THE
ROVING EYE Who's in charge, Qom or
Najaf? By Pepe Escobar
TEHRAN - Syria, Lebanon and Iraq are
crucial protagonists in the specter of a Shi'ite
crescent, according to the Saudi royal family,
King Abdullah of Jordan and conservative American
think tanks. Once again, the facts on the ground
are much more complex than a simplistic formula.
Syria, although 86% Muslim, is a
multiethnic and multiconfessional country. The
Sunni majority cohabits with 13% of Alawites (who
are Shi'ites), 3% of Druze and 1% of Ismailis. The
Alawites derive from a schism in the 9th century
around the 11th imam, al-Askari, who they consider
the last legitimate descendant of the Prophet
Mohammed. Sunnis as well as Western scholars
consider them Shi'ites. But many Islamic scholars
are not so sure.
Since the early 20th
century, Syrian nationalists have never accepted
the creation of Lebanon, Jordan and much less
Palestine - which became
Israel. Alawites - a persecuted minority for
centuries - have reached their current enviable
position in Syria thanks to the Ba'ath Party
ideology, which has always been secular and
nationalist.
Ba'ath ideology exalted
Arabism. So Alawites joined en masse both the
Ba'ath Party and the army. The result was
inevitable: at the end of the 1960s they took over
power in Syria. The incarnation of this process
was strongman Hafez Assad. Sunnis in Syria always
felt they had been "robbed" of power. But Assad
never feared the Sunnis as much as he feared
Islamic fundamentalism.
Damascus is close
to Tehran. In Lebanon - to counteract Christian
Maronite power - Syria has always supported the
Shi'ites. Does that mean that Alawite-controlled
Syria is part of the Shi'ite crescent? Not
necessarily. Lebanese Shi'ism is practically the
same as in Iran. But for the Iranian ayatollahs in
Qom, Alawites themselves are heretics. In the
1980s, in Damascus, there was plenty of official
talk about a Shi'ite "international" from the
Mediterranean to Pakistan. But Assad - coming from
a sect considered heretic - could never be the
head of such an entity.
The point now with
Hafez's son Bashar is whether he will be able to
keep the Alawites in power by remodeling the
state's upper echelons. Not if Washington
neo-conservatives can have a word on the matter.
Regime change in Syria may remain a priority in
Washington. But nobody knows how Syrian unity
would be affected - the country could become
another factionalized Lebanon, or another
factionalized Iraq - or what the consequences
would be over the stability of Lebanon and the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Shi'ites in
Lebanon are predominant in two non-contiguous
regions, the south and the northeast near the
Syrian border. Lebanese Shi'ites finally achieved
political representation as they have become the
predominant Lebanese community (about 60%). They
woke up from decades of political and social
torpor, their political consciousness determined
by the fact that they were Shi'ites. This
extraordinary, painful process has served as an
example for Shi'ites in Iraq, and may serve as an
example for Shi'ites in the Persian Gulf.
Lebanese Shi'ites essentially want to be
able to co-direct the country along with the
Christian Maronites - the financial power. This
could only happen in a Lebanon free from the
current confessional, institutional model,
something that is unlikely in the short term. The
only possible solution for Lebanon would be a
broad agreement between the Maronites (the
financial power), the Shi'ites (the demographic
power) and the Sunnis (the link with Saudi
financial power, and until recently with Syria as
well). With former premier Rafik Hariri's son as
the new prime minister - which means the Saudi
connection is intact - that seems unlikely to
happen. The point is that for Lebanese Shi'ites,
Lebanon is the most important thing, not a Shi'ite
crescent, even though Iran and Hezbollah remain
extremely active.
Breaking up (Iraq) is
hard to do Under whoever was in charge -
the Ottoman empire, the Hashemites, the British,
the Ba'ath Party, Saddam Hussein - Shi'ites in
Iraq were always denied political influence. That
was the main reason, at the end of the 1950s, for
the creation of the Da'wa Party - which became the
expression of Shi'ite specificity. Now a Da'wa
member, Ibrahim Jaafari, brother-in-law of the
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has become prime
minister of Iraq, probably to be reconfirmed in
the December elections. History has delivered it:
this is what Iran had wanted in Iraq since the
Islamic revolution in 1979.
