http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-v-micallef/death-to-america-shia-sun_b_6726458.html
Joseph V. Micallef
CEO & Senior Producer, Allegro Media Group; Military history and world
affairs writer
'Death to America': Shia-Sunni Rivalry and the Realignment of the Middle East
On January 20, 2015, Houthi militants from the Ansar Allah militia
(Supporters of God) attacked the Presidential Palace in Sana'a, Yemen.
Two days later, President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and Prime Minister
Khaled Bahah tendered their resignation to the Yemeni parliament. On
February 6, the Houthis announced they were dissolving parliament and
that a Revolutionary Committee led by Mohammed Ali al-Houthi would
assume full control of the government. The coup culminated a four year
long civil war, although its origins went back to 2004, which had seen
the Ansar Allah militia take possession of the northwest corner of
Yemen along with the capital, Sana'a and de facto control of much of
the rest of the country.
The Houthis belong to the Zaidi branch of Shia Islam. Although the
Zaidi are a uniquely Yemeni sect, they share many similarities with
the Shia communities in Iran and Iraq. They make up about one-third of
the population. Iran has been a strong backer of the Houthi militia.
The Hadi government had claimed that Tehran has supplied money and
arms as well as training, via the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds
Force and Hezbollah militants, at a secret base in Eritrea. It also
claimed that it had evidence that a number of arms shipments, destined
for the Houthis, that had been seized by the government had originated
in Iran. Both Iran and Hezbollah denied those charges.
The Hadi government had been seen as strongly pro-American and had
been actively cooperating with the United States in its conflict with
al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The U.S. was alleged to have
operated a "secret base" from which it conducted drone attacks against
AQAP militants as well as the related Ansar al-Sharia group. The drone
that was used in the 2011 attack against Anwar al-Awlaki, AQAP's
leader, was actually launched from a "secret" CIA operated air field
in Saudi Arabia. Although it's hardly a secret anymore as you can find
it on Google maps.The base is just across the border from Yemen.
References in the media to a "base in Yemen" may be describing a
forward command post used to coordinate drone attacks rather than a
facility where the drones are actually based. In addition, the U.S.
also has special forces units stationed in Yemen. The overthrow of the
Hadi government was seen as a significant setback for American
interests in Yemen, and especially to the covert war it had been
conducting against AQAP.
Following the coup the U.S., as well as several other European
countries, closed their embassies and withdrew their diplomatic
personnel. American diplomats organized a hasty departure to the
Sana'a international airport where they boarded whatever international
flights had open seating. The marine security guards were required to
relinquish their weapons before being allowed to depart and Houthi
militants seized embassy vehicles that were left at the airport. The
embassy, however, was not touched, and at least American diplomats
were spared the indignity of being paraded blindfolded through the
streets of Sana'a. In an epilogue all too disturbingly familiar,
Houthi militants celebrated their success with street demonstrations
and the accompanying mandatory "Death to America" chants.
Privately however, the Houthi told the United States that they wanted
U.S. special forces in Yemen to stay and that the U.S. could continue
to operate the "covert drone base" there. Moreover, they also
indicated they were prepared to work with the United States in the
ongoing operation against AQAP. For the Houthi, looking to consolidate
their position in Yemen and fearful that the situation in Yemen could
quickly degenerate into a Houthi/Shia versus AQAO/Sunni all out civil
war, a quiet alliance with the United States made a lot of sense. The
other two main political groupings in Yemen, the largely secular,
Marxist inspired Southern Movement, and the traditional Sunni tribes
in the east and center, are unlikely to be much help in fighting AQAP.
Washington now finds itself considering a de facto alliance with a
conservative, jihadist, Iran backed, Shia militia -- much as it has
already done with similar, Iranian backed, Shia militias in Iraq.
The issue underscores a much broader trend that has been steadily
gaining momentum in the Middle East, a fundamental realignment of the
regions politics along a Shia-Sunni axis. For much of the postwar
history of the Middle East, the regions politics were played out
within the framework of Soviet-American Cold War rivalry. The
Israeli-Palestinian conflict quickly became the centerpiece of that
rivalry with Soviet and American client states lining up behind their
respective patrons. Israel, after a brief flirtation with the Soviet
Union, quickly aligned itself with the United States. Secular,
socialist "front line states" like Egypt and Syria found common ground
with Moscow. The Jordanians, a conservative monarchy never quite
comfortable with the Kremlin's communist rhetoric and always better
adept at maneuvering between rival superpowers, managed to stay in
everyone's good graces.
