By John Lawrence
American politicians, including George W Bush and Barack Obama, have failed to deal with the fact of Sunnis and Shiites hating each other and have been fighting for 1383 years. Their lack of knowledge and/or acceptance of that fact has led to their bungling and botching of Middle East policy. There are effectively two religions: Sunni Islam and Shiite Islam.
Understanding the religious composition of countries in the Middle East goes a long way toward explaining why certain countries are fighting other countries or are standing by doing nothing in the fight against terrorism. For instance, why won’t Saudi Arabia fight ISIS? The answer is simple. They are both Sunnis. For the most part Sunnis won’t fight Sunnis and Shiites won’t fight Shiites. But they sure as hell will fight each other. Americans and the western world in general have just been snookered into getting involved in this mess, which has been going on for over 1000 years, starting with George W Bush’s ill-conceived and immoral invasion of Iraq.
Middle Easterners have long memories. They are fighting battles which started eons ago.This is from an article by Harold Rhode:
When Khomeini arrived in Iran in February 1979, one of the first statements he made to the media on the tarmac was that “he had come to rectify a wrong which took place 1400 years ago.” Westerners thought this somewhat quaint and obviously irrelevant. All that interested them was what he had to say about the Shah, America, and Israel. To Westerners, especially Americans, who dismiss things that happened a few days ago, Khomeini mumbling about some event that took place centuries ago seemed irrelevant.
Middle Easterners, however, who never forget perceived wrongs, knew exactly what he was talking about. When the Muslim prophet Muhammad died in 632 CE, a fight broke out among the Muslims as to who would inherit the leadership of Islam. Those who supported their prophet’s family eventually became known as the Shi’ites. Those who supported what might be labeled the “establishment” in Mecca became known as the Sunnis.
Rhode goes on to say, “Sadly, Middle Easterners culturally are unable bring themselves to ‘let bygones be bygones’ – a concept totally alien to Middle Eastern culture. Disputes therefore fester, then erupt when one side perceives the other as weak.” And thanks to George W Bush, Americans are embroiled in a 1400 year old dispute involving also perceived grievances experienced in the years since then. Nothing will ever get accomplished until there is peace and reconciliation between the two branches of Islam: Sunni and Shia. And that doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon.
If Khomeini was intent on righting a wrong committed almost 1400 years ago, his long memory probably also extends back to the time when the US installed the hated Shah in power in Iran. Again it was all about oil. Iran had nationalized its oil fields under the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, until a US and UK backed coup d’état deposed Mosaddegh and brought back foreign oil firms.
In August 2013 the CIA admitted that it was involved in both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda. The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out “under CIA direction” and “as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.”
Iran got rid of the Shah in the 1979 Islamic Revolution which replaced the US backed Shah with an Islamic republic under the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, supported by various leftist and Islamic organizations as well as Iranian students.
85% of all Muslims Are Sunnis
Iraq was a country ruled by a Sunni, Saddam Hussein, in which a majority of the people were Shiites. Potential conflict there? You bet. Saddam, however, kept the lid on this seething cauldron. Getting rid of him took the lid off. Syria has a government led by Bashar al-Assad who is an Alawite, a branch of Shia, who rules over a majority Sunni populace – just the opposite situation of Iraq.
85% of all Muslims are Sunnis. Sunnis are a majority in most Muslim communities in Southeast Asia, China, South Asia, Africa, most of the Arab World, and among Muslims in the United States (of whom 85–90% are Sunnis). The country with the highest Shiite population is Iran which is 90% Shia. Naturally, Iran supports Assad, a fellow Shia. Make sense?
American leaders, who don’t want to admit the fact that Islam is essentially two religions, fall into the trap of making statements like “ISIS has killed more Muslims than Christians.” Yeah, Shiite Muslims. Very few Muslims identify as “just a Muslim” or generic Muslims like American Presidents like to talk about. So ISIS naturally wants to wipe out the Shiites and establish a Sunni Caliphate. If the US had its way and got rid of al-Assad, it wouldn’t take long for ISIS to add southern Syria to its Caliphate. They already control northern Syria.
The attackers on 9/11 were Sunnis; the attackers in Paris were Sunnis. Let’s be clear about who the terrorists really are, and they are not Shiites. That certainly does not mean that all Sunnis are terrorists.
Getting Rid of Bashar al-Assad Would be as Disastrous as Getting Rid of Saddam Was
Photo by watchsmart 
How does this relate to what is happening in Syria now and America’s role in it? Hezbollah (Iran’s proxy) and Iran are naturally supporting Bashar al-Assad because they don’t want a Sunni takeover of Syria. Who is America supporting? Sunnis of course. And who are the ISIS fighters who occupy parts of northern Syria? They are Sunnis. When American politicians talk about getting Muslims to put troops on the ground to take out ISIS, who do they think those troops are going to be?