The Ba'ath
Party and Saddam wanted to create a strong,
secular, Arab Iraqi nation. They had everything
they needed: a sea of oil, lots of water (unlike
any other Arab country) and a significant
population. In this ambitious project there was no
room for religious or ethnic affirmation. So Kurds
as well as Shi'ites were immolated in the altar of
this concept - a modern and secular Iraq.
During the 1980s - because of the appeal of
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution -
Saddam's ultimate nightmare was seeing Iraq break
up in three weak statelets: a Kurdistan, a
"Shi'itestan" and a Sunni center with no oil. That
was a key reason for Saddam to launch the
Iran-Iraq war in the early 1980s. The pretext,
according to Saddam himself, was to recover what
Iraqis call Arabistan - the Iranian province of
Khuzistan, where most of Iran's oil lies.
George Bush senior, as is well documented,
decided to keep Iraq intact. He knew that the
inevitable consequence of an implosion of Iraq
would be a Kurdistan and a Shi'itestan near the
Gulf. That spelled the death sentence for the
Shi'ite uprising after Saddam's armies were
defeated in early 1991 in the first Gulf War.
Sunni repression was horrendous: more than
40,000 Iraqi Shi'ites were killed and hundreds of
thousands had to flee to Iran. It's Western
wishful thinking to believe that Iraqi Shi'ites
will ever forget this betrayal. In the early
1990s, the Americans, the "international
community", Arab regimes, nobody wanted to see the
Iraqi state break up. By another cruel historical
irony, the Bush junior administration's actions
could produce exactly this outcome.
A
smatter of Sunni Arab politicians meeting last
week in Amman in Jordan proclaimed that Iraqi
Sunni Arabs were facing genocide. They fully
agreed with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud
al-Faisal's recent claim that Iran was
destabilizing Iraq. Saudi Arabia never tires to
fuel the myth of the Shi'ite crescent.
Iraqi Shi'ites for their part know very
well that al-Qaeda wants civil war. They are
determined not to succumb to provocation. Sistani
has issued a fatwa in full support of the
constitution to be voted in mid-October. Shi'ites
know they have the numbers to win the general
election in December. That will seal the arrival
of Shi'ites to real power in Iraq.
This is
not about religion - or a Shi'ite crescent. It's
about power. A civil war in Iraq is already on.
And the Holy Grail is power. The US wants power
over the whole Middle East. The Sunnis don't want
to lose the power they thought was theirs in Iraq
by divine will. Other Sunni Arab regimes in the
Middle East obviously hate to see a Shi'ite
renaissance. The Shi'ites are about to reach power
after centuries of suffering. And al-Qaeda in the
Land of the Two Rivers wants power as well, in the
form of an Islamic emirate of Iraq, Taliban-style,
possibly controlled by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who
may or may not be a cipher.
Zarqawi was
forced to moderate his call of "total war" against
Iraqi Shi'ites. Most of the Sunni Arab resistance
- led by Iraqi nationalist, former Ba'ath Party
military officers - totally rejected it. A
resistance communique last week, signed by the
First Army of Mohammed, the Islamic Army, the
al-Qa'qa Brigades, the Army of the Mujahideen of
Iraq and the an-Nasir Salah ad-Din Brigades,
proclaimed that "the aim of the Iraqi resistance
is the expulsion of the occupation, making it an
example for anyone who might dare to think in the
future about occupying any Arab or Islamic state".
And according to the powerful Sunni
Association of Muslim Scholars, "The Shi'ites of
Iraq do not bear the guilt for the brazenly open
sectarian policy that the government is pursuing
with American blessings. They are not at fault for
the naked aggression carried out by the government
forces against Tal Afar and other cities, nor for
the terrorist crimes against peaceful people."
