Originally posted by Tumor
Bet your wrong. Iraq aint no Iran, never was. Historicly secular, still secular (T. Aziz is... err was... christian).
Lets check the history.
In fact the eastern part of Iraq was once iranian territory. The old capital city of the iranian empires of the parthian and sassanid dynasties (which exisited in total 800 - 900 years), Ktesiphon, lies WEST of Bagdad.
Then the islamic invasion destroyed the iranian Sassanid Empire in the 7th century and Iran was devided for centuries in smaller empires. During this time Bagdad raised to the centre of the arab islam empire - especially during the Abbasid dynasty, but was heavily influenced by iranian culture.
The iranians managed to avoid the arab assimilitation (not so old cultures like the egyptians, syrians or the people in the iraqui area, who gave up their native language and adopted the new arab language for example).
The iranians even modified the islamic religion and created their own version, the shiite islam wheich has many elements of the old iranian zarathustra-religion of the last sassanid empire.
And the people living in the iraq area also adopted the shiite religion instead of the sunnite.
This is the reason, why today that country we call Iraq is the only arab country with a shiite majority.
In the follwing time the area which is today called Iraq was switching between the two powers of the region - the reborn Iranian Empire under the Safawid dynasty and the Ottoman Empire.
This lasted until the WW1 when the Iraq of today was produced by the allies.
From the first day of this country which was created 1921 the shiite majority was excluded from ruling. Instead it was first a british colony/protectorate, then a sunnite arab kingdom and then a sunnite arab "democracy" under Kassem and later Saddam.
During all this time the shiite majority was suppressed. They tried many revolts - one during WW2 with the help of the German Reich - but all these failed.
The last one failed, when Bush sr. asked the shiites 1991 to revolt against Saddam and promised help. They did and the help never came - so again the shiites were butchered by the minority ruling the country. This has not been forgotten.
The most important thing to consider, is the fact that on iraqui territory there are the two most holy shiite places - Kerbala and Nadjaf.
These places are for shiite moslems more important than Medina, Mekka or Jerusalem. The religious leaders in these cities have great influence to the shiite people of Iraq. Also during all the decades of oppression by the sunnite minorities the shiites had one last defense line: their religion.
They were discriminated when they wanted to go to university or to get a good school education.
When they were pressed to the army they were put in badly equipped cannonfodder regiments and treated badly by sunnite officers and were controlled by the secret police and political officers in these troops.
And now the USA had started a meeting to find out the next iraqui president. And not a single shiite representative was present in this meeting.
Instead the USA is favorizing corrupt criminals like Charasi, who has left Iraq decades ago, is nominally a shiite but considered by the iraqui shiites as a traitor and an US-puppet.
So 20000 shiites demonstrated against this on the day of the Garner-meeting.
If Quislings like Charasi would go to a shiite city without military escort he would be killed by the shiites like the UK-puppet Khoei was killed when he dared to visit Nadjaf (even with escort).
No - the majority of the iraqui shiites simply dont trust foreigners or people who are only puppets of foreign regimes. They trust their religion and their religious leaders - and the highest ranking and most respected one is Ajatollah Hakim in iranian exile.
Thats the problem with the shiites and this status has been created during history.
Its right that in the history the modern Iraq (from 1921) has always been a secular state.
But its also right that the shiite majority had never been part of the governments of this Iraq.
That they were suppressed and discriminated by every regime of iraq - british, kingom, republican.
That they were manipulated by foreign regimes to revolt against their governments.
And that they finally developed to a people who only see in a theocratic regime a chance for a better future.
And thats only one of the many problems Iraq will have in next time.
Others - like the kurd problem - will also cause developments which, in my opinion, will lead to a civil war.
