Iraq: the shia revival

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Twenty years after the fall of Saddam Husayn's regime, Iraq is witnessing the Shia revival. After a century of Sunni governments, since the US invasion in 2003 political power has passed into the hands of Shia leaders who control the nation through secular institutions and armed militias linked to Iran and clerics, such as the former guerrilla man Muqtada Al-Sadr.

A power relies on popular religiosity especially in the holy cities of Kerbela and Najaf - which every year welcome millions of pilgrims and host some of the most important shia madrase - and which today is stronger than ever thanks to the huge funding of the Iranian government and the strength acquired by the pro-Iranian militias of the Popular Mobilization Forces after the victory against the Islamic State in the north of the country.

In this context, Iraq is struggling towards stability, suspended between the interference of the regime of the Ayatollahs and that of the United States, as demonstrated by the recent political impasses. Having failed the gentle revolution of the Tishreeni, the country rediscovers itself as a victim of deep religious fractures which make it the ideal playground for the new frontiers of political Shia Islam.