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Al Jazeera (English)
    Baghdad Burning Blog (by Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl)
            Dahr Jamail's Blog from Baghdad
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Burying the hatchet: US, Israel see Sunni-Shiite alliance emerging
(The Daily Star, 1 November 2003)
For years, the idea of an Islamic alliance between Sunni and Shiite extremists has been a nightmare scenario for Western intelligence agencies, their allies in the Muslim world and Israel. . . . Ever since the 1980s, there have been indications that hard-liners from both sects have been setting aside the theological differences that have kept them apart from 14 centuries and possibly even cooperating now and then on particular operations in which the interests of all concerned are advanced. . . . But no formalized hard-and-fast alliance between Shiite and Sunni hard-liners, dedicated to attacking the West and its Arab friends, ever seemed to emerge. By some accounts, that may be changing, largely as a consequence of Sept. 11, 2001, and the US response to that unprecedented terrorist attack on its soil. . . . The issue is clouded by intrigue and political agendas, propaganda from all sides, Iran, Israel, the US and elsewhere. But there seems little doubt that US President George W. Bush’s “war against terrorism” is increasingly perceived in the Muslim world as a new Judeo-Christian crusade against Islam and its people. The conquest and occupation of Iraq has radicalized the Muslim world to an unprecedented degree. . . . It is difficult to verify these claims, but it is clear that Sunni and Shiite militants are increasingly finding common cause against the US and its principal Middle Eastern ally, Israel. While there are deep differences between the two Muslim sects, which have flared into violence, as in Pakistan today, the perceived threat to Islam from the US since Sept. 11, has eroded those differences. . . . “Recent history has demonstrated that there are few religious-ideological barriers in the world of international terrorism,” according to a recent paper by Israel’s Institute for Contemporary Affairs. “It would be a mistake to assume that Islamist international terror groups are driven primarily by the religious associations with radical Sunni or radical Shiite Islam. These groups have their own geopolitical interests in bridging this great Islamic divide ­ particularly their antipathy for the US and it’s allies.” . . . The Shiite hard-liners may well have made an alliance of convenience with the Sunnis of Al-Qaeda to combat US forces now installed, far too close for comfort, in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan. . . . It is ironic that the US invasion of Iraq may be the instrument that pushes Sunni and Shiite together. An emerging alliance of Shiites and Sunnis in postwar Iraq may be the path to stability and the answer to the Americans’ inept efforts to end the chaos they engendered when they deposed Saddam’s brutal regime. Despite the escalating guerrilla war against the Americans, so far, at least, there has been no manifestation of the bloodbath between the long-repressed Shiites, who comprise some 60 percent of Iraq’s 24 million population, and the minority Sunnis who dominated Saddam’s regime that many had feared would happen once the war ended. . . . Indeed, two key leaders of the rival sects, the firebrand Shiite preacher Muqtada al-Sadr and the charismatic Ahmed Kubeisi of the Sunnis, have come together to oppose the US occupation and both command considerable grassroots support from their coreligionists. Both have preached unity among Sunnis and Shiites and both have run afoul of the Americans, who view the alliance between the two clerics with considerable concern and dismay and have blocked both from sitting on the US-appointed 25-member Governing Council of Iraq. . . . Many Muslims are convinced that pro-Western Arab regimes, particularly the rulers of Saudi Arabia, have also done much to maintain the religious schism for political purposes, largely by financing militant Sunni factions in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere over the years. . . . “It is this unholy alliance of secular Arab nationalism of Saddam’s Iraq, the Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalism of Saudi Arabia and Western imperialism with its massive media resources that has created the present perception of a vast Shiite-Sunni divide,” according to Islamic analyst Sultan Shahin. . . . “The fact that the widely predicted Shiite backlash against the decades-long Sunni domination of Iraq has not materialized may mean that the imperialist project of divide and rule has not succeed in that country, at least so far,” he wrote recently. “Now it is for the Shiites and Sunnis in other parts of world to build on the Iraqi example and seek to bridge the gulf separating the two sects promote harmony and peace undeterred by the bigotry of extremists and the machinations of imperialist powers.”

posted by Lorenzo 6:21 AM