More than any other community, Iraq's majority Shiites have benefited from the now-ended American occupation. But the community faces many challenges, some arising from internal divisions, others from its association with the Americans.
Shiites are thought to make up 60 percent of Iraq's estimated 25 million people. Provided that they vote along sectarian lines, they are certain to emerge as the biggest winners when elections are held in January, thus translating their numbers to formal political power.
Already, Iraq's first prime minister after Saddam Hussein, Iyad Allawi, is a Shiite and the United States handed over sovereignty Monday to an interim government dominated by Shiites.
But the future of Iraq's Shiites is more complicated. The community is among the poorest in Iraq. The mainly Shiite south is by far the most impoverished part of the country.
"In reality, the Shiites have barely won five percent of their rights," said Moussa al-Nagi, an imam from Baghdad's Shiite district Sadr City. "We were oppressed under Saddam and we are the biggest victims of the violence now," he said.
Shiites must also convince their fellow Iraqis and a Sunni-dominated Arab world that they are qualified to rule Iraq wisely. They must also allay widespread fears among Arab governments that non-Arab and predominantly Shiite Iran won't have a say in how Iraq is run.
They also need to avoid flaunting their newfound influence, overcome their own divisions and tame the more radical factions within the community.
It won't be easy.
The freedoms that came with Saddam's ouster brought divisions that have long existed within the Shiite community to the surface. Some of these involve influence and money. Others are based on theological differences, foreign links or the extent of cooperation by some factions with the American occupiers.
Competition between rival factions seeking to broaden their base of support have deepened old rifts.
The relative tolerance shown by many Shiites to the U.S.-led occupation has undermined the sect's patriotic credentials among Iraqi nationalists. That is a notion that some Shiite leaders must overcome in order to win acceptance outside their own base.
In contrast, Sunni Muslims in areas west and north of Baghdad have waged a guerrilla war against the Americans for most of the past 14 months. The Shiites, however, did not follow suit until April, when militiamen loyal to an anti-American militant cleric launched an uprising against U.S. and other coalition troops in Baghdad and across southern and central Iraq.
But the cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, is a 30-year-old maverick who doesn't enjoy the support of the older and more established clerics, a fact that has in large part assured the Americans of the continued goodwill of most Shiites.
Influence shown by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the Shiites' most senior cleric, has been another source of friction between Shiites and others. The Iranian-born cleric has forced Washington on at least two occasions to drop or revise political blueprints for Iraq. That reinforced Shiites power, but also created new enemies — especially among the Sunni Arabs.
Manifestations of the Shiites' new found confidence, like elaborate religious rituals and marches, have left some in the Sunni Arab minority indignant. Shiite pride reminds the Sunnis of the privileged position they lost with the collapse of Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.
The specter of a Sunni-Shiite war loomed ominously close in March after horrific blasts at Shiite shrines killed nearly 200 people on the holiest day of their calendar, Ashoura. Tit-for-tat killings of junior clerics from both sects followed, but no wholesale clashes took place.
Some Iraqis and experts blame such tensions on what they call the "sectarian approach" to Iraqi politics by the Americans such as ensuring that Allawi's government reflects the nation's ethnic and religious mosaic.
"The Americans' biggest mistake is the use of the sectarian approach," said Fahmi Howeidi, a prominent Islamic writer. "It's a bomb ready to explode," he said from his Cairo, Egypt, home.