PsychoticDan
01-02-2007, 23:17
It may already be happening. $150/barrel, here we come.
The murderous Sunni-Shia battle in Iraq is starting to infect other parts of the Middle East. It's spreading in insidious ways: In people's conversations, in the ways Arabs in the region look at events in neighboring nations, in the decisions some are making to take up arms several countries away from home.
On a recent visit to Jordan, I was speaking with a man we often work with on the ground, a Jordanian Sunni, who is as far from a radical Islamist as you can find.
"What the Shias are doing in Iraq, it's making Arabs not want to support Hezbollah in Lebanon."
I was dumbfounded.
"What they did to Saddam Hussein?" I asked.
"That and other things. Nasrallah is going to have to back down with the Lebanese government because people don't want to support the Shias as much as after the war with Israel."
The internal clash between Sunnis and Shias was spreading like a cancer, I thought.
This man was no fan of Saddam Hussein, and I can't say I ever meet anyone in the Middle East who is; yet the grainy cellphone images of his hanging, and the taunts and cries of "Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!" beamed around the Middle East and the world, struck a chord among Sunnis in faraway places across the region. The images hit a raw nerve.
Drinking coffee in a hotel lobby on an unrelated assignment, I felt the full impact of the shift in the region. The Sunni-Shia divide is experiencing a region-wide revival more than 1,400 years after it first led to a split among Muslims.
I remembered the story of the son of an Egyptian banker, a young man in his thirties who was married with two children. Increasingly religious and radical, he one day told his father that he was traveling to Iraq to fight. Against whom? The Americans, the Shias, you name it. He disappeared a few months ago, leaving his young family behind. The last time the father heard from him, I was told, the son was heading to Damascus. He has had no news from him since.
Growing up in a Syrian family in France, I don't once remember hearing the differences between Sunnis and Shias discussed in any great detail. Occasionally, "a Sunni married a Shia," or a Christian man converted to marry a Muslim woman, and that was that. I never learned more than the basics about why the original schism occurred because, in my family, it was simply not considered relevant to my understanding of political and social events in the region.
In my travels across the Middle East as early as last year, I can't think of an instance when a Sunni or a Shia outside of Iraq openly expressed feelings of hostility toward members of the other sect. It was something that was happening in Iraq - something tragic - but a conflict that remained contained within the borders of the war-torn country.
That was the Middle East of the past. Today, the battle lines have multiplied exponentially. It's not "the Arab world against the West" of the Iraq invasion aftermath, it's the Sunnis versus the Shias, the Christians with the Sunnis against the Christians with the Shias, the Sunnis against the West, the Shias with the West, those against the West, the Druze with the Sunnis against the Shias, and the list goes on. The overall conflict is dividing itself into hundreds of splinters. It's not bloody everywhere, of course, but the tension is sewing the seeds of what could explode into other struggles in many other places across the region.
Take Iran and Saudi Arabia: The two regional powers have come to represent the Sunni-Shia divide and despite efforts to smooth things over, tensions still run deep.
Repeated comments from the Saudi King Abdallah who reigns over the bastion of Sunni Islam are binging the Sunni-Shia divide into sharp focus. In a recent interview, he issued a veiled message to Iran that Sunnis would not convert to Shiaism and that his country knows its "role as the state where the message (of Islam) began."
Meanwhile, two senior Saudi clerics declared this month that Shiites were infidels and heretics, describing them as "the most vicious enemy of Muslims."
As for the open battle, look no further than Lebanon. What began as a mainly political struggle between the Hezbollah (Shia)-led opposition and the Sunni/Christian/Druze government of Fouad Siniora is taking an increasing sectarian tone in spontaneous clashes between the youngest of Lebanon's citizens. The Beirut Arab University tiff that turned into an all-out deadly battle raised fears the Sunni-Shia clash was erupting without warning, among those with no memory of the civil war that devastated Lebanon for 15 years. Young, angry people fighting for what they believe to be their identity.