Not Saudi Arabians who are Sunnis and who have supported Wahhabism, an extreme sect that has spawned terrorism. For more than two centuries, Wahhabism has been Saudi Arabia’s dominant faith. Wahhabism has been accused of being “a source of global terrorism”, inspiring the ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and for causing disunity in Muslim communities by labeling Muslims who disagreed with the Wahhabi definition of monotheism as apostates (takfir), thus paving the way for their execution for apostasy.
George W Bush kowtowed and pandered to the Saudi princes because he lusted after their oil.The US has been on the side of not what is morally right but on the side of rich American oil corporations. Bush and others winked at their Wahhabist extremism, and they winked back when Bush ousted Sunni Saddam Hussein and supposedly liberated Iraqi Shiites. But it didn’t work out that way. Instead Bush Jr opened a can or worms that metastasized into ISIS.
Yet the US sells arms to Saudi Arabia, and, despite its riches, it will do nothing to fight ISIS. Recently, the US State Department has approved the sale of $1.29 billion worth of bombs to Saudi Arabia, as its military carries out air strikes in neighboring Yemen. Why is Saudi Arabia fighting in Yemen’s civil war? Because it doesn’t want the country taken over by Houthis who are Shiite rebels. Simple as that. It is fighting Shiites to keep Sunnis in power.
Saudi Arabia is the center of the Sunni branch of Islam. It is also the center of the most violent and radical sect of Islam … the “Wahhabis”. But the U.S. has long supported the Madrassa schools within Saudi Arabia which teach radical Wahhabi beliefs.
An article in WashingtonsBlog, The U.S. Is Supporting the Most Violent Muslim Terrorists In Order to Wage War for Oil, on May 2, 2013 states:
Sunni extremists accounted for the greatest number of terrorist attacks and fatalities for the third consecutive year. More than 5,700 incidents were attributed to Sunni extremists, accounting for nearly 56 percent of all attacks and about 70 percent of all fatalities. Among this perpetrator group, al-Qaida (AQ) and its affiliates were responsible for at least 688 attacks that resulted in almost 2,000 deaths, while the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan conducted over 800 attacks that resulted in nearly 1,900 deaths.
I’ll state it simply: The US is on the wrong side in Syria. Al-Assad was never a threat to US interests. ISIS is. The western world is waking up to that fact after the killings in Paris. Hollande and Putin and most of the Western World are now determined to wipe ISIS out. So where does Obama stand? He’s backing off his position of getting rid of Assad slightly. The neocon policy of regime change has been a huge failure throughout the Middle East and before that in South America and elsewhere.
For instance, The election of Marxist candidate Salvador Allende as President of Chile in September 1970 led President Richard Nixon to order that Allende not be allowed to take office. Following an extended period of social, political, and economic unrest fomented by the CIA, General Augusto Pinochet assumed power in a violent coup d’etat on September 11, 1973; among the dead was Allende.
So now Obama is in the position of trying to save face by sticking to his position that Assad has to go, while Putin, Hollande and the rest of the Western World are aligned in their resolve to get rid of ISIS. You have to give Obama some credit for trying to end the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. That was his game plan; it just didn’t work out due to the ongoing struggle for power in the region. Where is Saddam when you need him?
Obama’s support for Sunni moderates fighting Assad in Syria was never realistic. If they had been successful in removing al-Assad, they would have installed a Sunni government in Syria. How much time would have to pass after that before their fellow Sunnis, namely ISIS, would have taken over all of Syria? Not much, I think. Remember they already control a large part of it.
Who Will the “Boots on the Ground” Fighting ISIS Be?
Where are the Muslim troops that are going to be the “boots on the ground” that will fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq? On Meet the Press, Leon Panetta suggested that the “boots on the ground” could be supplied by Saudi Arabia. Really? They who arguably spawned ISIS are going to take up arms against fellow Sunnis? I don’t think so.
They won’t be Sunnis, so let’s assume they will be Shiites. Where will they come from? Our pals in Iran? Perhaps, but not under US leadership. Even more distasteful to American politicians than allying ourselves with Russia would be to ally ourselves with Iran. However, in a report by Lara Logan on 60 Minutes, it was pointed out that the only thing that has saved Iraq from being completely overtaken by ISIS is Iranian-backed “boots on the ground” who naturally have had little if any support from the US.
