Kurdistan Observer

THE MYTH of a unified Iraqi identity may have finally been laid to rest. More clearly than any other measurement since the United States-led invasion in 2003, preliminary results from last month's parliamentary elections show Iraq as three lands with three distinct identities, divided by faith, goals, region, history and symbols.

Iraqis of all stripes say they are the descendants of Mesopotamia, the glorious great-grandchildren of the cradle of civilisation. Iraq, they point out, gave birth to law and the written word. And asked their faith, Iraqis often testily answer with the refrain: "There is no Sunni. There is no Shiite. We are all Iraqi."

But the preliminary election results, which have trickled out through a series of haphazard leaks and news conferences and remain disputed by all parties, show a nation starkly fragmented into ethnic and religious cantons with different aims and visions.

Nine out of 10 Iraqis in the Shiite Muslim provinces of the south voted for religious Shiite parties, according to the early results from the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq. Nine out of 10 Iraqis in Sunni Muslim Arab areas of central and western Iraq voted for Sunni parties. Nine out of 10 Iraqis in the Kurdish provinces of the north voted for Kurdish candidates. Nationwide, only about 9 per cent voted for tickets that purported to represent all Iraqis.

The results were like a bracing splash of ice water for US officials, who had predicted that a secular, centrist Iraqi government would emerge after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Many longtime observers of Iraq had hoped the vote would foster national unity by bringing to power moderate politicians who might help draw down a minority Sunni Arab-led insurgency against a Government now controlled by the country's majority Shiites, and stanch Kurds' secessionist tendencies.

Instead, more than 240 of the 275 legislators, who will decide the composition of the future government, will probably be Shiite Islamists, Sunni Arab sectarians or autonomy-minded Kurds. The Shiites, who make up about 60 per cent of the nation's population, will hold by far the largest share.

Though Iraqis often speak lovingly of golden ages when they were one big happy family, Iraq has been a shaky proposition since its 1920s founding. Rather than sharing a history, the paths of Iraq's Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds diverged from the beginning of the nation's inception as a product of British colonialism.

Sunnis collaborated with the British, who supported the Sunni Arab monarchists. Shiite insurrectionists heeded the calls of their clergy and fought a jihad, or holy war, against the British, who crushed them and reaffirmed their second-class status. Kurdish nationalists unsuccessfully sought independence, first by diplomatic channels, later by the gun.

Iraq's post-World War II order was no less divisive. Sunni Arab nationalists forced their pan-Arab ideology on the diverse country following Britain's departure. Saddam's Sunni-run government magnified discrimination to the point of mass killings, with Shiites and Kurds punished not so much for who they were but for refusing to accept the Baath Party's version of Iraqi identity. Nonetheless, Saddam's authoritarianism was the glue that held Iraq together for decades. Now that he is out of power, the nation's troubled identity has again been cast into flux.

Does the nation continue to bow before the philosophy of Arab nationalism, or that of Shiite mysticism? Is Iraq's national hero Saddam or the 7th century Shiite caliph Imam Ali? Or, for that matter, is it the late Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani?

A further erosion of Iraqi identity could pave the way for a partitioning of the country, with unpredictable results.

Kurds, already soured on the idea of Iraq, could bolt the union, taking the oil-rich city of Kirkuk with them and realising the worst fears of Turkey and Iran, each with sizeable and restless Kurdish minorities.

Shiites, too, unified by their religious iconography, have begun seriously talking about setting up a nine-province, oil-rich southern region. That would leave an angry and resentful Sunni Arab centre and west of the country determined to continue staging an insurgency that could inflame passions throughout the Middle East.

Many Sunni Arab nationalists and former Baath Party adherents blame Iran and the United States for interfering in Iraq's internal affairs and whipping up sectarian and ethnic passions. The US, they say, started the troubles by doling out seats on the initial post-invasion Iraqi Governing Council according to ethnicity and sect rather than who was best qualified. Iran, they say, has flooded the country with religious imagery and propaganda, bolstering the fierce sectarianism of the country's Shiite majority to achieve its own ends.

Regardless of the cause, the very idea of Iraq may be slowly fading, politicians and common Iraqis acknowledge, often sadly.

Even the Iraqi flag seems to appear only in the posters of politicians bankrolled by US-funded aid organisations. Government buildings such as the ministries of education and health are often festooned with posters of bearded and turbaned Shiite clerics instead of the red, white and black flag of Iraq.

In the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Dahuk, the Iraqi flag is nowhere in evidence, replaced by the red, white and green flag of the ill-fated Mahabad republic, the Kurdish state briefly established in northern Iran by rebellious Kurds aided by the Soviet army in the chaotic aftermath of World War II.

Many also blame politicians and clerics who have courted supporters with symbols of faith and ethnicity. Iraq remains a religious and tribal society where codes of honour and loyalty are deeply ingrained.

Some Iraq experts compare the situation with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. In times of crisis, they say, people tend to seek out their own kind and stick close to them, just as citizens of former communist countries sought refuge in religion and ethnicity, catalysts for wars in Chechnya, Yugoslavia and Tajikistan.

But Iraq's situation is by no means hopeless. In some quarters, Iraqi national identity remains strong, said Juan Cole, a professor of history and a leading authority on Shiite Islam at the University of Michigan. He argues that with the collapse of Baathist-imposed Arab nationalism, Iraqis need to work out a new identity that includes all Iraqis, just as Canada managed to accommodate the Quebecois and Britain the Scots.

In the worst-case scenario, questions of Iraqi identity will be resolved on the streets by the AK-47s each Iraqi household seems to have stashed away. In the best-case scenario, Iraqi identity will be renegotiated passionately yet peacefully in courts, classrooms and legislative chambers.

Even Saddam's continuing trial on charges involving the killings of 146 Shiite villagers in 1982, divisive though it is, can serve as such a forum. At times last month, the trial resembled not so much a legal battle as a dysfunctional family — a Kurdish judge, a Shiite prosecutor and Sunni Arab defendants — squabbling at a holiday dinner over traumatic events two decades ago.

Some Iraqi leaders have taken first steps to avert a break-up of the country. Under heavy US pressure, they've begun exploring the creation of a broad-based coalition government that includes Iraq's different segments. Others have begun publicly acknowledging the divisions within the country and urging moderation.

With many of the country's tribes and families divided between Sunni and Shiite, the increasing identification with one or the other inspires revulsion among some Iraqis even as the divisions deepen.

The politicians "talk in a vocabulary that separates us", says Ali Abdul Salman, a 25-year-old Oil Ministry worker in Baghdad. "That is horrifying."

Born to a Sunni Arab mother, Shiite father and Kurdish grandmother, Abdul Salman said he couldn't help but still believe in an Iraqi identity. "We all carry the same identity card, which says we are all Iraqis. When I leave the country, what I will carry is my Iraqi passport, and it doesn't say Sunni, Shiite or Kurd."