‘Now, it is our turn.” By the second day of a recent investment conference for Iraqis based in the United Kingdom, the rift between Sunnis and Shiites was clear. Despite the best diplomatic efforts and the common desire for a more peaceful future, these words spoken to me by an influential Shiite entrepreneur were my key takeaway message.
After decades of unbelievable persecution under Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Ba’athist party, this feeling is shared by many Shiites across Iraq.
I departed Iraq on June 10, two days before the country’s second largest city, Mosul, was overrun by Sunni and al-Qaida militias, just days before the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant waved high above government buildings and oil refineries.
Iraq had been a country emerging from disaster. Donors, exercising a high degree of caution, had begun the slow transition from emergency aid to programs supporting long-term economic and social development.
But in less than one week, the majority of our projects have been cancelled or postponed indefinitely.
Donors had made great strides, especially in the more stable and secure area of Kurdistan, which to this day remains an “optimistic outlier” in a country swept up in sectarian violence and hate.
U.S. President Barack Obama, facing a serious moral dilemma, is right to call on the current Shia government to form a more inclusive government, or to at least demand a government that prefers rapprochement over punishment when it comes to dealing with its Sunni minority, as a pre-condition for continued U.S. support.
But can one president’s words, spoken far from the battlefield, take the edge off an overwhelming desire for retribution?
Michael Ignatieff, in his excellent book The Warrior’s Honour, reflects on this desire for revenge as a journalist covering the conflict in the Balkans and the massacre at Srebrenica in the mid-1990s.
I believe Ignatieff was on the wrong side of the Iraq war in 2003, but his observation that “intergenerational recrimination” is one of the greatest obstacles to peace is abundantly clear to me in modern Iraq.
It is certainly the reason why, despite American military training and superior equipment, numerous Iraqi soldiers with Sunni roots chose to disarm in Mosul, rather than fight under a government that at best has done very little for their community.
Tomas Ernst, who graduated from Victoria High School, is a senior consultant working with the International Organization for Migration, undertaking a labour market assessment to strengthen employment services in the Republic of Iraq. The opinions are those of author, and do not necessarily reflect those of the IOM.
