TEHRAN, 2 April 2003 — A leading Iraqi Shiite cleric said yesterday he had never expected a popular uprising to take place in southern Iraq as US-led forces moved toward Baghdad — only the Americans had. Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir Hakim, head of Iraq’s largest dissident party and a key player in a Shiite uprising in Iraq in 1991, also told Reuters that any US attempt to impose a military-backed government in Baghdad would backfire.
Asked why Shiites in the south did not rise up against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein when the US-led war started, Hakim said: “We did not expect an uprising, the Americans did.” He did not say why he did not expect a revolt, but some Iraqi Shiites and analysts had warned that Shiite Muslims in Iraq have reasons to be wary after they were caught up in a US-fanned revolt against Saddam 12 years ago.
Former US President George Bush encouraged Iraqi Shiites and Kurds to overthrow Saddam during the 1991 Gulf War, but gave the rebels no support when they found themselves hopelessly outgunned by Baghdad’s tanks and attack helicopters. Shiites make up a large proportion of Iraq’s 26 million people, who include Sunni Muslims, Kurds and Christians. The 1991 uprising was brutally crushed by Saddam and now many people are scared they might be abandoned by allied forces as they were in 1991.
Hakim, head of the Tehran-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), said his group had fighters inside Iraq ready to fight and contribute to the fall of Saddam. Hakim’s group claims most of its support from Iraqi Shiites, especially in the south around the city of Basra and in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.
The SCIRI’s armed wing, the Badr Brigade, has said for years it has thousands of guerrillas throughout Iraq — mostly in the Kurdish-held north — ready to fight Saddam’s troops.
“We have tens of thousands of fighters, the majority of our forces, inside Iraq,” Hakim said. “They are fighting and they’ll continue to fight until the regime (of Saddam) is toppled”. He did not say what this “fighting” entailed.
Meanwhile, Iran may have condemned the war raging just over the border in Iraq, but it is nevertheless hoping that the US/UK forces will knock out the leading Iranian armed opposition group, the People’s Mujahedeen. “The Mujahedeen are a terrorist group,” Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said in Tehran on Monday. “No government that would have the support of the Iraqi people after the fall of Saddam Hussein will allow this group to remain active in Iraq,” he said.
The People’s Mujahedeen, based on Marxist and Shiite principals, was instrumental in the overthrow of the shah of Iran in 1979 but was later forced out of the country by the Islamic government and set up camp in Iraq, where it boasted several bases and thousands of fighting men.
The People’s Mujahedeen has been blamed for numerous assassinations and attacks in Iran. During the 1980-1988 war between Iraq and Iran, the Iraqi authorities recognized the Mujahedeen as the legitimate representatives of Iran.
