Playing the Sectarian Card to Contain Iran

"After Iran and Iraq went to war in 1980, Saudi Arabia threw its weight behind Saddam, financing his war effort to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. This was an Arab-Iranian war but also a Sunni-Shia war. If in Iraq it was Saudi-supported military might that would stop Khomeini, elsewhere Saudi Arabia had other resources to limit the spread of Khomeini's message.

Saudi propaganda underscored Khomeini's Shia identity on the one hand and the divide between Shiism and Sunnism on the other. It was clear to Riyadh and other capitals in the region that the surest and perhaps the only way to contain Khomeini was to play the sectarian card. This not only made it less likely that individual Sunnis would accept Khomeini as an Islamic leader but also enabled various governments to crack down on Islamic activism more easily, and after Khomeini's threat was gone to resist political reform. Any movement that got out of hand could be characterized as Iranian-generated or -inspired and hence a form of Shia rebellion against the proper order of things.

Governments from Nigeria to Bahrain, Indonesia, and Malaysia sought to drive wedges between Sunnism and Shiism, casting the former as "true" Islam - and the incumbent government as its defender - while branding the latter as obscurantist extremism. In 1998 the Nigerian government of General Sani Abacha accused the Muslim Brotherhood leader Sheikh Ibrahim al Zak Zaki of being a Shia just before he went on trial for antigovernment activism. In the 1990s the government of Bahrain repeatedly dismissed calls for political reform by labeling them as Shia plots. In Malaysia in the 1980s, the government routinely arrested Islamic activists on the pretext that they were Shias, thus avoiding the appearance of clamping down on Islamic activism while projecting an image as Sunnism's champion against subversive activities.

In India and Pakistan, Sunni ulama confronted the Khomeini challenge head-on, branding his vitriol against the House of Saud as a species of fitna (sedition) wielded against the Muslim community. The Saudi rulers, conversely, were routinely painted as Sunnism's greatest defenders and the symbols of its resistance to Shia attempts at "usurpation" in a historical context stretching all the way back to the early Shia rebellions against the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates. The Shia-Sunni struggles for the soul of Islam that had punctuated Islamic history were thus reenacted in the late twentieth century, with the Saudi princes in the caliph's role.

Saudi Arabia continued to pursue its strategy of containing Shiism by working closely with Wahhabi ulama to build a network of seminaries, mosques, educational institutions, preachers, activists, writers, journalists, and academics that would articulate and emphasize Sunni identity, push it in the direction of militant Wahhabism, drive all possible wedges between Sunnism and Shiism, and eliminate Iran's ideological influence. As one observer remarked concerning the geographical distribution of the Saudi-funded Sunni extremist madrasahs, or seminaries, that opened in Pakistan in the 1980s, "They form a wall blocking Iran off from Pakistan." It was in this context that one of Faysal's sons, the Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki, laid the basis for a Saudi-Pakistani strategic relationship that would underwrite the Taliban's conquest of Afghanistan and its renting out of that country as a training ground for various "holy warrior" outfits. The Pakistani-trained Taliban reflected traditional Pashtun biases against Shias, including the Afghan Hazara, whose plight is depicted so vividly in Khalid Husseini's 2003 novel, The Kite Runner. Taliban fanatics declared Afghan Shias to be infidels and massacred at least two thousand of them in Mazar-i Sharif and Bamiyan in 1997 and 1998, and many more in pogroms across Afghanistan up until the U.S. invasion. Others were told to convert to Sunnism or face death; many fled to Iran or Pakistan.

One of Saudi Arabia's aims was to stretch that Sunni wall from Pakistan north through Afghanistan and into Central Asia. The brand of radical Islam that began spreading across Central Asia and the Caucasus in the 1990s did not come from Iran but was a Sunni radicalism born of the deliberate Saudi policy of containing Iran.

Riyadh's strategy of turning militant Sunnism into a growth stock raised few Western eyebrows right through the 1990s, when Iran and its brand of Shia extremism still seemed to be the most dangerous face of Islam and the main threats to Western interests. It was the Shia who popped first into Western minds when Westerners thought about anti-Americanism, revolution, terrorism, hostage-taking, and suicide bomb attacks. The political fervor that emanated from Tehran and the kind of violence that it perpetrated were seen as flowing naturally from Shias' apocalyptic bent and cult of martyrdom. Even hotheaded Sunnis seemed less dangerous by comparison. They may have been hard-shell reactionaries who despised modern and Western ways, the thinking went, but they entertained no religious doctrines bloodthirsty enough to match those of the Shia, with their fixation on killing and dying for the cause. This inclined the West toward complacency when it came to Sunni extremism and its spread, first to Pakistan, then to Taliban-era Afghanistan, and then across Central Asia. Also largely unnoticed was Sunni sectarianism's role in the horrors visited upon Iraq's Shias after the first Gulf War and the failed uprising of 1991."

-Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival

The American Iraq

The American Iraq
Not the stuff of glory, but with a power and legitimacy all its own.

BY FOUAD AJAMI
Tuesday, January 30, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

So this government in Baghdad, fighting for its life, has not mastered even the grim science of the gallows, and has no knowledge of the "drop charts" used for hangings around the world. The Tikritis had been much better at this sort of thing. They had all the time in the world to perfect the skills and techniques of terror; they had done it against the background of relative indifference by outside powers. And they had the indulgence of the neighboring Arabs who gave their warrant to all that played out in Iraq under the Tikriti despotism.

Pity those men now hunkered down in Baghdad as they walk a fine, thin line between the yearning for justice and retribution in their land, and the scrutiny of the outside world. In the annals of Arab history, the Shia have been strangers to power, rebels and dissidents and men on the run hunted down by official power. Now the ground has shifted in Baghdad, and an Arab world steeped in tyranny reproaches a Shia-led government sitting atop a volcano. America's "regional diplomacy"--the name for our earnest but futile entreaties to the Arab rulers--will not reconcile the Arab regimes to the rise of the Shia outcasts.

In the fullness of time, the Arab order of power will have to come to a grudging acceptance of the order sure to take hold in Baghdad. This is a region that respects the prerogatives of power. It had once resisted the coming to power of the Alawites in Syria and then learned to accommodate that "heretical" minority sect and its conquest of Damascus; the Shia path in Iraq will follow that trajectory, and its justice is infinitely greater for it is the ascendancy of a demographic majority, through the weight of numbers and the ballot box. Of all Arab lands, Iraq is the most checkered, a frontier country at the crossroads of Arabia, Turkey and Persia. The Sunni Arabs in Iraq and beyond have never accepted the diversity of that land. The "Arabism" of the place was synonymous with their own primacy. Now a binational state in all but name (Arab and Kurdish) has come into being in Iraq, and the Shia underclass have stepped forth and staked a claim commensurate with the weight of their numbers. The Sunni Arabs have recoiled from this change in their fortunes. They have all but "Persianized" the Shia of Iraq, branded them as a fifth column of the state next door. Contemporary Islamism has sharpened this feud, for to the Sunni Islamists the Shia are heretics at odds with the forbidding strictures of the Islamists' fanatical variant of the faith.

