We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War

8. Reframing Sunni and Shi‘i Discussions

83 8 Reframing Sunni and Shi‘i Discussions Yara Badday In the thirteen hours it takes to go from Basra to Mosul, our driver Sami (a Mosul native), my cousin and I shared pieces of our lives. Over tikka sandwiches and tea at a restaurant in Beiji, we had some great laughs and long debates over the inevitable question, “Which is worse Saddam or the Amrikaan?” But on the outskirts of Mosul, Sami put our camaraderie aside in order to raise his serious concern for my cousin visiting from Iran, “You may wanna unbutton your shirt a little, because you look Shi‘i, and this is a Sunni city.” Comical words of wisdom that deeply resonated as we entered a new unknown. Mosul is Iraq’s third largest city; after the invasion it became overrun by armed militia and daily eruptions of violence. Mosul is also a northern and predominately Sunni Arab city, where Shi‘i like my visiting cousin, are far removed. Our driver, understood that this distance between Iraqi Shi‘i and Sunni amid raging volatility garners enough mistrust that any indication of foreignness becomes life-threatening. This distance and mistrust continued to be a key factor in the events that unraveled in the years to come. Sami’s comment, saying my cousin looked Shi‘i, implicitly signifies that Shi‘i are not simply a theological delineation from the Islamic community but a sociocultural one as well. We read sectarianism, as if a theological concern is underlying the conflict, which helps obscure the understanding to outsiders. But I would like to reframe the issue as one that mainly highlights a difference in their positions in the socio-political landscape of a rapidly changing and turbulent Iraq. 84  Yara Badday Under Saddam’s regime, Iraqi Shi‘i and Sunni endured different social and political conditions based on this identity distinction.1 As a result, their social realities grew further apart, a phenomenon more apparent in regions dominated by one or the other, Sunni or Shi‘i. Part of the general hesitation or taboo about addressing this issue is that it concedes some loss of a proud characteristic feature of Iraqi society: the coexistence of its historic ethnic and religious diversity. For this reason, even referring to sectarian divisions can be seen as a dividing mechanism. However, too many lives have been taken in the name of these divisions. Recently Iraq has endured a period of violence, generally between 2006–8, referred to as a “bloodbath” that resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of lives. Many of these lives were taken as a direct result of identifying with one sect or the other. It’s time to revisit what sectarianism in Iraq looks like and reexamine its relevance in the large and complex scope of violence in Iraq today. I do not attempt to offer a culmination of the relationship’s history . I merely offer a perspective derived from a lifetime of personal experience. While there are an abundance of ways in which Iraqis independently overcome this sectarian divide (like many Iraqis I was born from both Sunni and Shi‘i parents), there is still a gaping hole in the conversation about difference. I believe the theological and social differences are not relevant when discussing the current situation. More urgently, we need to reexamine that while both constitute a significant population in Iraq, each have distinctly different experiences with the same regime and these experiences shaped their views, their relationships with the new occupying forces and eventually with other Iraqis. After the invasion, ethnic and religious divisions became exploited by a power vacuum and new opportunities for political and monetary gain. The larger Iraqi Sunni and Shi‘i communities fell prey to this exploitation, as armed gunmen commenced attacks in their 1. Indeed, other groups such as Jews, Kurds, and Chaldeans endured identity based state-sponsored discrimination. Other factors such as class, gender, and political affiliation play an important role as well. Reframing Sunni and Shi‘i Discussions  85 name. Neighboring countries, occupying forces, and other armed militia pursued a stake in Iraq. I had the unique experience of traveling to Iraq and visiting my father’s city of Basra and my mother’s city of Mosul. I was in the South during the massacre in Kerbala, in the North during the Battle of Falluja , and I was working to document prison torture...