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| From top clockwise, Lebanon's Nasrallah with Iran's Khamenei, Iraq's Maliki and Syria'sAssad |
Shiite powerhouse Iran seems to have drawn the battle
lines for Shiite-Sunni warfare in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq -- a total area of
634,000 square kilometers with an overall population of 58 million.
Syria’s minority Alawite
sect — an offshoot of Shiite Islam — dominates Bashar al-Assad’s regime while
the rebels fighting to overthrow the Syrian president are mostly from the Sunni
majority.
Assad's major allies – Iran,
its Lebanese Hezbollah cat’s-paw and Tehran’s Iraqi surrogate Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki -- are all Shiite.
Iran
Closely allied with
Damascus since the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Tehran remains Assad's main
political and diplomatic backer, arms supplier and financier.
Iranian advisers help
man Assad’s war room and Iranian Revolutionary Guards are
present in Syria in numbers ranging into the hundreds, though exact figures
cannot be determined.
Last January 48 Iranians held hostage by rebel fighters in
Syria were released in exchange for 2,130 prisoners held by the
Syrian authorities.
The Syrian opposition said the 48 Iranians captured
in August 2012 were members of the Revolutionary Guards on their way to join
pro-Assad forces. Iran said they were simple pilgrims on their way to the
Shiite shrine of Sayyeda Zeinab in southern Damascus.
Shiite fighters from Iran, Lebanon and Iraq
are now deployed in the Syrian capital’s Sayyeda Zeinab neighborhood.
Ten weeks ago Iran’s point
man in Lebanon and Syria was ambushed and killed by Syrian opposition forces while
travelling overland to Beirut from Damascus.
The semiofficial Fars
news agency identified the slain Revolutionary Guards commanding officer as
Hassan Shateri. In Lebanon, Shateri was posing as “Hessam Khoshnevis,” head of
an Iranian agency set up to help rebuild Hezbollah-controlled areas devastated
by the 2006 war with Israel (see
my February 14 post).
More recently, Iran and Hezbollah built a
50,000-strong “People’s Army” of Syrian militiamen to bolster Assad’s depleted
regular army.
Hezbollah
Hezbollah is now playing
a more deepening and barefaced role in the Syria war just across the Lebanese
border.
Assad warplanes this
week provided Hezbollah fighters with aerial cover to help them advance near
the strategic town of al-Qusayr in Homs province.
The border region near
Homs on the Syria side is strategic because it links Damascus with the coastal
enclave that is the heartland of Syria's Alawites and is also home to the
country's two main seaports, Latakia and Tartus.
The battle for al-Qusayr
has inflamed tensions in Lebanon, where two Sunni clerics this week called for
volunteers to head to Syria and defend the oppressed in al-Qusayr and Homs.
Iraq
In Iraq this week, the killings of scores of Sunni protesters by forces
of the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government have raised fears of a return to all-out sectarian war.
The trouble began on
Tuesday when the army stormed an encampment in the village of Hawija, where Sunnis
had been holding protests since late December, leaving dozens dead and injured.
That incident set off a
wave of revenge attacks that hit five different Sunni-majority provinces,
killing dozens more people and culminating with Sunni gunmen taking control of
the town of Sulaiman Bek in Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad, on Wednesday.
The violence is the
deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that erupted some four months ago in Sunni
areas of the Shiite-majority country.
The Sunni protesters
have called for the resignation of Shiite Prime Minister Maliki and railed
against the alleged targeting of their community by the authorities.
“The Sunni uprising,
having now turned violent, represents a significant challenge to Maliki, whose
consolidation of power over the security forces and the judiciary, and his
targeting of high-level Sunni leaders for arrest, has raised alarms among world
powers,” according to The
New York Times.
“Mr. Maliki has
presided over an unwieldy power-sharing government, which nominally gives
prominent roles to Sunnis but in reality has resulted in political stasis, and
he has signaled in recent months that he would prefer to move to a majority
government, dominated almost solely by Shiites. On Tuesday, two Sunni ministers
quit to protest the raid in Hawija, and the largest bloc of Sunni lawmakers
suspended participation in Parliament.
“Mr. Maliki made no
public comments on the situation Wednesday, but on Tuesday, after being pressed
by American officials and the United Nations, he said he would open an
investigation into the events in Hawija, and promised to hold military officers
accountable for any mistakes.
“The deteriorating
situation in Iraq highlights the sectarian tensions that have risen across the
region, particularly amid the raging civil war in Syria…
“In Iraq, the central
government has aligned with the Syrian government and its greatest ally, Iran,
while Sunnis here have sided with the rebels, and they now appear to be
emboldened by the events in Syria to challenge their own government.