Baghdad, a city founded by the Abbasid Caliph al-Mansour in 762, was sacked by the Mongols in 1258: The invaders put it to the sword, and dumped its books and libraries in the Tigris. In the (Sunni) legend, a Shia minister by the name of Ibn Alqami had opened the gates of the city to the invaders. History never relents here. In a commentary that followed the execution of Saddam, a Palestinian commentator in the West Bank city of Jenin wrote in a pan-Arab daily in London that a descendant of Ibn Alqami (read Nouri al-Maliki) had put to death a descendant of al-Mansour.

These kinds of atavisms cannot be conciliated. The truth of Iraq will assert itself on the ground, but the age of Sunni monopoly on power has passed. One of Iraq's most respected scholar-diplomats, Hassan al-Alawi, has put the matter in stark terms. It is proper, he said, to speak of an "American Iraq" as one does of a Sumerian, a Babylonian, an Abbasid, an Ottoman, and then a British Iraq. Where Iraq in the age of the Pax Britannica rested on an "Anglo-Sunni" regime, this new Iraq, in the time of the Americans, is by the logic of things an American-Shia regime. The militant preachers railing against the fall of Baghdad to an alliance of the "American crusaders" and the "Shia heretics" are the bearers of a dark, but intensely felt conviction. We should not be apologetic, in Arab lands seething with bigotry and rage, about our expedition into Iraq. We shouldn't fall for Arab rulers who tell us that they would have had the ability to call off the furies had we had in place a "process" for resolving the claims of the Palestinians, and had we been able to "deliver" Israel. Those furies have a life of their own: In truth, they are aided and abetted by these same rulers in the hope of tranquilizing their own domains and buying off the embittered in their midst.

The Sunni Arab regimes, it has to be noted, are not of one mind on Iraq. Curiously, the Arab state most likely to make peace with the new reality of Iraq is Saudi Arabia; those most hostile are the Jordanians, the Egyptians and the Palestinians. The Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, has read the wind with accuracy; he has a Shia minority in his domain, in the oil-bearing lands of the Eastern Province, and he seems eager to cap the Wahhabi volcano in the Najdi heartland of his kingdom. There is pragmatism in that realm, and the place lives by its own coin. In contrast, Jordan and Egypt present the odd spectacle of countries heavily invested in an anti-Shia drive but with no Shia citizenry in their midst. The two regimes derive a good measure of their revenues from "strategic rent"-- the aid of foreign powers, the subsidies of Pax Americana to be exact. The threat of Shiism is a good, and lucrative, scarecrow for the rulers in Cairo and Amman. The promise of standing sentry in defense of the Sunni order is what these two regimes have to offer both America and the oil states.

The Palestinians, weaker in the scale of power and with troubles of their own, are in the end of little consequence to the strategic alignment in the region. But to the extent that their "street" and their pundits matter, they can be counted upon to view the rise of this new Iraq with reserve and outright hostility. For six decades, the Palestinians have had a virtual monopoly on pan-Arab sentiments, and the Arabic-speaking world indulged them. Iraq--its wounds, and the promise of its power and resources--has been a direct challenge to the Palestinians and to their conception of their place in the Arab scheme of things. A seam is stitched in Palestinian society between its Muslim majority and its minority Christian communities. Palestinians have little by way of exposure to the Shia. To the bitter end, the Palestinian street remained enamored of Saddam Hussein. Iraq's Shia majority has returned the favor, and has come to view the Palestinians and their cause with considerable suspicion.

For our part, the Pax Americana has not been at peace with the Shia genie it had called forth. We did not know the Shia to begin with; we saw them through the prism of our experience with Iran. Moqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad and Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut: This was the face of the new Shiism and we were spooked by it. And we were susceptible as well to the representations made to us by Arab rulers about the dangers of radical Shiism.

This was odd: We had been in the midst of a searing battle with al Qaeda and the Taliban, zealous Sunni movements, but we were still giving credence to the Arab warnings about the threat of Shiism. Nor were the Shia who would finally claim power in Iraq possessed of an appreciable understanding of American ways. Nouri al-Maliki speaks not a word of English; with years of exile in Syria behind him, he was at considerable disadvantage in dealing with the American presence in his country. He and the political class around him lacked the traffic with American diplomacy that had seasoned their counterparts in Cairo, Amman and the Arabian Peninsula. Without that intimacy, they had been given to premonitions that America could yet strike a bargain, at their expense, with the Sunni order of power.

We held aloft the banner of democracy, but in recent months our faith in democracy's possibilities in Iraq has appeared to erode, and this unnerves the Shia political class. President Bush's setback in the congressional elections gave the Iraqis legitimate cause for concern: Prime Minister Maliki himself wondered aloud whether this was the beginning of a general American retreat in Iraq. And there was that brief moment when it seemed as though the "realists" of the James Baker variety were in the midst of a restoration. The Shia (and the Kurds) needed no deep literacy in strategic matters to read the mind of Mr. Baker. His brand of realism was anathema to people who tell their history in metaphors of justice and betrayal. He was a known entity in Iraq; he had been the steward of American foreign policy when America walked away, in 1991, from the Kurdish and Shia rebellions it had called for. The political class in Baghdad couldn't have known that the Baker-Hamilton recommendations would die on the vine, and that President Bush would pay these recommendations scant attention. The American position was not transparent, and there were in the air rumors of retrenchment, and thus legitimate Iraqi fears that the American presence in Baghdad could be bartered away in some accommodation with the powers in Iraq's neighborhood.

These fears were to be allayed, but not put to rest, by the military "surge" that President Bush announced in recent days. More than a military endeavor, the surge can be seen as a declaration by the president that deliverance would be sought in Baghdad, and not in deals with the rogues (Syria and Iran) or with the Sunni Arab states. Prime Minister Maliki and the coalition that sustains his government could not know for certain if this was the proverbial "extra mile" before casting them adrift, or the sure promise that this president would stay with them for the remainder of his time in office.

But there can be no denying that with the surge the landscape has altered in Baghdad, and that Mr. Bush is invested in the Maliki government as never before. Mr. Maliki's predecessor--a man who belongs to the same political party and hails from the same traditional Shia political class--was forced out of office by an American veto and Mr. Maliki could be forgiven his suspicion that the Americans might try this again. It was known that he had never taken to the American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, and that he fully understood that American officials would rather have other Shia contenders in his post--our old standby Ayad Allawi, the current vice president Adel Abdul Mahdi, both more worldly men at ease with American ways. So if this is America's extra mile in Baghdad, it has to be traversed with a political leader whose abilities and intentions have been repeatedly called into question by American officials.

This marriage of convenience may be the best that can be hoped for. Mr. Maliki will not do America's bidding, and we should be grateful for his displays of independence. He straddles the fence between the things we want him to do--disarming the militias, walking away from Moqtada al-Sadr--and the requirements of political survival. We have been waiting for the Iraqis to assume responsibility for their own affairs and we should not be disconcerted when they take us at our word. The messages put out by American officials now and then, that Mr. Maliki is living on borrowed time, and the administered leaks of warnings he has been given by President Bush, serve only to undermine whatever goals we seek in Baghdad.

