Are Saudis Betting Their Barrels On A Shia-Sunni Divide?
Saeed Naqvi
How far will this latest
escalation by Riyadh of the Shia-Sunni conflict go?
It looks like an act best
described by a Hindi saying:
“Marta kya na karta?” (what
will a desperate man not do to escape expiry?)
It is possible to construct a
theory that the hanging of the Shia cleric Nimr al Nimr was an expedient.
Otherwise the hanging of 47 others, mostly Sunni extremist allied to the
Islamic State, Al Qaeda may have seemed one sided.
The existential danger the
Saudis face is not the Shia uprising in Qatif and other pockets in the eastern
province, nor is it Iran’s rise to power.
Riyadh is on sixes and sevens
because of grave internal threats. Iran and the Shia arc are designed to
externalize internal dangers. Strains in the coalition within the GCC and
pronounced fissures in Saudi society are sought to be glued. The region is being
directed to watch the menacing clouds of Shia ascendency all around them. This,
it is hoped, will cause the Saudis to take their eyes off the one billion dollars
a month unwinnable war in Yemen, the Syrian script meandering along routes
inhospitable to Saudi purpose, an economy in decline, the Obama-Kerry team
giving up the pretense of taking dictation from Riyadh – a screen is needed to
obscure this frightful Kaleidoscope. The Shia threat is that screen.
Internal dangers may be
peaking today but they are not of recent origin. 1979 will be etched on minds of
the Saudi ruling elite for two earthshaking events: Islamic Revolution which
brought the Ayatullahs to power in Tehran and the siege of the great mosque in
Mecca.
It was the latter event which
shook the Saudi regime because the uprising was a massive expression of
discontent against the Saudi “monarchy”. The concept of “Kings” is anathema in
Islam. This explains why to keep himself above opprobrium after the Mecca
uprising and the Iranian Revolution, the anxious Saudi monarch labeled himself
“the Keeper of the Holy Shrines”.
The leader of the Mecca
uprising, Juhayman al-Otaybi, would have been at the head of the Islamic State directed
against Riyadh had he been around today. Just as Riyadh blamed Iranian
collusion in 1979, it has turned upon the Shia threat today.
More recently, the Saudis
started paying a heavy price for helping create extremist insurgencies in Syria
and Iraq when in December 2014 the Kingdom’s Northern Border with Iraq was
breached by Islamic State elements. Saudi General Oudah al Belawi was killed in
the operation. Would this level of success across a border so heavily protected
be possible without “inside” help? This is the kind of speculation which frightens
the regime.
It cannot be disputed that
Sunnis constitute an overwhelming majority of the world’s Muslims. But this
overarching fact obscures nuances which cannot be wished away.
If the Sunni world of the
Saudi dream is so coherent, why did Riyadh bankroll Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s
military to topple a thoroughbred Sunni Prime Minister, Mohammad Morsi? Because
Riyadh is more scared of Muslim Brotherhood than it is even of the Shias.
“Brothers” represent a strong anti monarchy, political Islam, with a silent
following in the Kingdom itself which has often erupted in the social media.
Turkish President Tayyip
Erdogan, another candidate for the Sunni alliance, donned the cloak of the
Justice and Development only after Turkey’s secular constitution stopped his
Guru, Necmettin Erbakan from holding Prime Minister’s office because the Refah
Party he led was avowedly Islamist.
If Morsi as a Brother was unacceptable
to the Saudis, how is Erdogan kosher for a Wahabi monarchy.
Riyadh has listed Sudan in its
Sunni coalition. Records of the Mahdi’s war with the British from 1881 to 1899
describe the charismatic Mahdi as a “Sufi”. There are many question marks on
the validity of Riyadh’s coalition.
How does the Sunni coalition
compare with the Shia axis sketched by Riyadh? The Kingdom’s list of a Sunni
alliance consists of heads of governments, not the people. A Shia alliance, if
it were ever announced, would have people’s support.
There is no available
declaration by Tehran of a Shia axis or a coalition. Tehran and Bahrain are
overwhelmingly Shia. Over 65 percent of Iraq is Shia. Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, Syria, the Emirates, Egypt, Turkey, Sudan, Pakistan, all have
substantial or influential Shia populations. Not long ago, a saying in the
sophisticated circles of Cairo was: “Sunna bil deen; Shia bil hawa” – Sunni by
faith but Shia by culture. This because of 200 years of Fatamids in the region.
The puzzle for most observers
of West Asia is the composition of Yemen. Former Yemen strongman Abdullah Saleh
is a Sunni but also a Zaidi like a majority of Yemenis?
The Ottoman Caliphate ended in
1924 but an Imamate, a system in which the Imam is the supreme leader, ended in
Yemen only in 1962. The Imam as leader of the faith should not be mixed up with
the Imam as keeper of a mosque like Delhi’s Jama Masjid.
After the battle of Karbala in
680 AD, one of Imam Hussain’s grandsons Zaid ibn Ali, crossed over to Yemen to
continue the war against those who martyred Imam Hussain at Karbala. The
appellation, Shia, did not reach Yemen until much later. This explains the
Houthis becoming Shias later. In this framework, do Yemenis qualify as Sunnis
in Riyadh’s sectarian coalition?
Looking for details in the
Shia-Sunni divide is as difficult as looking for needle in a haystack.
The purpose of current
aggravation by Riyadh is two fold: to throw a smokescreen on its precarious
internal situation, and to give the Israel lobby in the US one more card to
play against the rise of Iran. This is a common aim of Riyadh and Jerusalem. The
job of the lobby is to give the sectarian divide traction in the US
Presidential campaign, tilting the argument in favour of Saudis who may be
persuaded to bankroll many undeclared projects. They could, for instance,
finance Islamic militancy in the Caucasus as one more way to get at Putin.
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