The Washington-Najaf axis
Sistani said that even if half of Iraq's
Shi'ites were killed, there would be no civil war.
The message could not be clearer: hold on, power
is at hand.
It was much easier for Sistani
to deliver this message with the knowledge that
the Americans have left "his" holy Najaf for good.
Najaf security is now the responsibility of the
Badr Organization (previously Badr Brigade), the
paramilitary wing of the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which rules the whole
of Najaf province. This means that the
Iranian-trained Badr, by themselves, have to
protect Sistani's life and have to face whatever
turbulence is caused by Muqtada al-Sadr's
anti-occupation, anti-establishment Mehdi Army.
The Washington-Najaf axis is a neo-con
dream. It would fit in a pattern of divide and
rule, splitting the Arab world between Sunnis and
Shi'ites perpetually at each other's throats. This
would include, of course, Shi'ites fighting Sunnis
in Hasa, in Saudi Arabia. That's a graphic case of
neo-con thinking encouraging the rise of a Shi'ite
crescent as a means to weaken the Arab world.
The neo-cons should beware of what they
want. It may be exactly what al-Qaeda wants: civil
war in Iraq leading to mini-civil wars in Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf states and ultimately regime
change, but to the benefit, in al-Qaeda's point of
view, of Salafi jihadi regimes. As Washington
wrestles - at least for public relations purposes
- with the dilemma of controlling Iraqi oil or
bringing the troops home, the temptation persists
of an attack against either Syria or Iran. All
scenarios seem to come straight from Pandora's
box.
One from the heart No
Shi'ite crescent - and no Shi'ite "international"
- to speak of may exist because the Shi'ite
galaxy, with the exception of Iran, remains
fragmented, polymorphous, an archipelago. Even
Shi'ism itself can be fragmented in many factions
- Iranian or Arab, with or without a powerful
clergy. The only thing that unifies Shi'ite
communities everywhere - and that's been the case
for almost 1,400 years - is opposition to
"illegitimate" Sunni Islam and rejection of other
religions.
Of course there is the Iranian
Shi'ite "sanctuary", sophisticated Iranian
diplomacy and still a pan-Shi'ite Iranian dream.
But national and theological antagonisms prevail.
The best example is the renewed rivalry between
Qom in Iran and Najaf. Iranian ayatollahs are
extremely concerned by the ramifications of
Shi'ites opposed to the concept of
velayat-e-faqih (the ruling of the
jurisprudent), the Khomeini-concocted base of the
Islamic republic's political system. That's why
the renaissance of Najaf - the site of Imam Ali's
tomb, the holiest city of Shi'ite Islam - can be
so problematic. Sistani, arguably the most
important religious authority in Shi'ism today,
although an Iranian, sits in Najaf. If the center
of gravity of Shi'ism goes back to where it was
before - in Iraq - Iran's influence will be
tremendously reduced. And Shi'ism - traditionally
apolitical - will be back to where it was before
the Islamic revolution.
Speculation about
an imminent Iranian nuclear bomb have been
circulating for at least 10 years. It's fair to
speculate on what would be the meaning of a
hypothetical Shi'ite bomb. Shi'ism in this case
will have not only a political sanctuary, but a
nuclear sanctuary. With Iran practically
invulnerable to an outside attack, would the
religious leadership be tempted to again start
exporting its vision of pan-Shi'ism?
Meanwhile, the Shi'ite dream embodied by
Iran, or at least the ayatollahs in Qom, keeps
burning - the revolutionary power, the aspiration
to be the flag-bearer of the misery of the world,
a kind of beggars banquet, or the ticket for the
beggars to finally accede to a banquet, the last
hope for the damned of the earth.
No wonder Sunnis fear the
power of this idea, which for Shi'ites comes
straight from the heart. It's not unfit that in
the 12th century the great Persian poet Nezami
Ghanjavi, in the famous Haft Peykar, wrote that
"the world is the body/and Iran is the heart".
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