With Saddam's execution, this prime minister has made himself a power in the vast Shia mainstream. Having removed Ibrahim Jaafari from office last year, the American regency is doomed to live with Mr. Maliki, for a policy that attempts to unseat him is sure to strip Iraqis of any sense that they are sovereign in their own country. He cannot be granted a blank check, but no small measure of America's success in Iraq now depends on him. If he is to fall, the deed must be an affair of the Iraqis, and of the broad Shia coalition to be exact. He may now be able to strike at renegade elements of the Mahdi Army, for that movement that once answered to Moqtada al-Sadr and carried his banners has splintered into gangs led by bandit warlords. In our concern with Moqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, we ought to understand the reluctance of Mr. Maliki's ruling coalition to take on the Shia militias. The terror inflicted on the Shia--an unrelenting affair of the last three years--makes it extremely difficult for a Shia-led government to disarm men who pose as defenders of a community still under brutal siege.

Boldness and despair may have come together to carry forward this new drive in Baghdad. Fear of failure often concentrates the mind, and President Bush's policy could yet find its target right as the skeptics have written off this whole project in Baghdad. Iraq has had its way of meting out disappointments at every turn, but the tide of events appears to be working in the president's favor.

There is a "balance of terror" today between the Sunni and Shia protagonists. More and more Sunni Arabs know that their old dominion is lost, and that they had better take the offer on the table--a share of the oil revenues, the promise that the constitution could be amended and reviewed, access to political power and spoils in return for reining in the violence and banishing the Arab jihadists. The Shia, too, may have to come to a time of reckoning. Their old tormentor was sent to the gallows, and a kinsman of theirs did the deed with the seal of the state. From the poor Shia slums of Baghdad, young avengers answered the Sunni campaign of terror with brutal terror of their own. The old notion--once dear to the Sunnis, and to the Shia a nagging source of fear and shame--that the Sunnis of Iraq were a martial race while the Shia were marked for lamentations and political quiescence has been broken for good.

The country has been fought over, and a verdict can already be discerned--rough balance between its erstwhile Sunni rulers and its Shia inheritors, and a special, autonomous life for the Kurds. Against all dire expectations, the all-important question of the distribution of oil wealth appears close to a resolution. The design for sharing the bounty is a "federal" one that strikes a balance between central government and regional claimants. The nightmare of the Sunni Arabs that they would be left stranded in regions of sand and gravel has been averted.

This is the country midwifed by American power. We were never meant to stay there long. Iraq will never approximate the expectations we projected onto it in more innocent times. But we should be able to grant it the gift of acceptance, and yet another dose of patience as it works its way out of its current torments. It is said that much of the war's nobility has drained out of it, and that we now fight not to lose, and to keep intact our larger position in the oil lands of the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf. This may not be the stuff of glory, but it has power and legitimacy all its own.

Mr. Ajami is a 2006 recipient of the Bradley Prize, teaches at Johns Hopkins and is author of "The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq" (Free Press, 2006).

Power to the (Shia) People

"A grassroots outpouring of sympathy for the victims of September 11 occurred on the streets in only two places in the Muslim world, both within days of the collapse of the twin towers and both among the Shia. The first was in Iran, where tens of thousands snubbed their government to go into the streets of Tehran and hold a candlelight vigil in solidarity with victims of the attacks. The second was in Karachi, where a local party that is closely associated with the city's Shia broke with the public mood in Pakistan to gather thousands to denounce terrorism. What followed September 11 in Afghanistan and Iraq has only strengthened these feelings. The Shia in Afghanistan, between 20 and 25 percent of the population, were brutalized by the Taliban. The constitution adopted in that country in 2003 has broken with tradition to allow a Shia to become president and to recognize Shia law. The Shia have come out from the margins to join the government and take their place in public life. The violent face of Sunni militancy in Iraq underscores the divergent paths that Sunni and Shia politics are taking.

The Shia revival constitutes the most powerful resistance and challenge to Sunni extremism and jihadi activism within the region. Shia revival is an anti-Wahhabi and anti-extremist force. Its objectives re served by change in the regional balance of power and democracy. In turn, democracy will unleash the full extent of the Shia challenge to Sunni extremism. Democracy will bring to power Shia majorities and give greater voice to Shia minorities, whose ideology and politics diverge from the extremist bent of Sunni radicalism."

--Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival

Iraqi Mojo's 7 Point Plan for Mid East Peace

I believe that several changes must happen in the Middle East before there is hope for peace there:

1) The US military must cease operations that might result in civilian casualties. I know that unlike many insurgents, the US military tries to minimize civilian casualties. I also know that many US soldiers are tired of Iraq and want very badly to go home. But as long as the US military is in Iraq, they should try harder to avoid civilian casualties and concentrate more on defending and training the Iraqi security forces. The US should also provide the Iraqi military with the best equipment. The Iraq Study Group found that Iraqi "Units lack equipment. They cannot carry out their missions without adequate equipment. Congress has been generous in funding requests for U.S. troops, but it has resisted fully funding Iraqi forces. The entire appropriation for Iraqi defense forces for FY 2006 ($3 billion) is less than the United States currently spends in Iraq every two weeks."

2) The Kurds will eventually have their country, and the Arabs must accept this. So must the Turks. The Kurds already have a de facto Kurdish state within Iraq, and it is much more functional and peaceful than Baghdad. The Iraqi Kurds have autonomy, they have security, and their economy is growing. We never hear about bombings in Sulaymaniya, and even Kirkuk, where many Arabs live, is relatively safe. We don't see the division between Sunna and Shia among the Kurds.

3) There must be democracy in Iraq, and the people of Anbar must participate in the Iraqi government without fear of being murdered. All Arabs must support democracy in Iraq. The Saudis and other Sunni Arab states must stop supporting the Sunni insurgency. The good people of Anbar must rise up and support the Iraqi army and police. The Anbar Salvation Council must be involved in defending Anbar against terrorists and mafiosi. Insurgents who continue to murder the relatives of government employees must be found and arrested or killed. From the Iraq Study Group report: "Insurgents wage a campaign of intimidation against Sunni leaders — assassinating the family members of those who do participate in the government. Too often, insurgents tolerate and cooperate with al Qaeda, as they share a mutual interest in attacking U.S. and Shia forces. However, Sunni Arab tribal leaders in Anbar province recently took the positive step of agreeing to pursue al Qaeda and foreign fighters in their midst, and have started to take action on those commitments."

The Sunni Arabs in Iraq will not have complete control of Iraq, but they must be a part of the government if Iraq is to remain united. This does not mean that there will never be another Sunni Arab President or Prime Minister in Iraq. The big cheese in Iraq can be a Sunni Arab, as long he is good to the people. King Faisal was a Sunni from Saudi Arabia (before there was a Saudia Arabia), yet he is to this day one of the most popular leaders in Iraqi history. It seems that no tyrant was needed to 'suppress greater horrors' until 1963, after Qasim nationalized Iraq's oil.