“The sectarian fissure
is evident in the rhetoric of the Sunni rebellion here [in Iraq]: militants
over the last few days have referred to Iraq’s army as a force loyal to Iran,
while many Shiites here have cast the formerly peaceful Sunni protesters as
Muslim extremists beholden to al-Qaeda…”
John Drake, an Iraq
specialist with risk consulting firm AKE Group, was quoted this week saying “the
fact that this is a predominantly Shiite government and it's predominantly Shiite
security forces opening fire on predominantly Sunni individuals (civilians or
militants) is going to have an impact on sectarian relations and could prompt a
rise in sectarian violence as a result."
Enclave
Political sources close
to the Maliki government suspect outside forces –“including Syrian armed gangs
and regional forces” -- are trying to exploit the Hawija events to help carve
up a Sunni enclave in Iraq.
Military sources on the
other hand blame the violence on “measures taken by Iraqi army units along the
border with Syria in the last 10 days. Let’s not forget Hawija, on the Iraqi
side of the border, sits opposite Deir Ezzor, which is Jabhat al-Nusra’s nerve
center.
“Iraqi forces
succeeded, to a large extent, in tightening the noose on Takfiri groups that sneak
fighters and arms into Syria from Iraq.”
Clarion
The Syria crisis, he
explains, “has entered a new phase of intense Iranian involvement.”
The reason is Tehran
cannot continue seeing its regional cards come under threat as they are in
Syria, Iraq, the Gulf and Yemen.
It is no coincidence,
says Choucair, that most live events in the region bear Iran’s signature. For
example:
- “Hezbollah’s overt and
unabashed participation in fighting alongside Syrian regime troops to recapture
territory from opposition forces as deep inside Syria as Homs.”
- “Execution by Maliki,
Tehran’s favorite point man in Baghdad, of his threat to crack down on
opponents and tribesmen who have been challenging his policies for months in
al-Anbar province, and by ordering the army to bomb protesters west of Kirkuk
and then in Baghdad.”
- “Assad’s warning that
terrorism will come back to haunt the West and his latest pep talk to a visiting
deputation of regime loyalists from Lebanon (see
my post, “Assad
on Black Sunday...”).
- Release of a photo
showing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei receiving Hezbollah leader Hassan
Nasrallah. The still aims to tell Lebanese Shiites that Hezbollah’s deepening
involvement in Syria has the blessing of Vali e-faqih (or
Guardian Jurist).
Counterattack
“Any parallel,” he wonders,
“between the Iraqi army’s storming of the Sunni protesters’ encampment in
Hawija and the joint campaign by Hezbollah and Syrian regime forces on the
rebel-held area of al-Qusayr?”
Yes, says Qusaybati.
The similitude is that
Tehran’s allies in Iraq and Syria “are implementing what can be described as an
Iranian counterattack” in anticipation of “the grand
bargain” between the United States and the Islamic Republic over the
latter’s nuclear program.
America suffices with
watching for the time being. It is hedging its bets on Iran drowning in
quagmires of religious and sectarian wars.
Bane
Initially, he says,
Iran leaders described the uprising in Tunisia and Egypt as an “Islamic
revival.” They changed their minds when the Arab Spring reached Syria.
Zaatra says most Shiite
Arabs subscribed to Tehran’s immoral stand, causing a serious sectarian split
in the region – whether in places like the Gulf and Lebanon, where Shiites are
in the minority, or in predominantly Shiite countries such as Iraq and Bahrain.
Iran’s mobilization of
Shiite Arabs against the majority Sunnis in Syria triggered an unprecedented
backlash among the historically tolerant Sunnis of the Arab and Islamic worlds,
according to Zaatra.
The cause of this
sectarian polarization is chiefly Syria and what happened earlier, when Iran put
Iraq under its thumb and dictated a sectarian agenda on Iraq’s new Shiite
rulers – who incidentally “entered Baghdad riding U.S. tanks.”
Shiite Arabs – whether
in Iraq, Lebanon or the Gulf -- have no interest in a confrontation with their
neighbors or fellow citizens and vice-versa. Ethnic and sectarian wars leave no
winners, Zaatra remarks.
“The arrogance of power
has got to the Iranian leaders’ heads. It made them lose sight of the true
balance of power in the Islamic world, where Shiites are in a minority of only
about 10 percent – and a lower percentage in the Arab world…”
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