Iraq's Democratic Moment

Iraq has a glorious history. As ancient Babylon, it was the acknowledged cradle of human civilization. Its formidable King Nebuchadnezzar II (634-562 BC) left for posterity a system of urban life that came to be known as “The Urban Revolution” city life as we know it today. Babylonians invented the alphabet and, under their King Hammurabi, they gave the world its first codified set of laws. Baghdad was the jewel in the crown of the Muslim caliphate, until its pillage by Hulagu in 1258, and, under the Abbasids, the cultural renaissance was no less important than that which transformed Europe in the sixteenth century. With the Abbasids, the Muslim caliphate had reached its apex in both civilization and conquest. By the 1500s, the Ottomans came to govern Mesopotamia through their Sunni allies, to avert any possible threat from their Shi[ah rivals in Persia. With the much later creation of the modern state of Iraq, Sunni dominance continued, with a Sunni king and his retinue of Sunni army officers. The British, who were by then the real rulers of Iraq, further promoted Sunni predominance. The Sunnis of Iraq happened to enjoy religious and cultural affinity with a huge section of the Arab world by virtue of their shared values of Arab nationalism, which was by and large a Sunni affair, while the religious elite of the Shi[ah of Iraq retreated into a quieter existence. Shi[ah masses suffered greatly, both socially and economically, a matter that gave them a noted persecution complex which had its political bedrock in Shi[ah history and mythology, which found its violent outlet after the fall of Saddam’s mainly Sunni regime in 2003.