The Shiite Obligation (Kenan Makiya Appeals To Fellow Iraq Shiites To Look Beyond Victimhood Alert)

Opinionjournal.com ^ | 02/06/07 | Kenan Makiya

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Foremost among those victims are the Shiites of Iraq, of whom I am one. Shiite parties and 111 coalitions are poised on the verge of a great electoral victory. But who is this mass of people, politically speaking? What do they stand for? What kind of a state do they want?

Since 1968, the Baath have been trashing the only idea that can hold the great social diversity of Iraq together: the idea of Iraq. Their answer to the question "Who am I?" was: You are either one of us, or you are dead.

True to their word, they killed anyone who dared to say he was a Kurd or a Shiite or a leftist, or a democrat and a liberal. Contrary to what many Iraqi Shiites tend to think nowadays, the Baath never wanted to build a Sunni confessional state in Iraq...

This idea cannot be built in reaction to perceived enemies, real or imagined; nor can it be built on exclusions of any kind. It has to be founded on the principle of tolerance and forbearance. No other formula will work in Iraq. We Iraqis tried dictatorship; in fact we took it further than almost anyone else in the world. Still it did not work. The country all but fell apart. But for a new inclusive idea of Iraq to take hold, the Shiites in particular have to make a very real sacrifice; they have to think beyond what is in their own self-interest, narrowly conceived. In so doing they might just become the agents for a genuine democratic transformation of the whole Middle East.

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Kenan Makiya, author of The Republic Of Fear, one of the most profound books I've ever read about Iraq under Saddam's dictatorship, looks forward to the future of Iraq's democratic experiment. Can Shiites transcend their feelings of victimhood to build a free and tolerant state? The Ba'ath set every one against each other. Liberating Iraqis from that prison of fear is a difficult job with heavy odds. The first step in that process was last Sunday's free elections. All good men and women can wish Iraqis well in the journey to transforming their country into a Republic that respects the rights of its own people and doesn't threaten its neighbors and which serves an an example of what is possible in the wider Middle East.

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