4) Splitting Iraq between Sunna and Shia will not happen in Iraq because Iraqis do not want it to happen, but if Anbar becomes unmanageable; if insurgents in Anbar continue to attack Iraqi army and police, the Iraqi military and government will eventually abandon Anbar. Shia groups only started discussing the forming of a Shii state in 2005. Even if Anbar secedes from Iraq (or if the Shia secede), a split between Sunna and Shia in Baghdad and in the rest of Iraq is not feasible, because there are Shia towns in Sunni areas (like Dujail) and there are Sunni enclaves all over the south. Zeyad has some good maps that show the sectarian demographics in Iraq and Baghdad.

5) The Shia of Iraq will share the oil wealth with the people of Anbar, as long as Anbar remains part of Iraq. Of course oil is what the insurgents fight for. Oil brings money, and money brings power. So let us make sure that the people of Anbar understand that they will share the oil and the power in Iraq if they join the government.

6) Iran must stop its support for Shia militias, and the sectarian militias must stop murdering innocent Iraqis. All Shia must realize that Iraq can never be like Iran, and the Iranian regime and Iraqis who spent years in Iran must realize that a theocracy will not work in Iraq. It barely works in Iran, and the Iranian people are nowhere near being free. The Iranian regime is the Shii version of the Taliban, and I don't want to see it in Iraq. Baghdad Treasure has told me stories of fundamentalist Shia (presumably Mehdi army) killing people for the silliest reasons, like having a spare tire in your trunk - you are not relying solely on God if you carry a spare tire in your trunk. It seems that in 2006 elements of the Mehdi army have been emulating the Iranian regime, or maybe they are competing with al Qaeda in terms of religious zealotry. This kind of mentality will result in educated Iraqis fleeing Iraq, and the brain drain has already begun (although educated Iraqis have been fleeing Iraq since the 70s). It will take at least a generation for the fundamentalists in Iraq to change, and it will change only if the Shia masses become educated and truly free, without Iranian influence. Investments in education, free access to media, and a free economy in Iraq will hasten this important change that must take place in order for Iraq to succeed.

7) There must be a peaceful and just solution to the conflict between Palestine and Israel. The US must pressure Israel to support an independent, contiguous and viable Palestinian state. Many people have argued that the Palestinians could have had a state in 2000, but if I were Yasser Arafat, I would not have signed such an agreement. Barak's 'generous offers' were a slap in the face of Palestinians, who have already given up 78% of their historic homeland so that Jews can 'live in peace' in their own country where they are a majority of the population. Next time the US tries to mediate between Israel and Palestine, they should not send a closet zionist like Dennis Ross to referee. The formula should be simple: towns and villages with Arab majorities belong to Palestine, and towns with Jewish majorities belong to Israel. The Israeli settlers who think they can get away with attacking Palestinian farmers and human rights workers must move back to Tel Aviv, Brooklyn or wherever they came from. I would also argue that Gaza should be connected to the West Bank somehow - it is the only way for Palestine to be truly contiguous.

A one state solution is a dream that may be impossible to achieve. So we should be pragmatic in the short term and strive to achieve what is achievable. The other important and major issue is the Palestinian refugees scattered throughout the world. Palestinian refugees who have lost their homes in the last 60 years must be compensated. One would think that a portion of the billions of dollars in cash Israel receives every year can be used to fairly compensate the Palestinians who were not allowed to return to their homes in 1948, 1967, and during other wars. One would also think that Arab countries like Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq would allow Palestinian refugees who live there to buy property and become ordinary citizens of those countries. It would be a stimulus to the economies of those countries, after all. We must not allow this wound to fester any further. I believe that justice for the Palestinians coupled with democracy in Iraq will result in a Middle East peace that has never been seen before.

Al Qaeda has lost in Iraq

We Haven't Won in Iraq, but al Qaida Has Lost

Opinion
Jack Kelly Tue Sep 18, 10:12 AM ET

Al Qaida's most spectacular attack came on 9/11. But its most successful attack took place two days before, when two al Qaida operatives posing as photo journalists assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud.

History is biography, Ralph Waldo Emerson said. The history of Afghanistan, and of the war on terror, likely would have been much different if the Lion of the Panjshir had not been killed that dreadful day.

Ahmad Shah Massoud was a brilliant and inspirational military leader -- his forces inflicted about 60 percent of all the casualties suffered by the Russians during their occupation of Afghanistan -- and he was also the closest thing to a democrat Afghanistan had yet produced. My friends Jack Wheeler and Dana Rohrabacher, who knew him, said Gen. Massoud was potentially the George Washington of his country.

Ahmad Shah Massoud was all that stood between the Taliban and the total conquest of Afghanistan, which is why al Qaida marked him for death. Osama bin Laden knew that if he did this "favor" for Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader would resist the calls for extradition that inevitably would follow the attacks al Qaida was planning on New York and Washington.

Hamid Karzai has his virtues. But he's no Ahmad Shah Massoud. Afghanistan almost certainly would be better governed and more effective in fighting the Taliban if the Lion of the Panjshir were its prime minister.

Last Thursday al Qaida killed with a roadside bomb Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who was becoming to Iraq what Ahmad Shah Massoud was to Afghanistan. Sheikh Abu Risha was the founder and leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, the coalition of Sunni tribes that banded together to fight al Qaida. He, more than any person save Gen. David Petraeus, is responsible for the dramatic turnaround in Iraq.

The political "leadership" in Iraq has ranged from poor to frightful, in large part because Saddam Hussein ruthlessly murdered anyone who might one day oppose him. But Sheikh Abu Risha rose far above mediocrity.

"It is an Iraqi national disaster," Iraq's national security adviser, Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, said at Sheikh Abu Risha's funeral Friday. "What Abu Risha did for Iraq, no single man has done in the country's history."

"Sattar was seen as a legitimate, pro-American alternative to the current crop of Sunni leaders in the Iraqi government," wrote independent journalist Bill Roggio.

By murdering the Lion of Anbar, al Qaida hopes to fragment the Anbar Salvation Council, weaken Sunni efforts to fight the terror group, and to foment strife between Sunni and Shia.

It could work out that way. But the murder of Sheikh Abu Risha also may backfire. More than 1,500 mourners attended his funeral. Mourners chanted "We will take our revenge," and "There is no God but Allah and al Qaida is the enemy of Allah," the BBC reported.

It cannot warm Osama bin Laden's heart (assuming it's still beating) to have so many Sunni Muslims in what just a year ago was al Qaida's stronghold in Iraq declaring that al Qaida is the enemy of Allah. Support for al Qaida has plummeted in seven of the eight Muslim countries polled by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. The assassination of Sheikh Abu Risha will not enhance the terror group's diminishing popularity.

The Anbar Salvation Council has chosen Sheikh Abu Risha's brother, Ahmed, as its new leader. "All the tribes agreed to fight al Qaida until the last child in Anbar," Ahmed Abu Risha said.

"The killing will give us more energy...to continue confronting al Qaida members and to dispose of them," said another member of the council, Sheikh Rashid Majid.

The assassination of Sheikh Abu Risha provides an opportunity for reconciliation between Anbar's Sunnis and the Shia-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, who in the past has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

The presence of Mr. al-Rubaie, a Shia, at Sheikh Abu Risha's funeral is an indication Mr. Maliki may not miss this opportunity. His decision to erect a statue of Abu Risha in Ramadi was well received.