Lesser, although not necessarily less bloody conflicts, Syria-Lebanon,
Iraq-Iran, Iraq-Kuwait and civil wars in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen,
resulted in similar alignments of each superpower's respective
proxies. The arrangement, bloody conflicts notwithstanding, was
remarkably stable. From time to time countries would switch camps,
Egypt flipped from the Soviet camp to the American as a result of the
Camp David Peace accords, and Iran flipped from the American to (more
or less) the Soviet camp as a consequence of the Iranian revolution.
Ethiopia flipped from the Western camp to the Soviet and back to the
Western camp. Somalia flipped from the Soviet camp to the Western camp
and then flipped into chaos. On the whole, these arrangements, along
with Middle Eastern governments and their leaders, proved to be
remarkably long lived, typically continuing for decades.
Historians are often prone to point out "inflection points,"
historical events that have a disproportionately significant impact on
a country or region. These are events that "reset a region's
historical trajectory" in a new, and often, wholly unexpected way.
Invariably the significance of such inflection points does not emerge
until years after the fact. Such is the benefit of hindsight. In
recent years it has become obvious that there have been two
significant inflection points in recent Middle Eastern history. The
first was the 1979 Iranian revolution. Not only did that revolution
replace a Western ally with a militant anti-Western and anti-American
government, but more significantly it heralded the rise of political
Shi'ism -- combining the power of a large, oil rich nation state with
a militant pro-Shia political agenda.
The second event was the American led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which
resulted in the fall of the Hussein government and its replacement by
a Shia dominated one. Not only did the overthrow of Saddam Hussein
remove an existential threat to Iran, but its replacement by a
pro-Iranian Shiite government proved to be the linchpin in a broad,
geopolitical arc of Iranian influence across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and
the Palestinian territories that came to be called the "Shia Arc" or
the "Iranian Arc of Influence," and was seen as a clear manifestation
of a "Shia revival."
At the moment there are three civil wars in the Middle East -- Iraq,
Syria and Yemen -- that pit Sunni dominated militias and military
forces against Shia based ones. In addition, significantly large Shia
minorities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Emirates are growing
increasingly restive. In Bahrain, a key American ally in the Gulf,
Shias are in the majority and outnumber Sunnis by better than 2 to 1.
Bahrain has seen a widespread and growing, Iranian backed, Shia
militancy. Significantly, most of Saudi Arabia's largest oil fields
are in regions where the population is predominantly Shia. Iran's
growing assertiveness in the Middle East in general, and in the
Persian Gulf in particular, especially among the Shia population
there, has brought it into sharp conflict with Saudi Arabia. It has
also raised Saudi fears that any American reconciliation with Iran
would come at their expense and cement Tehran's role as the preeminent
local power in the Gulf.
At the same time as this growing rivalry between Tehran and Riyadh, a
second equally significant rivalry is emerging between Turkey and
Saudi Arabia, two historical American allies, for the de facto
leadership of the Sunni world. Historically, Saudi Arabia has been
perceived as the leader of the Sunni community, a role it could claim
both as a consequence of its stewardship of Islam's holy cities of
Mecca and Medina as well as its prodigious oil wealth and its funding
of Islamic charities and new mosques around the world. Turkey's
president, Recep Erdogan, however, has increasingly tried to position
himself as the de facto leader of the Muslim ummah -- the billion plus
Sunni community.
On February 12, for example, during a press conference in Mexico City,
Erdogan sharply criticized President Obama, Vice President Biden and
Secretary of State Kerry for "their silence" after the murder of three
Muslim students at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
American officials were flabbergasted by Erdogan's comments on what
they say as a purely, domestic criminal matter. His comments were
carried live on Turkish television, however, preempting currently
running programming, as well as elsewhere in the Middle East,
underlining his self-assumed role as leader and spokesman of the
worldwide Sunni community.
