Friday, September 16, 2005
The Sunni World Turned Upside Down
by Stanley A. Weiss
LONDON - Osama bin Laden curses them as "the most evil creatures under the heavens." Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, derides them as "the lurking snake, the spying enemy and the penetrating venom." They are, in one Arab insult, "worse than the Jews."
These diatribes aren't aimed at Americans, but at Shiite Muslims, specifically by Sunni extremists who, like many Sunnis, have regarded Shiites as heretics ever since their seventh-century schism over the true successor of the Prophet Muhammad.
Even more than a fight between Iraq's new democratically elected government and Sunni Baathist holdouts from the former regime, Iraq has become the latest battlefield in this centuries-old struggle within Islam. Wednesday's massive attacks aimed at Shiites in Baghdad and a chilling audiotape the same day, apparently from Zarqawi, declaring "all-out war against Shiites everywhere" are only the latest manifestation.
Yet more than two years into the Iraq war, Washington's failure to grasp the true scope of this religious struggle risks undermining its strategic goals across the region.
For the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, nearly 90 percent of whom are Sunni, the psychological shock of the Shia minority assuming power in Baghdad cannot be exaggerated. Sunni monarchs and autocrats have historically ruled every Arab country except multi-ethnic Lebanon and Syria (ruled by the Alawites, an obscure Shiite sect disowned by Sunnis and Shia alike). Even in Iraq and Bahrain, the only two Arab nations with Shiite majorities, the Shia have long suffered under Sunni masters.
Now, for the first time in a millennium, Shiites in Iraq are dominating an Arab land, unnerving Sunnis and inspiring Shiites across the Middle East. Just weeks after Iraqis went to the polls in January, tens of thousands of Shiites in Bahrain defied their Sunni rulers and took to the streets demanding social and political reform.
In Saudi Arabia, where the puritanical Wahhabi religious establishment condemns Shiites as infidels, the kingdom's first municipal elections in March saw Shiites prevail in the one region where they constitute a majority, the oil-rich Eastern Province.
Shiite electoral victories in the kingdom are "a potent sign," says Terence Ward, an author and regional expert who grew up in Saudi Arabia and Iran. "The largest bulk of oil reserves on earth lies under Saudi Shia lands. The Shia of Saudi Arabia would love to have the same control over their oil revenues as their Shia brothers in Iraq."
Jordan's King Abdullah II spoke for many Sunnis last year when he warned of a Shia "crescent" stretching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon that would disrupt the balance of power in the Middle East. Nor was it surprising that Iraq's Arab neighbors offered more condolences and aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina than to Iraq after the recent stam-pede in Baghdad that killed some 1,000 Shiite pilgrims. These are the same regimes that, like the United States, stood by while their Sunni brother Saddam Hussein slaughtered more than 100,000 rebellious Shiites and Kurds after the 1991 Gulf War.
Washington would be wise to recognize talk of an Iranian-controlled Shiite "crescent," as the boogeyman it is. "It is a fallacy," said Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite and one of Iraq's deputy prime ministers and a former favorite of the Pentagon. Chalabi acknowledges that Iraq's leading political parties have close ties to Tehran. "But do not make the mistake of confusing Iraqi Shiites, who are Arab, with Iranian Shiites, who are Persian," he told me. "Iraqi Shia are proud to be Iraqis and Arabs."
Still, many Sunnis see cooperation between Iraqi Shiites and the U.S. as a conspiracy against them - a "wahhabi containment policy," Ward calls it. "The profound conviction among much of the Arab world today, including the Saudi royal family, is that the U.S. plans to do the same to Saudi Arabia that they have engineered in Iraq."
Like Iraq, the theory goes, Saudi Arabia would be divided into three parts. The moderate Hashemites of Jordan would regain their historic control of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina; autonomous Saudi Shia would control the oil-laden Eastern Province; and the Wahhabis would be left baking in the sands of the Nejad Desert.
This may be Sunni paranoia, especially since Washington doesn't even talk with the largest Shiite community in the Middle East - Iran. But such suspicion explains why so many in the region's Sunni political and religious establishment have been ambivalent or hostile to Iraq's new Shiite government and why Saudi Arabians account for the vast majority of suicide bombers in Iraq, according to independent analysts.
With Sunnis leading the charge to defeat Iraq's draft constitution in next month's referendum, and Sunni jihadists waging a holy war against the U.S. and its allies, it's time that Washington appreciate the historical irony. The greatest obstacle to American interests in the region is not the Shiites that Washington has spent a quarter-century trying to contain in Iran, but Sunni zealots, fueled and funded by America's old "ally" Saudi Arabia.
But irony, as Anatole France observed, "is the joy of wisdom." Only after Washington defines its true adversaries can it wage a real battle to defeat them. That would be the beginning of wisdom, in Iraq and beyond.
