The fate of the Iraqiya coalition and the State of Law Coalition, both of which ran in the general election of 2010 as national movements, reflects this fact. The Iraqiya coalition, which witnessed many divisions, has practically turned into a Sunni power, and the State of Law Coalition became the most radical Shiite power.
This infers that the conflicting “patriots,” express an indirect sectarian confrontation. In light of the regional division that employs sectarian identities in favor of competing forces, it seems impossible for fragile states to appropriately rebuild themselves.
This month marked 25 years since the end of the Iran–Iraq war. Yet still, the memory of this war continues to divide Iraqis and stop them from looking at it away from their political and ideological differences. For many Sunnis, it was a fair and national war against Khomeini's attempt to export his Islamic revolution to Iraq. For many Shiites, however, it was a war waged by Saddam's regime in alliance with the regional Sunni and Western powers against the Islamic revolution.
Despite the dispute over the meaning of that war, there is disagreement over the identification of its victims, especially since there were Iraqis fighting on both sides. Some Shiite forces that play a dominant role in the current government had sided with Iran in this war. Therefore, it is only normal that any attempt to say that Iran was the aggressor be considered as an insult to them and to their history.
Facing the Sunni accusations made against the Shiites of being “collaborators” with Iran, there are Shiite accusations made against Sunni forces of being “collaborators” with countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.
The word “collaboration” aims to undermine the other side and show that they don’t have an independent will. But the truth is that it is not only about the foreign forces’ use of internal parties in the regional conflict, but also about these internal parties’ use of foreign powers in the internal conflict.
Those mutual relationships are not only the result of ideological and cultural ties, but are also widely associated with political factors and with each side’s need for support in order to empower itself at the internal level. It should be noted that this support is also accompanied by a package of conditions that make the internal policies more closely related to foreign conflicts. In most cases, the price is the exacerbation of the internal conflict and further obliteration of the border between what is internal and what is external.
Harith Hasan is an Iraqi scholar and the author of Imagining the Nation: Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq. On Twitter: @harith_hasan
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