Ankara's competition with Riyadh has sparked a range of additional
conflicts between them, from sponsorship of different militant groups
in the Syrian civil war to a competition in Cuba to see who can get
Havana's permission to build a new mosque in the city. The two
governments have sharply different views on the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Saudi's have always seen the Brotherhood as anti-monarchy and an
existential threat to the continuation of the Saud dynasty. Erdogan's
Justice and Development Party trace its roots to the Turkish branch of
the Muslim Brotherhood and has historically been a strong supporter of
the organization. Lately, however, given its concern for the need to
build a broad, Islamist coalition to oppose both al-Qaeda and Islamic
State, Riyadh has been signaling that it may soften its historic
opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Given Russia's long standing ties with Syria and Iran, at first
glance, it would seem that the Kremlin is aligning itself with the
"Shia" pole of the growing Sunni-Shia rivalry. In reality, Moscow sees
significant opportunities in the Middle East given both what it
perceives as the incoherence of American policy there and the
political realignment that is taking place. In recent months, Russia
has reached out to improve its relationship with Turkey, a
longstanding foe, by offering preferential pricing of natural gas
exports as well as the possibility of a new natural gas pipeline to
carry Russian natural gas to the Mediterranean. Egypt too, has been
the focus of particularly active Russian diplomatic attention.
Some of America's European allies have also seen the lack of a clear
American strategy as an opportunity to better position themselves with
the Sunni Arab kingdoms in the Gulf. This diplomatic initiative has
resulted in the curious situation of a French Socialist government
taking a particularly hard line on the negotiations over the Iranian
nuclear program as a way of assuring the Saudi's and the Gulf states
that they would stand in the way of any "unreasonable" White House
concessions to the Iranian government.
The rivalry between Islamic State and al-Qaeda will also have an
impact on the larger issues of Shia-Sunni relations in the Middle
East. Islamic State has made its attacks on Shias a critical element
of its strategy of terror and jihadist violence. Al Qaeda, on the
other hand, has generally ignored the historic antagonisms between
Shias and Sunnis in favor of creating a broad Muslim coalition against
what they perceived as the "far enemy" -- the United States. The
Islamic State's virulent anti-Shia strategy may force al Qaeda to
adopt a similar orientation as it competes with Islamic State for the
heart and soul of international jihadists. This already seems to be
happening in Pakistan, which has the second largest population of both
Shias and Sunnis in the Islamic world, (India actually has the second
largest population of Muslims overall, second only to Indonesia) where
al-Qaeda affiliated groups appear to be leading a campaign of rising
violence against the Shia community there.
North and West Africa have recently become the centers of new jihadist
inspired conflict. In West Africa the militant jihadist group, Boko
Haram, has repeatedly praised Islamic State and there have been
reports that it has officially pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi and
recognized him as Caliph of the Muslim ummah. Islamic State has not,
however, publically acknowledged that allegiance. Nonetheless, Boko
Haram has emerged as a smaller version of Islamic State and is
increasingly adopting the "Islamic State template," especially in
regard to its social media. In Libya, al-Qaeda and Islamic State
inspired groups are waging war both against each other as well as the
"government" of Libya; in as far as there is one. North and West
Africa are overwhelmingly Sunni, and the small percentage of Shias
gets progressively smaller as you travel west. While there are few
Shia communities in North Africa to target, the growing rivalry
between al-Qaeda and Islamic State there may precipitate more
anti-Shia violence elsewhere as each side tries to burnish its claim
for the leadership of international jihadism.
For the United States the growing Sunni-Shia rivalry in the Middle
East offers both opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, it
allows the United States to play a balancing role, manipulating,
assisting and constraining both sides, as great powers are prone to
do, in pursuit of its own strategic objectives there. On the other
hand, the rivalry cuts across the present alignment in the Middle
East, threatens to put historic American allies at odds with one
another, and often creates de facto alliances with countries or their
proxies that Washington has been at odds with.
At a basic level, the U.S. finds itself in a situation where it is
fighting radical, Salafist-inspired jihadist movements, with an
explicit anti-American agenda, that its historic Sunni Arab allies
have, at times, been ambivalent about attacking. Moreover, many of
their citizens are sympathetic towards these jihadist groups and they
have often provided them, privately, with financial assistance. On the
other hand, it also finds its agenda in the region increasingly
aligned, at least in as far as fighting Salafist jihadists is
concerned, with Shia militias. Historically, outside of Lebanon and
Iraq, these militias have not expressly targeted Americans for
violence but their sponsor, Iran, has usually been diametrically
opposed to U.S. policies and interests in the Middle East.
At this point, we are not even in a position to argue that "the enemy
of my enemy is my friend", in fact, we're not even entirely sure who
all of our enemies and our friends are. In this rapidly changing
environment, U.S. foreign policy needs to be both fresh and nimble.
Sadly, it has been neither, preferring instead a seat of the pants
approach that only serves to emphasize its policy inconsistency and
its strategic incoherence.
Received on Sun Feb 22 2015 - 14:44:50 EST