I said at the outset of this column that al Qaida's most successful operation was the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud. But it wasn't, in the end, all that successful. It certainly wasn't for the Taliban, which once controlled three quarters of Afghanistan, and now controls a couple of caves. And though Osama bin Laden did escape extradition to the U.S., al Qaida lost its safe haven in Afghanistan. Thanks to Iran and the Shia militias it supports, we have not won in Iraq. But al Qaida has lost.

How Arabs reach out to their Iraqi “brothers”

I find it interesting how some Arabs try to reach out to me on my blog and other blogs. Recently two of my Arab brothers, a Lebanese Australian and a Palestinian American, dropped by to “reach out” by leaving some friendly, Arab-like comments for my post “Obama Talks to Arabs & Muslims”. The Lebanese Australian brother’s first comment on my blog:

”Finally the curiosity got the better of me.
Books you're reading:
Elie Wiesel?!!
For godssake mojo!
Elie Wiesel who's closer to a viper than to a weasel? For godsake, mojo!! Should I remind you how despicable this person is? This 'benefactor of humanity', the "great advocate for human rights' who never had anything to say about the Palestinian tragedy but scorn, contempt and accusations of anti-Semitism? Do you provide bags for those who feel like throwing up or should I bring my own?”

So Elie Wiesel is despicable, and I should not have his book displayed on my blog, lest my Arab brothers may vomit when visiting here. I did not know that Wiesel was a journalist for the Irgun, the militant Zionist group that participated in the attack on Deir Yassin in 1948, but I don’t think he deserves to be called “despicable” and I haven’t seen evidence that he supports the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. Before this discussion, I knew Wiesel only from his book Night.

After the lovely exchange with my Lebanese Australian brother, who has attacked me for my “sectarianism” on other blogs before, a Palestinian American brother chimed in with this comment:

"So Mojo, it is not despicable to support colonialism and settlements in Palestine"?

It depends on what “colonialism” and “settlements” mean, I responded. I insisted that I haven’t seen evidence that Wiesel supports the expulsion of natives from their homes. Colonialism is not necessarily the expulsion of natives from their lands, he retorted. He compared Jewish settlers to the Taliban. Some Jewish settlers are fanatical and some have engaged in horrific violence against Palestinians, but like the Taliban they are not. I wrote that I often see Arabs making inappropriate comparisons, “like comparing Guantanamo to Saddam-like imprisonment, or like comparing Abu Ghraib before 2003 to Abu Ghraib after 2003. Like comparing the IDF to Nazis. It is embarrassing.” He said “you are the embarrassment Mojo.”

He demanded that I tell him if I believe Hamas is a terrorist organization or legitimate resistance. The Arabs are in love with resistance. They drink, eat, and breathe resistance. But they have no answers when I point out that many Arabs who’ve lived all their lives just miles from occupied Palestine ended up traveling hundreds of miles to the east to mass murder Iraqis, except to say that it’s much easier to enter Iraq than to enter Israel or the West Bank, and that I should not use the term "3arab jarab". They have no answers to my bewilderment at the large number of non-Iraqi Arab suicide bombers who have killed and maimed mostly innocent Iraqis. They stay mum when I compare how the Arabs have resisted the occupation of Palestine to how the Arabs have resisted the occupation of Iraq. Apparently they would rather compare Israelis to Nazis.

He went on to write: “The good thing is our Shia brothers in Iraq overall support Palestine and the Palestinians. You are in the minority when it comes to your community and that is a good thing.”


So naturally I had to defend myself and show him that I do in fact support Palestine. I have written about Palestine on my blog. I support Palestine’s right to contiguous independent statehood, to freedom and prosperity, to peace. But I loathe the Palestinians who showed support for Saddam and Zarqawi. I will always call Arabs who supported Saddam and Zarqawi “3arab jarab”.

A few comments later my Palestinian American brother wrote this:

"Mojo, that is why i am reaching out to you but i feel that because i am Palestinians you are automatically rejecting me and judging me and my views.

I believe you support Palestine but i also believe you can't have it both ways, you can't be critical of only Arabs but not Americans who back these Arabs or who back Israel."

I asked him to give me an example of my sectarianism. He responded with: “I said i never saw you use the term Arab Jarab when it comes to Shia death squada. It is always in reference to Sunnis from what i have seen.”

Me: “There are Shia jarab, for sure. They just haven't killed any of my relatives. And the Shia jarab did not incite sectarian conflict in Iraq. There would have been no Shia Death Squads of there were no Sunni Death Squads like Al Qaeda to begin with.”

My Palestinian American brother, reaching out:

“You have no proof of that claim on death squads, it is all assumptions on your part.

Can't we argue there would be no Sunni death squads if they weren't disenfranchised?”

That’s when I found no patience left in me. I wrote “So the Baathists, with the help of 3arab jarab like Abu Musab al Zarqawi, responded to de-Baathification by blowing up markets, buses, police stations, weddings, funerals, universities.“

This is how my Arab “brothers” have reached out to me. It’s not the first time I’ve been called “sectarian”. Maybe I am sectarian. Would I be “sectarian” if the hardcore Baathists and their Wahhabi allies had not mass murdered Iraqi Shia in the first place? I doubt it.

It is not enough to commend the American President for wanting to help establish a contiguous Palestinian state. It is not enough that I have expressed sympathy with Palestinians who were expelled from their homes, who lost their children to Israeli bombing. Apparently Iraqis must express support for Hamas as well, or at least agree that Hamas is a legitimate “resistance” organization. We must condemn American support for Israel and US foreign policy in the Middle East in general, even as the same Arabs who hate America emigrate to America and become successful in America. We must not become angry when our Palestinian American friends say “bad move Shia” when we express joy or satisfaction at the hanging of Saddam or one of Saddam’s henchmen - we should at least find the humor in such statements, I am told. We must agree with our Arab “brothers” that Americans caused the sectarian conflict in Iraq, and IF Sunni Arabs caused violence in Iraq, it is because they were disenfranchised. We should not “demonize” Palestinians by linking to articles that show how some Palestinians supported Saddam or Zarqawi. We should avoid discussing Saddam's crimes before 2003, and if we must discuss life for Iraqis before 2003, we should say that it was better than after 2003, and we should blame the Americans for that and nobody else. And we must not display on our blogs books written by such “despicable” characters as Elie Wiesel.

Takfiri War on Pakistani Shia

Forward from my uncle:

Please forward this info to as many people as you can.

A Protest has been organised by Majlise Ulama Shia Europe
Saturday 12th July 2008, 2:30 PM

Against the Brutal killing of the Shias in NW Pakistan by the Taliban

Please all Brothers & Sisters attend

Venue: Pakistan High Commission
The Posters will be sent to you soon

In the name of the Most High

Mass Killing of Shī'ah Muslims in North West Pakistan

Sayyid Ali Raza Rizvi

'Whoever slays a soul, unless it be for manslaughter or for mischief in the land, it is as though he slew all men; and whoever keeps it alive, it is as though he kept alive all men' (Qur'ān: 5: 32).

