The Sunni-Shia battle is growing by the day involving communities like the Alawites of Syria, the Alevi of Turkey and the Houthi of Yemen, whose Shia credentials might have been doubted a few decades ago by the Shia of Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. But people’s national and religious identities are defined as much by the perceptions and actions of their enemies as by their own beliefs. Denunciations of the Houthi of Yemen, who have recently captured the capital Sanaa, by Saudis as Shia and pawns of Iran tend to be self-fulfilling. When I asked some Alevi in Istanbul last year if they saw themselves as part of the wider Shia world, they said that their problem was that many Sunni saw them as such. The same is true of Syria. Whatever the popular origins of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad and his government in 2011, it swiftly took a sectarian form. This happened because sectarian divisions were always very real and because Sunni states like Saudi Arabia and Turkey channelled their support towards jihadis, thus preparing the ground for the dominance of the rebel movement by Islamic State (IS) and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qa’ida’s affiliate in Syria. It has been politically convenient for the US, Britain and their allies to pretend that there is a “moderate” non-jihadi rebel movement capable of fighting both IS and the Assad government. In reality, the civil war in Syria is all too real and sectarian killers are not all confined to IS. Earlier this year I was on the outskirts of Adra, a town north of Damascus, part of which had been captured by rebels from Douma who had killed many non-Sunni. One highly secular Alawite family had blown themselves up with grenades, children as well as parents, because they believed they would all be tortured to death by the rebels. In Syria the western powers blithely pretend that the rebels, especially the famous “moderates” are less sectarian than they are. In Baghdad they do the exact opposite and pretend that the Shia-dominated government and its armed forces do not have a sectarian agenda. The reality is that the most effective military force on the government side is the Shia militias who murder and kidnap Sunni with impunity as shown by a recent Amnesty International report. If the United States and others back the government with embedded advisers calling in air strikes, it will be supporting the Shia in a war against the 5 or 6 million Sunni in Iraq. Anti-Sunni sectarian cleansing has already started in Diyala, Hilla and other provinces around Baghdad. It is self-deceiving to believe the recapture of Mosul or other Sunni cities by the government will be welcomed by the terrified local inhabitants.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 03:52:46 +0000
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