Source: Huffington Post
Author: Hamza Hendawi
BAGHDAD — Now that U.S. forces are gone, Iraq’s ruling Shiites are moving quickly to keep the two Muslim sects separate – and unequal.
Sunnis are locked out of key jobs at universities and in government, their leaders banned from Cabinet meetings or even marked as fugitives. Sunnis cannot get help finding the body of loved ones killed in the war. And Shiite banners are everywhere in Baghdad.
With the Americans no longer here to play peacemakers and Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab nations moving to isolate Iraq, it’s a development that could lead to an effective breakup of the country.
“The sectarian war has moved away from violence to a soft conflict fought in the state institutions, government ministries and on the street,” said political analyst Hadi Jalo. “What was once an armed conflict has turned into territorial, institutionalized and psychological segregation.”
Categories: Citizenship, Discrimination, Education, Employment, Human Rights, Iraq, Middle East, Politics, Religions, Sectarianism, Society, Universal Brotherhood
“Bagdad Burning” is a book based on the blog by an Iraqi blogger who referred to herself as ‘Riverbend’ and offered eye witness testimony with sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes amusing insight into civilian life following the U.S. invasion. In it, among many other things, she highlighted the fact that prior to the U.S. invasion, Iraqis generally did not engage in sectarian discussions–it was considered taboo. But following the invasion, one’s sectarian allegiance became a matter of prominence. She also wrote that like anywhere else in the world, Iraqi families (though large unlike Western families, often including up to 15, 16 people) were composed of members of varying ethnic and religious backgrounds.
Was it then a mere coincidence that followng the U.S. invason and in the wake of the U.S. departure, there has been such sectarian strife in Iraq? Has it not always been the rule of thumb of the occupier to divide and conquer? Is it possibly a regional strategy wherein the Muslim world, riddled as it is by sectarian divisions, plays right into the hands of the global superpower?
Every Ahmadi and particularly every Pakistani Ahmadi knows the impending doom that such measures spell for a nation. What begins as a mild albeit painful form of discrimination, slowly becomes an insidious plague that gnaws away at human compassion at the national level. And finally erodes what little unity there may be left in a country maligned by institutionalized divisions and hatred.
Apart from the insult and humiliation such discrimanatory measures inflict upon their targets (i.e. a specific religious group or sect), they also deprive the countries that practice them of all the potential their citizens have to offer. And in the long run, such countries lose out and ultimately fall out of the international game of merit.
At least Pakistanis can bask in a warped kind of luxury, knowing that they had no clue where their country would be headed should they institutionalize discrimination. Following Pakistan’s very public embarrassments, no other country certainly has any excuse.