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“Sunni triangle”. Around half of them live in urban areas, mainly in Baghdad and Mosul,
while the Shi’ites dominate the areas south of Baghdad as well as a large portion of
Baghdad, in particular Sadr City. 149
The contemporary divide between Shi’ites and Sunnis in Iraq, however, includes more than
the above-described schism. In fact, there has been considerable intermarriage between the
two groups among the urban middle class and some Iraqi tribes have both Sunni and Shi’ite
branches. 150 In reality, the schism is also a result of the politics of the former regimes,
exacerbated by post-2003 emphasis on religious and ethnic identities. 151 Despite the fact
that, since its formation in 1921, Iraq has been largely secular, Sunni Arabs by-and-large
dominated the country’s government, military and economy. The Ba’athist Government of
Saddam Hussein targeted the Shi’a clergy and the Shi’ite population at large. According to
Global Security,
“Forces from the Intelligence Service (Mukhabarat), General Security (Amn al-Amm), the
Military Bureau, Saddam’s Commandos (Fedayeen Saddam), and the Ba’ath Party […]
killed senior Shi’a clerics, desecrated Shi’a mosques and holy sites (particularly in the
aftermath of the 1991 civil uprising), arrested tens of thousands of Shi’a, interfered with
Shi’a religious education, prevented Shi’a adherents from performing their religious rites,
and fired upon or arrested Shi’a who sought to take part in their religious processions.
Security agents reportedly are stationed at all the major Shi’a mosques and shrines, and
search, harass, and arbitrarily arrest worshipers.” 152
Furthermore, the regime of Saddam Hussein was responsible for military campaigns against
Shi’ite civilians, extra-judicial killings, the confiscation of land and the drainage of the
Southern marsh areas and forcible relocation of its original inhabitants, the Marsh Arabs.
The unequal distribution of the country’s resources led to the under-development of the
mainly Shi’ite South of Iraq. 153
ii) The Emergence of the Current Sectarian Violence
The Sunni-driven insurgency initially targeted US troops. Soon, with the involvement of
Al-Qa’eda in Iraq, parts of the insurgency deliberately attacked Shi’a targets. Igniting
sectarian violence is central to Al-Qa’eda’s strategy in Iraq. In a 15 June 2004 letter
purportedly authored by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, Al-Qa’eda’s former leader, and addressed
149
Global Security, Sunni Islam in Iraq, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/religionsunni.htm
[last updated 22 June 2005].
150
CFR, Iraq: The Sunnis, see above footnote 148.
151
According to the ICG, Iraq’s electoral law, drafted in 2004, had also furthered “communalism” and
“deepened ethnic and sectarian identities (…)”; see ICG, After Baker-Hamilton, p. 19, see above footnote
111. The USIP assessed that “(i)n order to gain power in a political vacuum, among an electorate with few
institutions and little experience, leaders appealed to ethnic and sectarian identity with great success,
mobilizing these sentiments and organizing coalitions on this basis, and thus furthering the division of Iraq
largely along ethnic and sectarian lines”; Phebe Marr, Iraq’s New Political Map, USIP, Special Report,
January 2007, p. 7, http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr179.pdf.
152
Global Security, Sunni Islam in Iraq, see above footnote 149. However, the Ba’athist regime of former
President Saddam Hussein exploited religion to mobilize his people, in particular during the Iraq-Iran War in
the 1980s. See: Global Security, Shia-Baath Relations, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/
religion-shia-baath.htm [last updated 22 June 2005].
153
Global Security, Shia-Baath Relations, see above footnote 152.
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