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The world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are divided into two main sects,
Sunnis and Shi’ites (although there are divisions within those
sects themselves). Shi’ites number around 10% of the world’s
Muslim population. The overwhelming majority of Shi’ites (in the
region of 120 million) live in the area between Lebanon and
Pakistan, where they constitute the majority population in Iran,
Iraq, Bahrain and Azerbaijan. Nevertheless, sheer numbers have
not guaranteed Shi’ites a commensurate political voice, for,
with the exception of Iran, Sunnism has long been the face of
the Middle East and the ruling parties in all Arab countries. As
Vali Nasr, a professor of Middle Eastern & South Asian politics
and author of ‘the Shia’a Revival’, rightfully put it, ‘from the
marshes of Southern Iraq to the ghettos of Karachi, the Shi’a
have been the underdogs – oppressed and marginalized by Sunni
ruling regimes and majority communities.’ The Sunnis,
representing the absolute majority of the Muslim population, are
divided into groups, the most prominent of which for today’s
discussion are the Wahabis, as they represent both the power in
the Arab world (in the guise of Saudi Arabia), as well as the
most vehement anti-American / anti- Shia’a voice of recent
history.
Wahabism emerged in Arabia in the 18th century and it is today
the most prominent religious and political force in Saudi Arabia
and some of the Gulf States. Wahabism is an extreme school of
Sunnism which upholds the strictest and most narrow
interpretations of Islam, regarding all those who do not
subscribe to its views, especially the Shi’ites, as infidels,
and ascribing to the elimination of those infidel elements for
the purpose of spreading Wahabi view of Islam. This anti-Shi’ite
movement is as old as Wahabism itself, with Wahabi armies
invading Iraq as far back as 1801 and desecrating the Shi’ite
holy shrines. It is also this school of thought, with its arm of
Islamic activism, that has been promoted by Saudi Arabia
throughout the 80’s and 90’s, reaching as far as central Asia
and the Caucasus and underlying much of the ideology of groups
such as Taliban and Al-Qaeda. This movement however was much
ignored by the West during the 80’s and 90’s when Iran was
regarded as the most dangerous face of Islam, with the Iranian
revolution, the hostage crises and Iran’s support of terrorism.
It is this ideology that drove much of Western policy until the
events of 9/11, when 19 Wahabists attacked the US on its soil
for the first time. The US and its allies, up to that point, had
supported the oil-rich nation of Saudi Arabia for many years,
casting a blind eye on its promotion of radical Islam, backed
Saddam, and some would argue ‘created him’ as the perfect
counter-balance to Iranian forces, whist again casting a blind
eye on the atrocities carried out within his nation. This
support of Saddam however, came to an end in 1990 following his
invasion of Kuwait, as now he threatened the oil rich nations of
the Gulf. Nevertheless, the US, with pressure from Saudi, having
militarily crippled Saddam, allowed him to crush the uprising in
1991 and massacre his people, whilst continuing to support the
economic sanctions against those same people. This ensured that
a majority Shi’ite rule in Iraq does not take hold and tilt the
regional balance of power away from the Sunnis.
With the atrocities of 9/11 and the ensuing war on terror, US
foreign policy took a drastic turn, understandably, as extremist
Islam and Wahabism now became the biggest threat to Western
society. It is with this changed policy that the US invaded
Iraq, whilst paying little attention to the implications of such
invasion on regional powers. Whilst I, just like many other
Iraqis, was an advocate of the war, as force was the only way to
topple Saddam’s regime, I am equally an advocate that the
‘peace’ was mishandled, mismanaged and continues to be
determined on the wrong premises. No one would argue that the
war was swiftly and impressively executed. However, the days,
months and years that followed with repeated loss of opportunity
and a policy based on short-term gains, have resulted, to a big
extent in today’s Iraq. Whilst I do not believe in talking of
blame, deeming it far more important to talk of solutions, I do
feel it is important to highlight certain facts in response to
some of the assertions that have been circulating recently.
One such assertion, which is probably the one I oppose most
vehemently, is the fact that Iraq is not a real nation, that
Iraqis have always been fighting each other since the
dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, and thus the nation of Iraq
should be divided along sectarian and ethnic lines. I would say
that the people of Iraq have lived together as Iraqis all those
decades despite the atrocities inflicted on them, that during
the uprising of 1991 when the Kurds and Shi’ites took over the
majority of the country, Sunni Arabs were not targeted and the
aim of such uprising was the toppling of a despotic regime and
not the division of a nation. I would say to these people that
the bloodshed we see today is a result of years of a Ba’athist
rule based on dividing a nation, as well as the last 3 years of
continued attacks against civilians based on ethnic lines. There
had been so much talk of Wahabi militants entering Iraq through
Syria prior to and following the war, to incite violence and
cause a civil war … those factions joined other fighters, mostly
Ba’athist remnants, with one goal in common, the toppling of a
Shi’ite majority rule and thus the defeat of US forces. Vali
Nasr argues that ‘in militant Sunni circles, the Shi’a revival
in Iraq is proof of sinister US intentions toward Islam after
the events of September 11th, 2001 – the grand conspiracy to
weaken and subjugate the faith. To these circles, Washington has
snatched Iraq from the hands of ‘true’ Islam and delivered it to
Shi’a infidels’.
It is to this end that the insurgency has plagued Iraq almost
from day one. Attacks against Shi’ite leaders, innocent
civilians and holy shrines, have marred the US occupation from
the beginning of the war and were not dealt with by those forces
when they were in full control of the country. The borders
continued to be opened, the US administration refused to declare
marshal law in a lawless and chaotic country due to insufficient
troop levels to manage a nation of this size, and for fear of
repercussions with voters and approval ratings in the US. At the
same time, Iran was playing its interference game, supporting
and funding Shi’ite militias, with Iranian ideology taking
control over Southern Iraq, all with the watchful eyes of the US
occupation. For two and a half years, the Shi’ites of Iraq held
back as they were urged by the leading Shi’ite cleric, Al-Sistani,
to remain calm, not to retaliate and succumb to the infighting,
but those urgings are now ignored – the final straw took place
in February of this year with the bombing of a holy Shi’ite
shrine in the northern city of Samarra. As one gaunt, weeping
Sunni woman is quoted to have said “there used to be a time when
Sunnis and Shi’ites were living together like family. We were
married to each other, we all had Sunni friends, we all had
Shi’ite friends. It was all like a balloon that exploded”. Why
are we then surprised to find the continued deterioration in
violence, why are we surprised to find that after decades of
oppression, followed by indiscriminate attacks by Muslim
extremists, that the Shi’ites, rightfully so or not, decided to
take matters into their own hands and fight back. Why are we
surprised to find a country on the verge of civil war?
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