This is a declaration by the Islamic Holy Book, the Qur'ān. However, there are people who call themselves Muslim, though they should not be even considered human, for they openly violate this verse. They are better known as the Taliban. Taliban (seekers) they may be, surely not of knowledge, but of blood! No one in recent history compares to them; however, they are similar to a group of people in the time of Imam 'Alī (AS) 38 AH, 6 century CE, who were known as the Kharijites (Khawārij).

People have heard and seen some photographs of their brutality and killing of innocent human beings in Afghanistan. I wish they had been stopped there, but we see them spread all over, especially in Pakistan, where they have made a covenant to kill every single Shī'ah. They started their activities in North West of Pakistan and took over some small cities and villages in tribal areas in the name of establishing Islamic states. Now we see them outside the tribal areas as well. In recent months, they have killed hundreds of innocent civilians in D.I. Khan and Kurram Agency. The two areas are deprived of many facilities and advancements that we take for granted in the western world or even the city life of Pakistan. Most recently, on 19th June 2008, twelve tribesmen were abducted by militants of Sadda. Their bodies were badly mutilated. Eight of them were found beheaded and slaughtered with chopped legs and arms and the other four were found burnt. There are other incidents continuing till today. We are pleading in the name of humanity to stop this slaughter and bloodshed.

We, the Majlis-e -'Ulamā' Shī'ah Europe, have waited long enough for reactions from Pakistani law enforcement authorities against the inhuman and brutal killing of the innocent people in the foresaid areas. Moreover, the prevailing of democracy in Pakistan has not brought any change to the situation there. Now, we believe that it is our human and religious duty to stand up in protest against this violence and oppression. We began our activity through making our community aware. However, we felt it did not have enough affect. We have made our first protest in front of the Pakistani Embassy in London on 4 July, 2008. Our representative there spoke with the Pakistani High Commissioner and made our demands known to him; namely, that we want this killing to stop as from now, otherwise, these protests will not stop here. They will continue here in London and around the globe as a voice for those who are oppressed and are not allowed freedom to live in peace.

'A government may remain with disbelief, but will not remain with oppression.' --Imam 'Alī (AS)

Majlise 'Ulamā' Shia Europe

Is Bush Admin Lying About Iran?

This is interesting. Apparently Dick Cheney and his pals have been spreading rumors that Iran is arming the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iran arming Al Qaeda type groups doesn't make sense. Last week Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeil, finally denied the allegations. Kudos to Gates and McNeil - I respect honesty. I love a country where Generals and Defense Secretaries are free to contradict the Vice President. Saddam Hussein would have had his General's arms broken, or worse.

Cheney’s Iran-Arms-to-Taliban Gambit Rebuffed
by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - A media campaign portraying Iran as supplying arms to the Taliban guerrillas fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, orchestrated by advocates of a more confrontational stance toward Iran in the George W. Bush administration, appears to have backfired last week when Defence Secretary Robert Gates and the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeil, issued unusually strong denials.

The allegation that Iran has reversed a decade-long policy and is now supporting the Taliban, conveyed in a series of press articles quoting “senior officials” in recent weeks, is related to a broader effort by officials aligned with Vice President Dick Cheney to portray Iran as supporting Sunni insurgents, including al Qaeda, to defeat the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

An article in the Guardian published May 22 quoted an anonymous U.S. official as predicting an “Iranian-orchestrated summer offensive in Iraq, linking al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents to Tehran’s Shia militia allies” and as referring to the alleged “Iran-al Qaeda linkup” as “very sinister”.

That article and subsequent reports on CNN May 30, in the Washington Post Jun. 3 and on ABC news Jun. 6 all included an assertion by an unnamed U.S. official or a “senior coalition official” that Iran is following a deliberate policy of supplying the Taliban’s campaign against U.S., British and other NATO forces.

In the most dramatic version of the story, ABC reported “NATO officials” as saying they had “caught Iran red-handed, shipping heavy arms, C4 explosives and advanced roadside bombs to the Taliban for use against NATO forces.”

Far from showing that Iran had been “caught red-handed”, however, the report quoted from an analysis which cited only the interception in Afghanistan of a total of four vehicles coming from Iran with arms and munitions of Iranian origin. The report failed to refer to any evidence of Iranian government involvement.

Both Gates and McNeill denied flatly last week that there is any evidence linking Iranian authorities to those arms. Gates told a press conference on Jun. 4, “We do not have any information about whether the government of Iran is supporting this, is behind it, or whether it’s smuggling, or exactly what is behind it.” Gates said that “some” of the arms in question might be going to Afghan drug smugglers.

The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. McNeill, implied that the arms trafficking from Iran is being carried out by private interests. “[W]hen you say weapons being provided by Iran, that would suggest there is some more formal entity involved in getting these weapons here,” he told Jim Loney of Reuters June 5. “That’s not my view at all.”

Continued

One-sided sectarian violence continues in Pakistan

The Wahhabi-inspired Taliban have been mass murdering Shia in Pakistan and Afghanistan for many years now. Some Pakistani Shia have blamed America for the bombings. Some rioted. One Pakistani said “This is precisely the kind of reaction that the Taliban were seeking in the first place. They want to divide Pakistan.”

Reuters:

"Several thousand mourners attended funerals on Tuesday for victims of a suicide bombing that killed 43 people in Pakistan's commercial capital, an emotional reminder of a raging Taliban insurgency.

Coffins were carried through the crowds after Monday's explosion in Karachi during a procession at the climax of Ashura, one of the most important events in the Shi'ite calendar.

The bombing underscored multiple security challenges facing nuclear-armed U.S. ally Pakistan at a volatile time for President Asif Ali Zardari, who could be weakened further if corruption charges against his close aides are revived.

...Although the government blamed militants for the Karachi attack -- the third in as many days -- some mourners expressed disbelief that fellow Muslims were capable of such carnage.

"I am 100 percent sure that the United States and its agents are behind this attack, and all other such attacks in the country," said Syed Kausar Hussain Zaidi, a Shi'ite lawyer.

Other mourners were furious, shouting confusing slogans.

"Down with America. Down with the Taliban. Down with Israel."

Religious scholars urged people to remain peaceful.'

No Western condemnation of Saudi & Bahraini royals

From an article published on May 14 in The Independent: 'Christopher Hill, a former US secretary of state for east Asia who was ambassador to Iraq – and usually a very obedient and un-eloquent American diplomat – wrote the other day that "the notion that a dictator can claim the sovereign right to abuse his people has become unacceptable".

Unless, of course – and Mr Hill did not mention this – you happen to live in Bahrain. On this tiny island, a Sunni monarchy, the al-Khalifas, rule a majority Shia population and have responded to democratic protests with death sentences, mass arrests, the imprisonment of doctors for letting patients die after protests and an "invitation" to Saudi forces to enter the country. They have also destroyed dozens of Shia mosques with all the thoroughness of a 9/11 pilot. But then, let's remember that most of the 9/11 killers were indeed Saudis.

