New Muslim Order: The Shia and the Middle East Sectarian Crisis »

Nicolas Pelham has spent 20 years studying, writing and broadcasting in the Middle East and North Africa. He has lived in Damascus, Cairo, Rabat and most recently Baghdad, where he covered the US occupation as a correspondent for The Economist and Financial Times. He now works in Jerusalem as a senior analyst for the Brussels-based think-tank International Crisi Group

Nicolas Pelham explores how America’s overthrow of the Baath party in Iraq, and the failures of Washington’s post-invasion regime spawned a Shiite revolution in the heartland of the Arab world. Through first-hand accounts beginning with Saddam’s rule to the post-Bremer period, he traces the turning of the tables from a Sunni to Shia-led state. Pelham recounts how Shia clerics led the largest protest the region had seen since the Iranian Revolution to topple Paul Bremer, America’s head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. As Washington struggled to control the situation, Pelham reveals how the Ayatollahs' drive for elections won power for their acolytes to draft the constitution for a utopian Shia state.

Sect. 1 Before the Fall

1 From Trilby to Turbans 3

2 Stirring in the Shia Slums 13

3 Cracks in the Sunni Bulwark 25

Sect. 2 Unravelling Iraq

4 The Scramble for Shia Succession 37

5 Foreigners Come Gobbling 49

6 The American Shah of Iraq 61

7 The Reconstruction Myth 77

8 The Quiet Ayatollah's Regime-Change 91

9 America's Exiles Carve Up the Spoils 103

Sect. 3 Balkanisation of the Broken State

10 From Baathism to Jihad 117

11 The Sunni Arab Emirates 131

12 The Local Hero and the Fighting Arm of Hizbollah 143

13 Regime-Change and the Baathist Interregnum 157

14 The Staying Power of the Shia 171

15 The Country Once Called Iraq 187

Sect. 4 The Regional Wars of Religion

16 The Reawakening of Arab Shiism 203

17 The Two Stripes of the Arab World: Shia Protestantism and the Sunni Counter-Reformation 219

Map of Shiites in Selected Countries 224

Table of Muslim Population in the Middle East by State and Sect 225

Bibliography 229

Notes 235

Index 265