Dilip Hiro: Can Iraq be held together now Saddam is gone?

For centuries, Iraq has been part of a volatile region held together by empire. So what will happen when democracy is imposed?

Hardly had the first enthusiasm for the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime broken out in Baghdad than events in both the north and the south of Iraq – the fall of Kirkuk to Kurdish forces and the assassination of the Shia Ayatollah al-Khoei in Najaf – seemed to confirm the worst fears of those who had warned that the collapse of the tyrant would lead to a dismemberment of the country.

As ever, it is oil and past imperial policies that poison the ethnic relations of the region and threaten its unity. The oil wealth of Iraq is divided north and south between Kurds and Shias, while the power is held by the Sunnis in the centre. With the dominance of Shias and Kurds in the US-supported opposition, the disgruntled Sunnis, the former ruling group, cannot be far behind in wanting to battle for a territory for themselves.

Contrary to the promises the Bush team repeatedly gave the Turkish government, the forces of the Kurdistan Democratic Party have seized Kirkuk, the hub of the Iraqi oil industry in the north. This has alarmed both the civilian and military leaders of Turkey. They consider it a gross breach of the assurances given to them by Washington. They view the seizure of this city, to be followed shortly by Mosul, by the KDP – albeit in association with US troops – as the first step toward the creation of a federal Iraq. And they fear that Kirkuk, a city that has been a bone of contention between ethnic Arabs and Kurds for decades, would become part of Iraqi Kurdistan.

The nightmare scenario for Ankara – as well as for Iran and Syria, which have their own Kurdish minorities in the areas adjoining Iraqi Kurdistan – would be for the Iraqi Kurds to declare an independent sovereign state, thus creating a nucleus for a greater Kurdistan in the near future. Assured of hefty oil revenue from Kirkuk, that state would be an economic powerhouse.

Even if the political situation in the post-Saddam Iraq stabilised around a federal set-up, with the country carved up between Kurdish, Sunni and Shia-majority regions, say the Turkish leaders, this would pose a mortal threat to the territorial integrity of their republic. Already there are persistent reports of the Kurdish autonomous movement gathering momentum in south-eastern Turkey and a heightened military presence there.

Thus these three powerful neighbours of Iraq are intent on keeping the autonomy of Iraqi Kurds in the post-Saddam era to the absolute minimum. If that fails, they fear, it will be a free-for-all.

In the south, where the American and British forces have carved up the region between themselves after pursuing dissimilar military strategies, a different pattern of military administration is emerging. That does not augur well for the continued territorial integrity of Iraq.

It was only after the SAS stormed the headquarters of the much-hated General Ali Hassan al-Majid in Basra on 4 April and killed him that British armoured troops were able to punch their way to the city centre two days later. Since then the military commanders have tried to gain the co-operation of local leaders to administer the city.

By contrast, the Pentagon, controlling Nasiriyah further up the Euphrates from Basra, has been heavy-handed. It was a fortnight before US forces managed to pacify the town. Now, pursuing the political agenda of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney, the Pentagon is trying to bring into the town the so-called "Free Iraqi Army" of the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi.

Though a favourite of the US hawks and the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington, Chalabi is deeply unpopular among Iraqi exiles and lacks any constituency inside Iraq. His presence in Nasiriyah has already ignited renewed hostilities.

In the Shia holy city of Najaf, American claims to have reached a peace agreement with the religious authorities were blown apart yesterday by the assassination of Abdul Majid al-Khoei, the US-backed son of the late leader of the country's Shia majority and a friend of Tony Blair's, who had just returned from exile in London with US support. No one is yet certain of the cause or the perpetrators of the killing, which was carried out by a mob in the Ali Mosque, one of the Shias' most sacred places. But it comes on top of the growing tension between the followers of Grand Ayatollah Mirza Ali Sistani and those of the Tehran-based Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir Hakim.

Sistani issued a fatwa early on in the war calling on all Muslims to help Iraqis to fight the invading infidel forces, whereas Hakim's Supreme Assembly of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), based in Iran, had joined the US-supported Iraqi opposition and arrived in Najaf in the wake of the Anglo-American invasion.

In any case, Hakim and Iran's ruling clerics have made it abundantly clear that once the attacking forces have ousted Saddam Hussein, they must leave the country. This is an unrealistic demand, and will, of course, go unheeded in Washington. That is likely to lead the followers of Hakim and Sistani in the predominantly Shia south to join hands against the Anglo-American occupiers of Iraq.

Al-Khoei was widely seen as America's stooge in the area, and may well have paid the price, killed by either of the rival sects. Certainly his death would seem to have dented Washington's and London's hopes of an early reconcilement of the various Shia groups behind new democratic structures.

On top of the volatile situation in the south, there is the long-buried issue of relations between the Shia majority (forming 70 per cent of ethnic Arabs) and the Sunni minority in Iraq. Ever since 1638, when the Sunni Ottoman Turks captured Mesopotamia, minority Sunnis have been in the driving seat. They have kept Shias down at best, and persecuted them at worst.

Now, with the impending flowering of promised democracy in Iraq, it will be the majority Shias who will be in the driving seat. Will they then do to the Sunnis what the latter had done to them over centuries? This is the question that the Saudi royals, staunch Sunnis to the bone, must now be asking. There, too, the Shias dominate the oil provinces but power belongs to Sunnis. Given that Sunni as well as Shia tribes straddle Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the rulers in Riyadh have a way of influencing events in Iraq.

Senior Saudi officials are notorious for keeping their policies under cover while making a liberal use of the state's coffers to prosecute them. They had reportedly bribed the Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq to switch sides during the Anglo-American invasion. It is not clear whether this really happened.

What is crystal clear, though, is that democracy is the last thing the autocratic Saudi royals wish to see take root in Iraq, fearful that the contagion would spread to their own kingdom and undermine their monopoly of power. So here we have another element of irredentism in Iraq.

For centuries Iraq has been part of a complex and volatile region held together by empire – first the Arabs, then the Ottomans, and then the British. It remains to be seen whether an American effort at nation-building can hold it together.

The writer is the author of 'Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm' (Granta Books, £8.99)