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| Public funerals for Iraqi (top) and Lebanese (below) Shiite fighters killed in Syria |
Whipped up by Shiite Iran, the struggle for Syria has degraded into a
Shiite holy war.
Iranian, Iraqi and Lebanese Shiite fighters have been trickling into
Syria for months.
Effectively, their charge is to prevent the fall of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
But the “rallying banner” used for their recruitment is to protect the
revered Sayyeda Zeinab
shrine in Damascus.
The longer the fighting continues in Syria, the greater the risk of
exposing fault lines between Shiites and Sunnis in both Lebanon and Iraq.
Whereas Iran is 90 percent Shiite, Syria is 75 percent Sunni and 10
percent Alawi-Shiite.
In Lebanon, Muslims are very roughly divided into two quasi-equal Sunni
and Shiite halves.
Iraqi Muslims are two-thirds Shiite and one-third Sunni.
Lebanese Hezbollah’s head-on plunge to fight alongside Assad forces against
Syria’s Sunni rebels is increasingly radicalizing Lebanon’s Sunnis and
threatening Lebanon’s own future.
Hezbollah leader Hassan
Nasrallah declared in a televised speech last week, "Syria has real
friends who will not let it fall to the U.S., Israel or Islamic radicals".
With armed opposition
groups in Syria threatening to capture villages under Damascus government
control, he said, it was “normal to offer every possible and necessary aid to
help the Syrian army.”
Hezbollah fighters are at
the moment openly and freely waging war on Assad’s opponents in Qusayr, Homs
and the suburbs of Damascus.
Concomitantly, there
has been an uptick in the number of Iraqi Shiite fighters arriving in Syria to
join Assad’s war on Sunni “armed gangs.”
Initially the only proof
of a Lebanese or Iraqi Shiite fighter killed in Syria was the occasional hushed
funeral.
The funerals are now
public and much more common in both Lebanon and Iraq.
The latest, for two
members of Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq who died in Syria, was held in Najaf earlier this
week (see photo above).
Hawija
The Syria war is also fueling
renewed Sunni-Shiite strife in Iraq, where sectarian violence is on the rise.
Iraqi security forces used
“disproportionate force,” including shooting unarmed civilians, during their
raid on an encampment of Sunni protesters last week that left 45 people dead.
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| Images of Iraqi Sunni protesters killed in Hawija |
The April 23 crackdown
on Sunnis in the city of Hawija in Kirkuk province who were protesting against
the Shiite-led Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri el-Maliki unleashed a
backlash of deadly attacks by Sunnis and battles between gunmen and security
forces that have claimed more than 250 lives.
The unrest poses the
most serious threat to Iraq's stability since the last American troops left in
December 2011, and raises fears of a new phase of widespread sectarian
fighting.
A parliamentary
committee probing what happened at Hawija found this week that 44 Sunnis were
killed, along with one soldier. They were all killed by gunshots and ranged in
age from 13 to 55 years old, according to the report.
Seven of those killed
were shot from behind, and five victims had bruises or other injuries in
addition to the gunshot wounds, the report states.
The parliamentary
committee report indicates that “senior officials gave orders for army, federal
police, and SWAT forces, all of which fall under Maliki's military office, to
invade the demonstration site, remove demonstrators and level tents," according
to Human Rights Watch.
Witnesses told members
of the parliamentary committee that at dawn on April 23, security forces
sprayed demonstrators with hot water and threw sound and smoke bombs into the
square. Black cars that federal police typically use for crowd dispersal and
tanks invaded the square, “razing everything, including tents and cars,” the
report quoted witnesses as saying.
The report said some of
the corpses also bore abrasions, fractures, and bruises consistent with
beatings, and witnesses reported that security forces wearing black uniforms
beat them with batons and fired on protesters with live rounds using automatic
weapons.
On the basis of these
witness accounts and of interviews with members of parliament and local and
federal government officials, the report concluded that 44 civilians were
killed, including five children.
The parliamentary
committee gave Human Rights Watch photographs it says were taken of the victims
in the attack’s immediate aftermath. The photographs show the corpses of
several men lying in the area of Pride and Honor Square, amid flames and
burning cars. Their hands are bound and they appear -- because of the way the
bodies are positioned -- to have been executed with gunshots.
High-risk
Editorially, Egyptian political analyst Imad Adeeb,
writing today for the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, believes Iraq is more high-risk than Syria.
His four reasons:
1. Whereas the regime in Syria is aligned to Iran and
Russia and standing on its last legs, Iraq has a government that makes common
cause with Iran and is likely to stay.
2. In Syria, a sectarian regime is setting out. In
Iraq, a sectarian regime is sinking roots and increasingly buoying up its sect
on the home front and regionally.
3. Unlike Syria, Iraq is an oil-rich country par
excellence. It recently made a major gas field discovery to boot.
4. Iraq reflects the failure of an American venture
that cost Washington two trillion U.S. dollars. While it is difficult to
imagine U.S. troops returning to Baghdad, Iranian intelligence services and Republican
Guards are already having a field day in Iraq.
Adeeb says, “This makes Iraq under the government of
Maliki, and his political and sectarian alliances, pose the highest threat to
the independence of a modern civil state in the Arab world.
“Under Maliki, Iraq is becoming a satellite state
orbiting Iran and its sectarian scheme…
“Iraq’s Sunnis have no idea what’s in store for them.
Would they be driven to fall into the lap of armed religious extremists or
should they wait passively for a political organization to champion their
cause?”