Brace yourself, without strong intelligent leadership in the region to turn things around quickly, many say there can only be more conflict to come.
http://www.cnn.com/exchange/blogs/in.the.field/
The murderous Sunni-Shia battle in Iraq is starting to infect other parts of the Middle East. It's spreading in insidious ways: In people's conversations, in the ways Arabs in the region look at events in neighboring nations, in the decisions some are making to take up arms several countries away from home.
On a recent visit to Jordan, I was speaking with a man we often work with on the ground, a Jordanian Sunni, who is as far from a radical Islamist as you can find.
"What the Shias are doing in Iraq, it's making Arabs not want to support Hezbollah in Lebanon."
I was dumbfounded.
"What they did to Saddam Hussein?" I asked.
"That and other things. Nasrallah is going to have to back down with the Lebanese government because people don't want to support the Shias as much as after the war with Israel."
The internal clash between Sunnis and Shias was spreading like a cancer, I thought.
This man was no fan of Saddam Hussein, and I can't say I ever meet anyone in the Middle East who is; yet the grainy cellphone images of his hanging, and the taunts and cries of "Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!" beamed around the Middle East and the world, struck a chord among Sunnis in faraway places across the region. The images hit a raw nerve.
Drinking coffee in a hotel lobby on an unrelated assignment, I felt the full impact of the shift in the region. The Sunni-Shia divide is experiencing a region-wide revival more than 1,400 years after it first led to a split among Muslims.
I remembered the story of the son of an Egyptian banker, a young man in his thirties who was married with two children. Increasingly religious and radical, he one day told his father that he was traveling to Iraq to fight. Against whom? The Americans, the Shias, you name it. He disappeared a few months ago, leaving his young family behind. The last time the father heard from him, I was told, the son was heading to Damascus. He has had no news from him since.
Growing up in a Syrian family in France, I don't once remember hearing the differences between Sunnis and Shias discussed in any great detail. Occasionally, "a Sunni married a Shia," or a Christian man converted to marry a Muslim woman, and that was that. I never learned more than the basics about why the original schism occurred because, in my family, it was simply not considered relevant to my understanding of political and social events in the region.
In my travels across the Middle East as early as last year, I can't think of an instance when a Sunni or a Shia outside of Iraq openly expressed feelings of hostility toward members of the other sect. It was something that was happening in Iraq - something tragic - but a conflict that remained contained within the borders of the war-torn country.
That was the Middle East of the past. Today, the battle lines have multiplied exponentially. It's not "the Arab world against the West" of the Iraq invasion aftermath, it's the Sunnis versus the Shias, the Christians with the Sunnis against the Christians with the Shias, the Sunnis against the West, the Shias with the West, those against the West, the Druze with the Sunnis against the Shias, and the list goes on. The overall conflict is dividing itself into hundreds of splinters. It's not bloody everywhere, of course, but the tension is sewing the seeds of what could explode into other struggles in many other places across the region.
Take Iran and Saudi Arabia: The two regional powers have come to represent the Sunni-Shia divide and despite efforts to smooth things over, tensions still run deep.
Repeated comments from the Saudi King Abdallah who reigns over the bastion of Sunni Islam are binging the Sunni-Shia divide into sharp focus. In a recent interview, he issued a veiled message to Iran that Sunnis would not convert to Shiaism and that his country knows its "role as the state where the message (of Islam) began."
Meanwhile, two senior Saudi clerics declared this month that Shiites were infidels and heretics, describing them as "the most vicious enemy of Muslims."
As for the open battle, look no further than Lebanon. What began as a mainly political struggle between the Hezbollah (Shia)-led opposition and the Sunni/Christian/Druze government of Fouad Siniora is taking an increasing sectarian tone in spontaneous clashes between the youngest of Lebanon's citizens. The Beirut Arab University tiff that turned into an all-out deadly battle raised fears the Sunni-Shia clash was erupting without warning, among those with no memory of the civil war that devastated Lebanon for 15 years. Young, angry people fighting for what they believe to be their identity.
Brace yourself, without strong intelligent leadership in the region to turn things around quickly, many say there can only be more conflict to come.
http://www.cnn.com/exchange/blogs/in.the.field/