim to hold sway over their opinion.

Mobilising the Shias for the building of a new state, assuring them of their rightful place in future political arrangements, and preventing their internal divisions and external influences from undermining the stability of Iraq are important challenges to the U.S. over the longer term.

But protecting the many petrochemical facilities around Basra from Mr. Saddam Hussein's scorched earth policy, winning friends among the Shias, delivering quick relief, preventing a settling of scores between different communities, and ensuring law and order will be immediate objectives for the U.S. forces in southern Iraq. And these must be met even as American forces deal with the Iraqi President in Baghdad. By any measure, these are gigantic tasks.

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