...Bahrain has never had a reputation as a "friend" of the West, albeit that is how it likes to be portrayed. More than 20 years ago, anyone protesting the royal family's dominance risked being tortured in the security police headquarters. The head of it was a former British police Special Branch officer whose senior torturer was a pernicious major in the Jordanian army. When I published their names, I was rewarded with a cartoon in the government newspaper Al-Khaleej which pictured me as a rabid dog. Rabid dogs, of course, have to be exterminated. It was not a joke. It was a threat.

The al-Khalifas have no problems with the opposition newspaper, Al-Wasat, however. They arrested one of its founders, Karim Fakhrawi, on 5 April. He died in police custody a week later. Ten days later, they arrested the paper's columnist, Haidar Mohamed al-Naimi. He has not been seen since. Again, silence from CamerClegg, Obama, La Clinton and the rest. The arrest and charging of Shia Muslim doctors for letting their patients die – the patients having been shot by the "security forces", of course – is even more vile. I was in the hospital when these patients were brought in. The doctors' reaction was horror mixed with fear – they had simply never seen such close-range gunshot wounds before. Now they have been arrested, doctors and patients taken from their hospital beds. If this was happening in Damascus, Homs or Hama or Aleppo, the voices of CamerClegg, and Obama and La Clinton would be ringing in our ears. But no. Silence. Four men have been sentenced to death for killing two Bahraini policemen. It was a closed military court. Their "confessions" were aired on television, Soviet-style. No word from CamerClegg or Obama or La Clinton.

What is this nonsense? Well, I will tell you. It has nothing to do with the Bahrainis or the al-Khalifas. It is all about our fear of Saudi Arabia. Which also means it is about oil. It is about our absolute refusal to remember that 9/11 was committed largely by Saudis. It is about our refusal to remember that Saudi Arabia supported the Taliban, that Bin Laden was a Saudi, that the most cruel version of Islam comes from Saudi Arabia, the land of head-choppers and hand-cutters. It is about a conversation I had with a Bahraini official – a good and decent and honest man – in which I asked him why the Bahraini prime minister could not be elected by a majority Shia population. "The Saudis would never permit it," he said. Yes, our other friends. The Saudis.'

Thanks Ammu for forwarding.

Shia Jurisprudence?

'Worse than the Taliban' - new law rolls back rights for Afghan women

'The Afghan constitution allows for Shias, who are thought to represent about 10% of the population, to have a separate family law based on traditional Shia jurisprudence.

..."There were lots of things that we wanted to change, but they didn't want to discuss it because Karzai wants to please the Shia before the election.'

Traditional Shia jurisprudence allows a man to rape his wife? This is becoming law in Afghanistan in the year 2009??

The Shia Taliban

This is very disturbing. After seeing this, I can understand why many Iraqis, especially women, would say that life was better for them under Saddam Hussein. How embarrassing for the Iraqi Shia who wanted freedom! Thanks to Harry Barnes for posting this in a comment. Also read this: Basra's murderous militias tell Christian women to cover up or face death



PS: I guess Al Jazeera isn't that bad. I have praised Al Jazeera before.

Destroying Iraq to defeat the US

"We are fighting these terrorists with our military in Afghanistan and Iraq and beyond so we do not have to face them in the streets of our own cities," Bush said in 2004. If the strategy was to use the war in Iraq as flypaper to attract terrorists, it seems to have worked well. Hardcore jihadis from all over the wide Arab "watan" (nation) left their countries, flying right over occupied Palestine, or in some cases leaving their home towns that were just miles from occupied Palestine, ostensibly to fight the American infidel invaders in Iraq. Unfortunately Iraqi civilians have suffered the brunt of this war. Suicide bombers, about half of them Saudi, have murdered many more Iraqi civilians than American soldiers. As an Arab, I am saddened that so many Arabs have murdered Iraqis. I have learned to swallow the bitter truth and realized some time in 2004 that Arab nationalists and fundamentalists seem more interested in defeating America than helping Iraqis. Some of them would murder 34 Iraqi children just to kill one American soldier.

To add insult to injury, many "anti-war" activists blame these murders of innocent Iraqis directly on Americans. "Anti-war" journalists like Dahr Jamail apparently had no problems with the wars Saddam Hussein waged before 2003. They said nothing of Saddam's Killing Fields. They would have liked to see Iraq continue to be held hostage by Saddam's regime.

Two nights ago I spoke to a cousin who worked as an economic advisor in Iraq. He told me that Iraq is surrounded by enemies, and for this reason, the long-term presence of US troops in Iraq is ultimately beneficial to Iraqis. Amazingly, my cousin echoed the words of a terrorist recently interviewed by Arab media and said that it is in the interest of Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran, to cause havoc in Iraq.

Iran has also fought a proxy war in Iraq, supporting Shia militias, supplying them with arms that have been used to kill and maim American soldiers. Some have claimed that the Iranian regime is "fearful of a strong, independent, Arab Shia community emerging in Iraq." The Badr Brigades have been accused of rounding up innocent Sunni Arab men and torturing them to death. Just this morning I heard an NPR report about Iranian influence in Najaf, which worries many Iraqis. Secular Shia like me do not want to see the Shia version of the Taliban in control of Iraq. One thing is clear: the Iranian regime seems to hate America. The photo below illustrates this hatred in a funny way.



So what should America do in Iraq after Al Qaeda is defeated? Should we withdraw all troops? Can Iraq defend itself on its own? Would Iran take over completely?

PS: The question, which nobody has been able to answer, remains: have "Safavids" ever blown up a marketplace?

40 Iraqi women killed this year for not dressing to "Islamic" standards

'Religious vigilantes have killed at least 40 women this year in the southern Iraqi city of Basra because of how they dressed, their mutilated bodies found with notes warning against "violating Islamic teachings," the police chief said Sunday.'

 

This infuriating news is reported as Britain plans to hand over control of Basra to Iraqi provincial authorities within two weeks.  Not that it really matters.  I wonder how much control British troops had in Basra if 40 women were killed by Shia Taliban for not dressing to Khomeini standards.  The sad reality of the new Iraq is that it has become more like Iran, and in that respect we cannot call it liberation. 

Should the US intervene in Libya?

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski says the US should not intervene in Libya alone, that we need Europe's help at least. He is afraid the uprisings in the Middle East may give rise to extremist groups, and democracy may not come out of it. It is a legitimate fear. Also in this clip he says the US abandoned Afghanistan in the late 80s, which was a mistake, because the vacuum allowed the Taliban to take over.

David Ignatius seems more optimistic and says we're seeing something new, a global political awakening by people who want freedom and democracy. This idea is new in the Arab world; it's not the Al Qaeda narrative.

Andrea Mitchell says the Saudis would not allow a Shia government to take control of Bahrain.

Americans seem divided on whether we should interfere in Libya. Brzezinski makes a good point - Europe is more dependent on Libyan oil than the US is, and they should help with a no-fly zone, if there is consensus to do it.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What happens if Qadhafi remains in control of Libya? What happens if Wahhabis invade Bahrain and start killing Shia? Would Iran get involved? What if the price of crude shoots to $200 per barrel? I bet the US would act alone just to keep the price of oil from spiraling out of control.

