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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iraq
Index
In 1964 Ayatollah Khomeini was expelled from Iran to Turkey,
and he was then granted asylum by Iraq
(see The Iran-Iraq Conflict
, ch. 1). His theological erudition and idealism earned
him a significant following in An Najaf, where ulama (religious
leaders) and students from throughout the Shia world formed an
important circle of learned men. The Baath socialist regime,
however, with its secular, anticlerical stance, was never
comfortable with Shia religious leaders and their followers.
Relations between the Iraqi regime and the Shia clerics
deteriorated during the Imam Husayn celebrations in February
1977, when police interference in religious processions resulted
in massive antigovernment demonstrations in An Najaf and in
Karbala. Several thousand participants were arrested, and eight
Shia dignitaries, including five members of the clergy, were
sentenced to death and were executed. In 1978, in an effort to
quell the Shia unrest and to satisfy the shah's request, Baghdad
expelled Ayatollah Khomeini, who sought refuge in France.
In another attempt to minimize Shia dissent, the Iraqi
government had deported to Iran 60,000 Shias of Iranian origin in
1974. In the months following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in
Iran, the Iraqi government deported nearly 35,000 more ethnic
Iranians.
Deportations, the suppression of the Shia ulama, and the
death under suspicious circumstances of Shia leader Imam Musa as
Sadr all contributed to the deterioration of relations between
Baathist Iraq and Islamic Iran. The ranking Shia religious
leader, Sayyid Abu al Qasim al Khoi, refrained from either
sanctioning or opposing the Baath government, but the government
feared Sadr because of his leadership qualities and because of
his close association with Khomeini.
Beginning in 1980, Iran actively promoted its own
revolutionary vision for Iraq. All anti-Iraqi Islamic
organizations, including Ad Dawah al Islamiyah, commonly called
Ad Dawah
(see Political Opposition
, ch. 4) and the Organization
of Islamic Action were based in Tehran, where they came under the
political, religious, and financial influence of the ruling
clergy. To control rivalry and infighting among the different
groups, Iran helped to set up the Supreme Assembly for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI) on November 17, 1982. It was
headed by Iraqi cleric Hujjat al Islam Muhammad Baqir al Hakim.
Establishing SAIRI was viewed as a step toward unifying the
political and military work of all groups and as an attempt to
unite them under a single command directly supervised by their
Iranian counterparts. In return, SAIRI acknowledged the
leadership of Khomeini as the supreme commander of the Islamic
nation. Nevertheless, the majority of Iraqi Shias resisted
Tehran's control and remained loyal to Iraq.
Data as of May 1988
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