BAHRAIN - Khomeinism & Saddam's 'Arab Shield'.

The Jaafari revolution against Pahavi rule brought Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini to power in Iran in early 1979. This heralded the first Shiite resurgence in modern history, not only on the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf but also on the Arab side including a predominantly Jaafari Bahrain, as well as in Iraq where the Jaafari Shiites formed a majority of about 60%, and in other parts of the Muslim world where Shiite communities were large.

Suddenly, the status quo in the Arab part of an overwhelming Sunni world of Islam was being threatened by what Sunni religious leaders had long condemned as "rafadiyoun" (rejectionists - hence heretics to people like the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, or revolutionary to the far more moderate Sunnis).

Bahrain was then seen likely to be one of the first Shiite dependencies of a Khomeinist commonwealth, with one of the Modarresi brothers of Iraq spearheading the Da'wa (the Jaafari Shiite cause) movement on the islands. Then based in Iran, the Modarresi brother was also using Bahrain to establish Da'wa links with the Jaafari Shiites of Al Ihsa'; and the split within the Khalifa ruling family got deeper (see Part 6B in RIM of next month).

It did not take long for Saddam Hussein  to realise that a highly risky situation could be turned into a rewarding opportunity for himself. He was then deputy chairman of an Sunni Iraqi regime led by the military wing of the ruling Arab Baath Sociality Party, and the latter was negotiating merger with a Syrian Baathist regime led by the military wing of an Alawite elite under Gen. Hafez Al Assad.

Saddam and Assad never trusted each other; while the latter sympathised with the Khomeini regime, the former was being groomed as a "shield for Arabism" by the Sunni rulers of Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states.

Saddam staged a Baathist coup against the military wing in Baghdad and became Iraq's dictator in August 1979, after summarily executing many "plotters" includ-ing several Shiite Baathists and severing all links with Syria. Simultaneously, he began a systematic campaign against Shiite religious leaderships in Najaf and Karbala, which culminated in the execution of many including Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer Al Sadr and his sister, and launched measures that led to an all-out military offensive against Iran.

The war began in late September 1980, when Iraqi forces invaded the oil-rich Iranian province of Khuzistan which, on the Iraqi side, used to be called Arabistan. Indeed, most original inhabitants of this province were Arab and more than half of them were Sunni. It is important to note here that most of Iraq's Shiites had been Sunni Arab, converted into Jaafari Shiims about 150-160 years ago.

Equally important to note is the fact that the first cycle of Jaafari theocracies in Persia several centuries ago had originated from Iraq, where Shiism was born before the Abbasid Caliphate came into being as a successor to the Omayyad Caliphate of Damascus. The first Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad was Abul Abbas "Al Saffah" (750-754) - the latter part of his name was an adjective meaning the man who massacred people.

The first Imam of Shiism was Ali Ibn Abi Taleb (600?-661 AD), who was both a cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed. To the orthodox Sunnis, however, Ali was their fourth Caliph (656-661 AD). But in the subsequent centuries the Jaafari Shiites gave Imam Ali and his 11 successors in the Imamate some divine authority - which to most of the Sunnis, mainly the Wahhabis, was heresy.

Ali was struck by a poisoned sword before the door of the mosque of Kufa (today near Najaf) and died about two days later. His secret burial place was only identified during the reign of Harun Al Rashid, a famous Abbasid Caliph (786-809 AD). That was where a sanctuary arose around which the Imam Ali Mosque was built subsequently and a town, Al Najaf, grew up there surrounded by an immense cemetery. The cemetery grew rapidly due to the aspiration of pious Shiites to be buried in the vicinity of their first Imam.

The second Imam in Shiism is Al Hassan (624-670 AD), one of Ali's sons who it was said performed many miracles. He had 60 to 90 wives plus 300-400 concubines. That life of sensual pleasures did not appear to arouse much censure at the time or subsequently. He died of long illness (or poisoning?). The most important martyr (or "the Prince of All the Martyrs" in Jaafari Shiism) is its third Imam, Al Hussein, a younger brother of Hassan who was killed by the forces of the second Omayyad Caliph, Yazid I (680-682 AD) in a tragedy regarded as unique by the Shiites. That was on the 10th of Muharram of the Hijri year 61 (October 680 AD), when during a massacre Hussein's head was cut off. The headless body was buried along with those of other martyrs in the spot where the massacre had taken place. A sanctuary was erected there, which later grew up to become the town of Karbala.

