Lebanonwire, March 27, 2003

The Daily Star

BEIRUT: The parallels between the US-led invasion of Iraq and Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon are striking ­ and also ominous.
Both involved modern armies wielding state-of-the-art weaponry launching their assaults initially through Shiite-dominated areas. Both armies also expected to face no opposition from the Shiite population: US war planners hope for a warm reception from Iraqi Shiites grateful for an end to years of repression by Saddam Hussein’s Sunni elite; Israel believed the Shiites of south Lebanon would be happy to see the back of Palestinian guerrillas whose aggressive presence in southern Lebanon had made life intolerable for the local population. Indeed, the Lebanese Shiites initially showered the invading Israeli troops with rose petals and rice. But the Israelis made a serious miscalculation about the Shiites and the welcoming rice and rose petals soon turned into bombs and bullets.
And in a harbinger of what may yet come, leading Iraqi Shiite figures are warning that Iraqis will rise up against coalition forces if they remain in Iraq too long.
“Beware the Shiites!” wrote Israeli journalist and peace activist Uri Avnery recently, predicting that Washington’s problems in Iraq will begin once the fighting is over. He gave an example of two trips he paid to south Lebanon in 1982. During the first visit, four days after the Israeli invasion, he recounted being greeted “with great” joy by Shiite villagers. A few months later, Avnery returned to Lebanon and found Israeli troops” now wearing bulletproof vests and helmets, many on the verge of panic.”
“What had happened? The Shiites received the Israeli soldiers as liberators. When they realized that they had come to stay as occupiers, they started to kill them,” he wrote.
In 1984, then Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, seeking advice on a possible withdrawal from Lebanon, consulted Augustus Richard Norton, a specialist on Shiite affairs and today professor of Anthropology at Boston University.
“My advice was … Israel must withdraw from Lebanon because if it does not withdraw from Lebanon what it will do is push the people in the middle into resistance. In effect what it will do is radicalize the population against Israel,” Norton said. Rabin ignored the advice and instead redeployed the Israeli Army to a zone along the border. Over the next 15 years, the border zone became a target for attacks and resistance and helped turn Hizbullah into Israel’s most resolute and implacable foe.
The primary opposition to coalition forces in southern Iraq is being waged by units of “Saddam’s fedayeen,” a paramilitary force composed of die-hard Hussein supporters apparently deployed from areas further north. But The New York Times reported Tuesday that the fedayeen were being joined by local Iraqis “outraged by the American intervention.”
“Of course these people will fight,” the newspaper quoted Mohsen Ali, a 35-year-old farmer, as saying. “They will fight against the invaders.”
In an easily missed but telling report, CNN correspondent Ryan Chilcote, embedded with the 101st Airborne Division, spoke of the reaction of Shiites as the troops drove through their towns.
In the first town, Chilcote reported, the US soldiers were “quite literally applauded.” But in the next town, the reaction was markedly different. It was “eerie,” he said. The villagers stared unsmiling at the passing American troops. “It had all the ingredients of an ambush,” Chilcote said, and had the US commanders “really worried.”
Despite some evident similarities between Shiite resistance in southern Lebanon and the possibility of Shiite resistance emerging in southern Iraq, analysts believe it is a mistake to deduce that Shiites are more prone to the concept of resistance than other Arab communities. After all, much of the “resistance” in the Arab world during the 20th century against foreign occupation ­ the Ottomans, the European mandate authorities ­ was conducted by Arabs of all religions, sects and political persuasions.
According to Professor Nizar Hamzeh, head of the political science department at the American University of Beirut, the depth of Shiite opposition to the US presence will depend on the post-Saddam arrangements.
“If the Shiites are granted more power in the new arrangements then the level of tolerance will be higher,” Hamzeh said. “If their representation is lower than they expect, then that tolerance will be lower.”
The 1920 revolt in Iraq was notable for uniting all Iraqi communities ­ Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites, the tribes ­ against British rule. But the driving force behind the rebellion was Mirza Mohammed Taqi Shirazi, the leading Shiite mujtahid, or religious scholar, in Iraq, who successfully rallied the Shiites and enlisted the support of the tribes.
In an article for the History News Network entitled “Why you should pray that we don’t bomb the sites sacred to Shiites”, Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, asked if the Shiites would remain happy with the US after the war.
“The US is about to take control through conquest of the holiest shrines of Shiite Islam,” Cole wrote, referring to Kerbala and Najaf, where the tombs of Imam Hussein and Imam Ali respectively lie. “The sensibilities of Shiites throughout the world could easily be injured if they are damaged in war or later seen to be administered unjustly.”
Asked about US expectations that the Shiites in Iraq were going to receive American troops with flowers, leading Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah told the pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper “Those expecting that were deluded about Iraq, especially the south … the Shiite human being lives for the cause of freedom.”
In a foretaste of what the future may hold for the coalition forces, Sheikh Mohammed al-Khakani, a leading religious authority in Najaf, on Tuesday called on Iraqis to “defend their country, honor and religion by expelling the unbelievers from the land of Islam.”
Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the largest Shiite opposition group, warned on Tuesday that his followers are “ready to take up arms” should the coalition troops become an occupation force. The Badr Brigades, SCIRI’s 15,000-strong military wing mainly deployed in Iran with some units in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, has so far stayed out of the fighting. But they could represent a formidable obstacle to US plans for post-Saddam Iraq if Shiite interests are not taken fully into account.
“The American troops will face a very strong resistance in just a couple of months. They will have to leave the cities and move into the desert,” said a veteran Hizbullah fighter who spent his childhood in Najaf. “I know the Iraqi people and I think the Americans will face the same resistance the Israelis faced in Lebanon, even harsher.”

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