by Sina

Created on: January 14, 2009   Last Updated: January 16, 2009

"Can Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki bring stability to Iraq?"

My answer to this question is yes but with caveats, stability will be less democratic and more pro-Iranian than the United States would like.

The contemporary history of Iraq starts with the end of World War I and the British Mandate of Mesopotamia. The League of Nations initially mandated to the British the Ottoman velayets (regions or areas) of Baghdad, Basra, and then later Mosul. The head of the mandate was Sir Percy Cox and immediately was faced with the rise of violent Arab nationalism. The movement was a broad coalition composed of Shiite and Sunni ulama (members of the religious establishment), Shia merchants, civil servants, and military officers which united for the explicit goal to throw out the British. The British reacted accordingly and 1920 put down the rebellion quickly but violently. The following year at the Cairo Conference the British set not only the specific form of Iraqi political life until 1958 but also its general outline until the United States led invasion and occupation in 2003.

The governing idea behind Iraq, as far as the British were concerned at the Cairo Conference, was to create a state where the Shiite majority in the south would be kept under control while guaranteeing the delivery of oil. The political calculus of the British was if the Iraqis are divided then it would easier to rule, i.e. a lesser chance that they would unite and throw out the British. Thus a state was created with King Faisal, a Sunni, in control and the Kurds and Shiite being subordinated to Sunni or specifically Hashemite rule.

In 1958, the Hashemite rule is ended with a coup d'etat that brings Abdul Karim Qassim to power, who is promptly throw out of power by his brother, Abdul Rahman Arif, who is then throw out of power by Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti or just Saddam Hussein. The first important thing to note is again the government by Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds are marginalized. The second important concept is that some members of the Shia ulama, merchants, and intellectuals begin to organize politically with the explicit intention to overthrow the government in Baghdad. Thus resistance and revolution in Iraq went from being defined as "us (Arabs) vs the outsider (British)," to "us (one sectarian group) vs them (another sectarian group)." Saddam Hussein would take this idea to the extreme, persecuting both the Shiites and the Kurds very violently.

In 2003 the United States upturned the Sunni dominated

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