The Sunnis feel they are the big losers in the new Iraq. Graham Usher in Baghdad reports on a community divided, disempowered and fearful of the future Last April the US army entered Baghdad via Um Tubal junction, now a concrete chaos of snarled traffic and uncollected rubbish. Facing it is the Ibn Taimiya mosque, an oasis of palm trees, blue cupolas and milk-coloured stone. On 1 January the army broke down its doors. For Iraq's Sunni minority, last year's invasion meant the "loss of our country", in the words of Muthanna Al-Dhari, a member of the newly formed Sunni Shura Council (SSC). Last month's incursion reinforced their sense of absolute violation. Four weeks later a demonstration is being held in the mosque's gardens. Around 100 people are protesting the army's ongoing internment of its imam, Sheikh Sumaidaie. The army says the mosque was being used to store arms, and that Sumaidaie was using his pulpit to incite against the occupation. The SSC says the raid was to wreck its founding meeting. It was another episode in the US-led "conspiracy" against the Sunnis, "the original people of Iraq", says SSC Spokesman Fakhry Al-Kaissi. "For months the Coalition Provisional Authority and Iraqi Governing Council have been discussing elections, selection and a provisional government. We read in the papers that [Coalition Chief Administrator Paul] Bremer is communicating with [Shi'ite religious leader Ayatollah Ali] Al- Sistani and meeting with [Kurdish leader Jalal] Talabani. Where is the authentic Sunni leadership in all this?" The SSC presents itself as that leadership. Its political aims are to end the US-Anglo occupation "by peaceful means", while defending the "legal right" of those who resist by other means. But Al-Kaissi's main plea is for the Americans to "open a dialogue" with the SSC and the Sunni community it claims to represent. He seeks "a fair share" for the Sunnis in the next Iraqi government. But he admits the motive behind forming the new council was largely reactionary. "We were forced to create the SSC in response to the Kurds and Shi'ites collaboration with the occupation, combined with the American violence against our communities. It's not a positive development but a necessary one. It would be better to have an organisation promoting Iraqi rights rather than Sunni ones." Despite their relatively privileged position under the old regime, few Sunnis mourned the demise of Saddam Hussein. He had dragged them into three unnecessary wars, wrecked the economy and built a regime "based on a family, not even a tribe", snorts Al-Dhari. Nor, initially, were they actively against the invasion, viewing US soldiers as the "necessary evil" to oust a dictator. They simply assumed the latest conquerors would preserve their religious, political, military and professional hegemony in the new Iraq the way their Ottoman and British predecessors had done in the older ones. They were to be brutally awakened. From the outset it was pretty clear that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and US army, guided by certain Iraqi exiles, viewed most Sunnis as either unreconstructed Ba'athists or anti-American Islamists. This was shown not only in the ruthless counter-insurgency operations the US army has carried out in the mainly Sunni towns and villages that form the "triangle" -- actions that in the eyes of many Iraqis have simply fuelled the resistance rather than doused it. It was brought most violently home in the "de- Ba'athification" campaign, in which 400,000 Iraqis lost their jobs in the army, and 30,000 in professions like teaching. Into the vacuum the CPA appointed the Interim Governing Council (IGC). Sunnis saw this as being weighted overwhelmingly in favour of Iraq's Shi'ite and Kurdish communities, rather than their own. They have since seen "their" ministries taken over by the Shi'ite religious and Kurdish national parties, whose patronage means protection while any kind of association with the Ba'athists means dismissal or worse. They have also seen their homes, suburbs and businesses become wracked with crime, stalked by armed gangs and abandoned by a new Iraqi police force whose main job "is to protect the Americans, not us". The result is fear, says an employee in the Education Ministry, who refuses to give her name or rank. "In my directorate out of 700 headmasters, 400 were dismissed because they were Ba'athists. Ten have been killed, including one in front of his students. We suspect the Shi'ite religious groups because they are in charge of the de- Ba'athification campaign in our ministry, but it could be anyone. It is simply revenge. I think it was better under Saddam. Then you had one ruler. Now you have many rulers and many rulers in Iraq means chaos." Sunnis are looking for ways out. Among some there is a visceral if passive support for the armed resistance against the US and British soldiers. "It restores our sense of national dignity," says one. But most condemn attacks that kill Iraqi civilians. And many are alarmed by the slaughters that killed Shi'ite religious leader Mohamed Baqr Al- Hakim and 80 others in Najaf last August and 100 Kurds in Arbil on 1 February, fearing the sectarian backlash they could unleash. "We are against such attacks and sent our condolences to the Kurds to say so. We want a united Iraq," says Al-Dhari. But the confessional agenda he and others on the SSC espouse is no solution for the Sunni plight, says Iraqi political analyst, Wameed Nadhmi. "If the Sunnis start to act as Sunnis they will only further divide Iraq. Nor can the SSC represent the Sunnis. Unlike the Shi'ites, we don't have a historical, accepted religious leadership. Many Sunnis are urban, middle class, and secular. If they have an ideology it is nationalist rather than Islamist." Instead Nadhmi advocates a strategy of Sunni-Shi'ite unity bound by "our common identities of being Arab and Muslim". In his view, the best means to achieve this unity would be for Sunnis, Islamists and nationalists alike to rally behind the Shi'ite Sistani's call for direct elections for the new Iraqi government. This would not only hasten the departure of the occupation and "strengthen our common desire for independence", says Nadhmi, it would show the Shi'ites that the Sunnis are not afraid of a Shi'ite majority in a democratic Iraq. The problem is many Sunnis are afraid of that majority. The SSC is resolutely opposed to elections any time soon, as are the five Sunni Arab representatives on the IGC. It highlights the bedrock Sunni contradiction in the new Iraq, says another analyst, Sadoun Delaney. "The Sunnis have ruled Iraq in one form or another since 1920. They don't know how to be an opposition." Outside Baghdad's main passport office in the Karrada neighbourhood a woman is trying to get a visa for Qatar. She refuses to give her name or her history, but it is not hard to draw her profile. Her husband was a surgeon in the Iraqi army. He worked in a Baghdad hospital throughout the war "because, unlike Saddam Hussein, he loved his country". He "lost" his job in May, she says. When the tanks first ploughed through Um Tubal, she believed the American and British soldiers would "save us; that there would be new Iraqi government but with the old army. The army loved their country", she repeats. "But now look -- there is occupation, insecurity and explosions every night. That is why we are leaving." When will she return? "When Iraq is free." Free of whom?
