Saddam's Sunnis In Majority After All, Study Says

(IPS) BAGHDAD -- New statistics by an international organization suggest that Iraq's Sunnis are in a clear majority, with Shiite scholars conceding that Shiites could make up as much as 40 percent of the whole population.

The statistics, released at the end of last year by an international humanitarian relief agency, suggested that Sunnis make up 58 percent of the Iraqi population and Shiites 40 percent.

The UN Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq put the whole population at about 27 million, including 16 million Sunnis and 11 million Shiites, Quds Press International news agency reported on Wednesday, January 28.

The remainder, 2 percent, include Christians and Jews.

The UN group relied on statistics from the former ministries of trade and planning as well as the data provided by the self-rule government in Kurdistan.

It also looked at ration cards every Iraqi family used to get food supplies during the more than 12 years' sanctions after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The cards have been used by Iraqis as identity cards, and analysts say they could closely estimate the number of the population regardless of the fact that some Iraqis, Sunnis and Shiites, may give wrong counts of their children to get more food.

The international relief group found in statistics released in 1997 that Sunnis outnumber Shiites by more than 819,000 people.

Other statistics, collected with dependence on counts of the Central Statistics Office of the former Iraqi Health Ministry and a study by an Iraqi academician, believed that the numerical gap is much lesser, with Sunnis estimated at 53 percent and Shiites at 47 percent.

The latest statistics counter earlier studies showing that Shiites are a majority in the already sectarian, turbulent country.

Unofficial Shiite statistics said Shiites make up 60-65 percent of the population. Others have gone as far to put the percentage at 73 percent.

Moving to the other extreme, Sunni statistics said that Sunnis are larger in number forming 65 percent against 40 percent of Shiites.

Iraqi academicians -- both Sunnis and Shiites -- are skeptical of both counts.

These numbers are exaggerated as "the number of Shiites, I think, is averaged at 40 or 45 percent of the whole population against 53 percent of Sunnis," the Shiite Mohamed Jawwad Ali told Quds Press news agency.

Mazen El-Ramadani, a Sunni political science professor, attributed the numerical conflicts between two main sects to the Shiites' huge ability of mobilization and their distribution at many governorates regardless of population density.

El-Ramadani said the Shiite majority claims were first propagated by Jewish writer Hanna Batto.

Observers said the contrasted Shiite and Sunnis statistics could have been politically motivated, as the U.S. occupation forces seeking to marginalize the role of Sunnis -- now launching almost-daily resistance attacks that killed hundreds of American soldiers.

Iraqis Sunnis have expressed bitter resentment at being marginalized under the new U.S.-led order in post-violence Iraq, charging that the Americans were rewarding the Kurds and the Shiites with drawing up the country's political landscape.

For the first time since modern day Iraq was founded in 1921, the Sunnis are no longer in charge of Iraq with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

The Sunnis have only five seats against 13 Shiites on the 25-member Interim Governing Council (IGC), whose members were selected by the U.S. occupation forces.

Sunni leaders also showed fury over reports that the country's Kurds clamor for a federalist state and Shiites poise to rule Iraq after years of oppression under captured former President Saddam Hussein.

But they warned against schemes aimed at pitting the Sunnis and Shiites against each other, unleashing a deadly communal war.

A bomb attack hit a Sunni mosque in Baghdad in September 2003 that left three dead, blaming Shiite groups from abroad for "provocations against the Sunnis."

A few days before the attack, a massive car bomb killed top Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohamed Baqer Al-Hakim and 82 others after Friday noon prayers in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, sparking fears that Iraq's ongoing violence could take a sectarian turn.

Reports also said that Shiites seized 18 Sunni mosques, including 12 in Baghdad and the only two in the Shiite majority cities of Najaf and Karbala.