Hussein's head was taken first to Kufa, then to Damascus. When it was placed in front of the new Caliph Yazid and his governor Ibn Ziyad, each reacted differently (an episode worth looking into). Since then, the 10th of Muharram has become the climax of what is known as Ashura' (the Tenther), a 10-day cycle of rituals filled with emotions among the Shiites of today. During the latest climax of Ashura' in Karbala and the Baghdad Shiite suburb of Al Kathimiya, on March 2, 2004, more than 150 Shiites were killed by suicide bombers and rockets blamed on Wahhabis affiliated to, or volunteering for, Osama Bin Laden's Qaeda.

It is important to note that Mohammed Baqer Al Sadr by 1979 had founded the Da'wa movement in Iraq. The Modarresi brothers in Najaf and Karbala had been among his main aides. But most of the Modarresis had managed to flee to Iran before Saddam could get hold of them. (Today, Al Da'wa is represented in the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council). In Iran, the Modarresis, the Hakims (another prominent Shiite religious family of Najaf) and others were in late 1980 calling Saddam's Khuzistan offensive a war on Islam being waged by an un-Islamic regime.

In Baghdad that was called the "Shield of Arabism" against "Persian Imperialism", "Qadisiyat Saddam", and so forth. Quietly, the Arab regimes - with the exception of Syria and a few other states - gave Saddam's offensive against Khomeini's Iran several other names. The Shiites of Bahrain, Al Ihsa' and other Arab countries had to lie low, because to them it was a huge Sunni offensive backed by the world's two super-powers - the Soviet Union and the US - as well as the other major powers of the West.

By 1981, Saddam had secured from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Arab Gulf states huge funds to finance both his offensive against Iran and an unprecedented socio-economic boom in Iraq. Mainly through the Saudi government, then blessed by the US with Riyadh's petro-dollars and Wahhabi religious partners backing Islamic fighters against Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, "Washington's darling Saddam" was eventually to receive American intelligence on Iranian troop movements in the battlefields.

Despite what a US combination of money and arms and Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi volunteers were doing to the Soviets in Afghanistan, Moscow had no choice but to keep supplying Saddam's forces with all the weapons systems they needed to defeat the Iranians. On the one hand, the USSR was deeply apprehensive of Khomeini's anti-Communist appeal to the Muslims in Central Asia and the Caucasus; on the other, Moscow was worried that a rapidly increasing supply to Iraq of combat aircraft and other weapons systems by France could eventually lure Baghdad away from reliance on the Soviet defence industry, so the Communist empire had to put its weight behind Saddam's war effort.

By late 1979, however, both the US and Saudi Arabia had become acutely alarmed by the turn of Islamic events across the Persian Gulf. Radical Khomeinist students had stormed the American embassy in Tehran in November and held the US diplomats hostage, demanding that Washington hand over the Shah for trial in the Iranian capital and several other American concessions. Radical jihadist Wahhabis, of Osama Bin Laden's mould, had stormed the Grand Mosque of Mecca in December and demanded that the 18th century AD pact of partnership between the House of Saud and Shaikh Mohammed Ibn Abdel Wahhab be observed exactly the way the latter had preached.

In both cases the demands had been impossible to meet; so later the US and Saudi Arabia were compelled to put their weight behind Saddam, among other things, with King Fahd eventually forced to assume the title of Khadem Al Haramein (to the Wahhabis meaning the servant, and to seasoned Saudi translators meaning the "Custodian", of Islam's two holiest shrines - Mecca and Medina - because in pure Wahhabism "kingdom" or "monarchy" is sacrilege).

This should explain the depth of problems the Saudi royal family now is facing from radical Wahhabi quarters.

It was mainly thanks to the US and the Soviet Union that, in August 1988, Khomeini was forced to accept a ceasefire with Iraq, i.e., an end to a war that made Saddam look victorious. Broken by what Saddam once called a "Persian defeat", Khomeini died in June 1989 and with him went the first Shiite resurgence in modern history.

Since then, the Jaafari theocracy in Tehran has been merely trying to survive, while the big majority of the people in that country have been wishing since March 2003 that the US forces invaded Iran rather than Iraq.