PS: I should not have said the idea is new in the Arab world. Arabs have always wanted freedom and democracy. The idea is not new. Maybe what is new are non-violent protests in multiple Arab nations at the same time.

The Islamic Revolution in the Middle East

The BBC World Service has concluded a three part documentary titled Iran and the West: From Khomeini to Ahmedinejad. It is a very informative documentary. Part 3 reveals that Iran under Khatami and the US worked together to set up a new government in Afghanistan in late 2001. After this cooperation, George Bush labeled Iran as part of the "Axis of Evil" in January, 2002, which damaged relations between the two countries. In 2003 Khatami again offered to cooperate with America, this time with Iraq and Hizballah. But Bush's conservative administration did not want to do business openly with the Islamic Republic, whose conception was marked by the Iranian students' taking hostage of 53 Americans for more than a year.

It has been more than 30 years since Iranians voted to become an Islamic Republic. Khomeini and his crew of Islamic scholars reversed the Shah's westernization of Iran and ended 2,500 of monarchy in Iran. Clerics in Qum began imposing their version of the hijab on all Iranian women, including in Tehran, where women had enjoyed many years of secular law. Many gay Iranians have been sentenced to death and hung in public. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians have fled Iran over the three decades.

One would think the Arab world, especially Saudi Arabia and other religious Gulf countries would embrace the new Islamic Republic. But the opposite happened, and a war between Saddam's Iraq and Khomeini's Iran would be funded by the oil-rich Sunni Arab Gulf states and would result in the deaths of a million people. The influence of Islam, however, would spread beyond Iran, and the relationship of each Arab country with the US would take a different and unique direction.

The governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia would cozy up to the US government and pay for American protection from Iran, and later from Saddam, and then from Iran again. Sunni Arab rulers have feared Iran's Islamic Revolution and have purchased billions of dollars in US weapons to defend themselves and have portrayed the Shia as infidels.

Despite their human rights record, the relationship between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the US government has been relatively stable since the end of the oil embargo in 1974, and the two governments worked together to fund and adequately weaponize the mujahideen in Afghanistan in order to expel the Soviet invaders. The Saudis also funded the building of hundreds of Wahhabi mosques and madrasas in Afghanistan and Pakistan throughout the 80s and 90s.

In 1992, angered by the presence of infidel American soldiers in the birthplace of Islam, bin Ladin moved to Sudan and from there he began planning attacks on American soldiers. Al Qaeda was born.

'On December 29, 1992, al-Qaeda's first terrorist attack took place as two bombs were detonated in Aden, Yemen. The first target was the Movenpick Hotel and the second was the parking lot of the Goldmohur Hotel.

The bombings were an attempt to eliminate American soldiers on their way to Somalia to take part in the international famine relief effort, Operation Restore Hope. Internally, al-Qaeda considered the bombing a victory that frightened the Americans away, but in the United States the attack was barely noticed.

No Americans were killed because the soldiers were staying in a different hotel altogether, and they went on to Somalia as scheduled. However little noticed, the attack was pivotal as it was the beginning of al-Qaeda's change in direction, from fighting armies to killing civilians.[88] Two people were killed in the bombing, an Australian tourist and a Yemeni hotel worker. Seven others, mostly Yemenis, were severely injured.'

In March, 2001, in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, the Taliban blew up 1,700-year-old sandstone statues of Buddha, believing them to encourage idol worship, which is forbidden by Islam. On September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda hijacked United Airlines and American Airlines planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing almost 3,000 people. 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi.

Islamic rule in the Arabian peninsula had been the norm for centuries: “The kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] is an authoritarian monarchy in which all political power is held by the royal family and in which the Koran and the Sunna (rules derived from the deeds and sayings of the prophet Mohammed) serve as the country's constitution. All Saudis are required by law to be Muslims, and the government prohibits the public practice of any religions other than Islam. Women, like this one at a trade fair in Riyadh, are forbidden from driving, receive half the inheritance awarded to their brothers, and find their testimony equal to half that of a man's in sharia courts.”

But the wave of modernization throughout the world and the liberalization that swept the Americas and Europe in the 50s and 60s also reached North Africa, the Levant, Baghdad, and Tehran. Few women in Cairo wore hijab in the 60s. The photo below shows how Iraqi women dressed in the late 60s.



The result of the last war between the Arab states and Israel in 1973 compelled many Arabs to turn to Islam. In Iran the belief that Islamic rule would end poverty and outside influence was very popular. A reversal of the trend towards secularization in the Middle East began. Khomeini’s revolution was the catalyst in a reaction that could not be easily reversed. It is as if the Sunni Arabs were competing with Iran in becoming more Islamic. Cairo and Tehran are very different from each other, but both capital cities have become more conservative.

By 2000, most women in Cairo wore some sort of hijab, and Muslim societies, especially in the Middle East, became more conservative, often striving to be fundamentalist. The entrenching of Islam in Iraq was inevitable, given the circumstances during the war with Iran, and then especially during sanctions, when even educated Iraqis struggled to survive. The US meant to punish Saddam, but indirectly punished the Iraqi people instead. The ostensible alliance between the US and KSA and the Gulf states, however, would continue.

Two years ago, at the height of the sectarian violence in Iraq that Saudis participated in, the US offered to sell Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states $20 billion in weapons. With typical ineptitude that made Dubya infamous, "the administration did not seek specific assurances from Saudi Arabia that it would be more supportive of the U.S. effort in Iraq, the officials said.

According to the officials, the plan to bolster the military might of Gulf countries is part of a U.S. strategy to contain the growing power of Iran and to demonstrate that, no matter what happens in Iraq, Washington remains committed to its longtime Arab allies in the region."

And so the irony and hypocrisy continue.

Today the Islamic revolution in the Middle East is in disarray. In Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, those who sought to impose their version of Islam have been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Muslims. Al Qaeda has nothing to offer Iraqis except death and threats of death.

After the fall of Saddam's secular regime, Jaish al Mahdi and the Iranian-influenced Badr seemed only to be competing with Al Qaeda in terms of imposing their respective views of Islam on the Iraqi people, often attacking Iraqi women for not wearing hijab. The more moderate Da3wa party have gained power through democratic elections in Baghdad, but have been unable to pull Iraq from the grips of poverty, war, and sectarianism. The new Iraqi security forces have relied heavily on American military support for their survival. Corruption and murder have plagued Maliki's government.

It seems that nothing good has come out of the Islamic Revolution.

After the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmedinijad, many Iranians protested, and the legitimacy of the Iranian regime appears to be in jeopardy. Iranians shouted "Allah Akbar" every night for weeks after the election, reminding all that God is above Khameini and Ahmedinejad. Shouting "Allah Akbar" also reminds us that Iranians are still pious Muslims. Leaders like Mossavi and Khatami may not be as liberal as westerners would like them to be, but they are more moderate and sensible than Khameini. The Iranian people will continue their protests, and hopefully the Iranian people will soon get the democracy and justice they deserve. Maybe then there will be reconciliation between Iran and the US, which may lead to a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Insha Allah.