-Analysis-
BAGHDAD — A memory from my first year of college, in 2015, is still etched in my mind: At a welcome event, my fellow students and I exchanged the usual introductory questions. What city are you from? What school did you attend? But then I asked one of my classmates: What part of Baghdad are you from?
He hesitated for a moment, his face turned red, and he answered in a low voice: “I fear this question because of the stories I heard from my family or on the news about kidnapping and killing based on sectarian identity.” Then he told me a story I’ve never forgotten about a time he was riding the bus with his father during Iraq’s sectarian conflict.
This violence was the result of rising sectarian tensions between the different religious and ethnic groups of Iraq, most notably between the Shiite Muslim majority and the Sunni Muslim minority. It developed in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and escalated into a full-scale civil war between 2006 and 2008.
My classmate said he and his father were returning home on a bus when the driver asked his father whether he was Sunni or Shiite.
“My father hesitated,” my classmate recalled, “then replied, ‘I’m an atheist, brother.’”
For me, that story summed up a legacy of fear, a deep wound that — years later — has not yet healed. It is as if the Iraqi memory refuses to forget; or perhaps reality doesn’t allow it to to heal.
Collapse of social peace
The year 2006 marked the culmination of the collapse of social peace in Iraq, following the bombing of al-Askari Shrine in Samarra. The country turned into an open arena for sectarian fighting, and opposing militias appeared on the ground, dividing up the streets and sowing death based on identity.
That dark year left a deep wound in the Iraqi consciousness, a wound that has not yet healed.
In Baghdad alone, corpses were thrown daily into dumps and on sidewalks — some bound and tortured — and the reason often went no further than their full name or place of residence. Families were displaced from their neighborhoods, entire neighborhoods were emptied of their residents, mosques were destroyed and hundreds of thousands of displaced people found no refuge except within the sect they belonged to.
The capital was divided, as the country was divided. There was no talk of the homeland, only of the “component.” No discussion of solutions, only of revenge. Neighbors became enemies, and colleagues, potential killers. The conflict was not political as much as it was purely sectarian, putting simple people in the line of fire for no reason other than belonging to a particular sect.
That dark year left a deep wound in the Iraqi consciousness, a wound that has not yet healed. Its effects are still evident in souls, in residential maps and even in the accents of people, which are now hidden and masked for fear they might reveal something that should not be known.
Return of sectarian rhetoric
Today, after years of claims of “national harmony” and “social reconciliation,” sectarian rhetoric is returning to the surface — not only from popular circles but also from political and media platforms that are funded.
Channels, pages and activists promote a tone of hatred, stir instincts and feed a memory burdened with blood. It is as if we are on the verge of a new version of the 2006 nightmare rewritten in a modern language and digital means but with the same intention: tearing apart society in service of the ballot box.
On some pages, you see circulated clips of Sunnis mocking Shiite rituals or Shiites insulting Sunni symbols. These clips are inflated, dramatized and wrapped in phrases like “defending the sect” to recycle the same poison that claimed the lives of thousands of Iraqis.
The dangerous thing is that these campaigns do not come out of nowhere; they coincide with every election season. It is as if sectarianism has become part of the “political mobilization tools” and a guaranteed way to harvest votes from an audience haunted by fear, confused by hatred and forcibly distanced from thinking about the future.
There is no salvation for Iraq except by restoring value to national identity.
The recurring question that haunts every fearful Iraqi: Will the Iraqi learn the lesson? Or rather why doesn’t Iraq learn the lesson despite all the horrors it has gone through? Two decades have passed since the American occupation, and the country is still mired in a whirlpool of political chaos, service collapse and regional dependency. Electricity is dependent on Iran, water is dependent on Turkey, sovereignty is suspended and national identity is torn between sects, ethnicities and overlapping interests.
So how can a society rise when seeds of division are sown with every new electoral cycle?
With the approach of each parliamentary election — the next are scheduled to be held on Nov. 11 — the language of incitement returns to the forefront, and speeches that tickle sectarian instincts resurface, reviving sectarian alignments. Suddenly, some begin insulting the “sacred values” of the other side, and the public exchanges insults until the discussion arenas turn into swamps of hatred.
Sunni groups accuse Shiites of Safavidism, and Shiite groups accuse Sunnis of being part of ISIS. The scene ends with a familiar argument “We defend the holy places.” But in fact, both sides are defending nothing but political ambitions of forces seeking a seat, a position or influence.
The questions that remain
The big question remains: Are the parties and figures stirring up these sectarian strifes actually motivated? The most likely answer: Yes. There are parties and political forces accustomed to investing in fear and exploiting the memory of blood to build an electoral base that heads to the ballot box driven by anxieties not reason — by sectarian belonging not competence or political programs.
But the more dangerous question: Has this discourse become part of the society’s culture itself? If this division continues as a daily reality, then Iraq is not merely facing a political crisis but an existential catastrophe that gnaws at its body from within. This will turn Iraq into a fragile entity liable to collapse at the first crisis.
In a country exhausted by wars, corruption and foreign interventions, it has become necessary for Iraqis to examine themselves before reproducing the nightmares of 2006.
There is no salvation for Iraq except by restoring value to national identity. This must be done through a law that criminalizes hate speech and sectarian incitement. Freedom of expression does not mean freedom to incite, and defending a sect does not justify insulting the sanctities of others.
In a country exhausted by wars, corruption and foreign interventions, it has become necessary for Iraqis to examine themselves before reproducing the nightmares of 2006 under a fragile “democratic” guise. History is unforgiving and peoples who do not learn from their own bloodshed repeat it every time — at a higher cost.