The Sunni Rise Again

Iraq or Maliki Iraq or Malikirsquo shout Sunni Arab demonstrators as they block roads in western Iraq in protest against Prime Minister Nouri alMaliki and discrimination against their community Demonstrations by Sunni in their tens of thousands began with the arrest of the bodyguards of a Sunni politician on December 20 and are still continuing For the first time since 2003 the Sunni mdash one fifth of the 33 million Iraqi population mdash are showing signs of unity and intelligent leadership as they try to escape political marginalisation in a country ruled since the fall of Saddam Hussein by the Shia majority in alliance with the Kurds Iraqi Sunni Muslims wave an Iraqi national flag during an antigovernment demonstration at the Abu Hanifa Sunni mosque in Baghdadrsquos Adhamiya district At least three people were killed on Friday when Iraqi troops opened fire during clashes in Falluja city with Sunni protesters rallying against Shirsquoite Prime Minister Nuri alMaliki officials and witnesses said PicReuters In the first days of the protests Sunni demonstrators held up pictures of Saddam Hussein and waved the old regimersquos version of the Iraqi flag This changed when a revered Sunni scholar AbdulMalik alSaadi taking a leadership role instructed that these symbols of Sunni supremacy be dropped and substituted with slogans acceptable to the Shia Mr Saadi issued a fatwa condemning lsquoregionalismrsquo which is the code for a semiindependent Sunni region a demand which if granted would mean the break up of Iraq He appealed instead for Sunni and Shia unity against the Maliki government A Shia political observer noted that lsquothey are aware that without winning over the Shia south of the country they face isolation and defeatrsquo The new direction of Sunni opposition has met with a positive response The Sunni have a lot to complain about Anger is deep over an antiterrorism law that allows detention without trial of a suspect on the word of an unidentified informer Sheikh Qassim alKerbuli a leader in the Sunni heartland province of Anbar says ldquoI know a Sunni teacher in Baghdad who threw a Shia student out of an examination because he caught him cheating The student told the security forces the teacher was a terrorist and he is now in prisonrdquo Worse things can and do happen in prison ldquoWhen the security forces arrest someone they torture them with electricityrdquo says Nazar Abdel Hamid from Fallujah who is helping organise the protests lsquoThey are hung up by their hands or forced to sit on a broken bottlersquo This is not confined to Sunni but they are most frequently targeted for abuse The demonstrators are enraged over women being detained for long periods by the security forces because their male relatives are under suspicion but cannot be found Sheikh Kerbuli says ldquoI know of one woman who has been held for six years because her husband was seen with a suspiciouslooking black bag Nobody knows what was in the bag but he escaped so they took away his wife insteadrdquo Such stories are confirmed by human rights activists who have visited prisons Pascale Warda a former minister and one of the heads of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organisation visited the womenrsquos prison in Baghdad last year She says ldquoThere were 414 inmates of whom 169 had been arrested but not sentenced Some women prisoners had been rapedrsquo Sunni grievances are much more extensive than false imprisonment and mistreatment They feel they have been reduced to the status of second class citizens discriminated against when it comes to getting a fair share of jobs and projects to provide electricity water and healthcare They see antiBarsquoathist legislation supposedly directed against leading members of the Barsquoath Party that ruled Iraq from 1968 to 2003 as a sectarian weapon used to take away the jobs and pensions of Sunni teachers and minor civil servants Ghassan alAtiyyah a political scientist and activist says he visited a teacher in the Sunni district of Abu Ghraib in Baghdad who ldquoafter 30 years as a school teacher is out of a job and a pension They just sent him a message written on a scrap of paper saying lsquoGo homersquo He is penniless If he was younger he would get a gunrdquo Many Shia express sympathy for cases like this but they add that Sunni in Anbar Salahudin Nineveh and Sunni districts of Baghdad are frequently unemployed because they used to have plum jobs under Saddam Hussein as army police or intelligence officers In the 1980s it was said that 80 per cent of army officers were Sunni and 20 per cent Shia while the proportions were the reverse in the lower ranks A retired Shia general says ldquoIt is hypocritical of Sunni to demand back security jobs that they only held in the past because of sectarian bias in their favourrdquo The Sunni demonstrations now entering their third month raise a question crucial to the future of Iraq how far will the Sunni once dominant accept a lower status Members of the government fear the real agenda of the Sunni is not reform but regime change a counterrevolution reversing the postSaddam Hussein political settlement ldquoShia leaders believe they have been elected are legitimate and any change should come through an electionrdquo said one senior officialu00a0 Much of Iraq has been cantonised into Sunni Shia and Kurdish areas in a way that was not true before 2003 In places burnt out Sunni mosques or mosques taken over by Shia underline the extent of Sunni defeat AbdulKarim Ali a real estate broker says Sunni may want to return but they are frightened by rumours of action against them even when these are not true ldquoI was just with a Sunni family in Doura who want me to sell a good house in Bayaa in another part of Baghdad where they used to live But they think it is now too dangerous for them to go there even to visitrdquo Sunni hopes and Shia fears are being heightened by the struggle for power in Syria with the Sunni majority there likely to emerge the winners This emboldens the Sunni of Iraq who no longer feel isolated and sense that they benefit from a regionwide Sunni counterattack against the Shia led by Saudi Arabia Qatar and Turkey ldquoExtreme Sunni and Shia both feel a sense of powerrdquo says Dr Atiyyah ldquoThe Sunni say we have the whole Arab world behind us The Shia leadership says we are the majority in Iraqrdquo He fears these beliefs are a recipe for mutual destruction Many Sunni in Iraq have seen their lives torn apart by occupation and sectarian violence over the last decade and are fearful of it happening again A Sunni friend has done better and has a middle ranking post in a ministry where he says most jobs are going to members of the ruling Dawa party of Mr Maliki ldquoThey run it like a triberdquo he says ldquoEvery appointee is one of their relativesrdquo He speaks fearfully of civil war but adds that ldquoif the Sunni could just get jobs and pensions all this fury would ebb awayrsquo