Even more naive than Leon Panetta is John Kasich. His comprehensive plan to deal with ISIS would include “Arab forces.” Which Arab forces, Mr. Kasich? Not Sunnis. Well, then, will it be our pals in Iran? He is proud to see many moderate Muslims willing to stand up and condemn the attacks in Paris. Well, who are these moderate Muslims. Are they the 5% who identify as “just a Muslim” and don’t identify as either Sunni or Shiite?
Supposedly, according to Mr. Kasich, these moderate Muslims say that their religion has been hijacked. That doesn’t square very well with the documented 1400 year hatred between Sunnis and Shiites. Of course, Sunnis would say it has been hijacked by Shiites and Shiites would say it has been hijacked by Sunnis. Remember there are hardly any generic Muslims, but these guys go on pretending that there are. Naivete abounds!
The US better get its act together and get on the right side of history. Putin has visited Iran recently and Russia and Iran are forming an alliance both to repel ISIS (which has proclaimed its enmity to Iran) and to cooperate economically and strategically. I’m afraid the US is being left on the sidelines as France, Russia and Iran take over the major responsibilities of fighting terrorism. In a way, this is OK. Let someone else do the job that the US has fantastically bungled at this point.
In light of the deep-seated hatred between Sunnis and Shiites, American political leaders should never again say that Muslims are by and large peace loving peoples. This negates the realities of the thousands of years of hatred and fighting between the two groups. Solving this conundrum would require getting the two branches of Islam to make peace with each other.
According to Sunnis, Muslims are wonderful people, but they mean Sunni Muslims are wonderful people, and the opposite holds true for Shiites. So there’s no lack of Muslims willing to say that Islam is a religion of peace and love, but they don’t qualify it with “if it weren’t only for those terrible Shiites (Sunnis).”
The US has supported the epicenter of Sunnis, Saudi Arabia, because supposedly we need their oil. Well, reality check, we don’t need it any more. The US needs to convert away from oil and towards renewables to forestall the disaster of global warming but, as far as oil is concerned, the US is self-sufficient. The US needs to realign its Mideastern policy.
What we need is a coalition, a partnership among France, Russia, Iran and the US with France, Russia and Iran supplying the boots on the ground. America’s role in that regard has a sorrowful legacy. Let someone else step up. The US doesn’t have to be the “leader.” The partnership should be equal with the military Chain of Command being comprised of officers from all four countries on a merit-based basis.
Eliminating ISIS’ nascent Caliphate in Syria and Iraq in terms of lands occupied, however, will not prevent them and others from pulling off Paris-style attacks. Those attacks could just as easily have been planned and executed without any help from ISIS outside Europe. They were essentially homegrown European cells that then activated themselves. They were just taking a page out of American domestic terrorists’ book (who have no political agenda).
John Lawrence
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From Frank Thomas via email:
John,
Bid Laden’s organization, al-Qaeda, operated flexibly as a geographically spread-out network of autonomous cells, but today it also has foot soldiers in Syria as does its affiliate al-Nusra, successfully fighting Assad forces. IS has same capabilities, but it requires territory to remain legitimate and a top down structure to rule it.
IS already controls a land territory greater than the United Kingdom. Its organization is split into civil and military units, and its territory is divided into provinces. IS’ ultimate aim is to establish a single global state (caliphate) using the name of Islam to commit barbaric atrocities against Muslim and non-Muslims.
Unlike al-Qaeda, al-Nusra and other Syrian factions, IS a “sky-is-the-limit” extremist Islamic medieval religious organization. It by far from being a modern secular people with modern political concerns. It wants to return civilization to a 7th century Islamic-based legal environment, and ultimately to bring the apocalypse.
This is what sets IS apart from other Islamic factions of the Middle East. In the words of one Middle East scholar, “IS is ready to cheer its own near-obliteration, and to remain confident, even when surrounded, that it will receive divine succor if it stays true to the Prophetic model set down by Muhammed.”
Only military tools applied mercilessly will end or at least severely limit IS’ horrors. Its ideology is global and inspires like-minded terrorist adherents.That’s why and a well-coordinated East-West coalition including Russia, Iran, Turkey and Western allies is a MUST … as Putin pleaded for a few weeks ago.”
The importance of focusing on the “real common enemy” is gaining force in the opinion of perhaps of one of the most brilliant insider experts on Middle East developments, Charles Lister, who says:
“The armed opposition in Syria is often characterized as divided, extremist, chaotic, and a danger unto itself, to Syria, and to the world. Perception does not always add up in reality.Over the last twelve months, I’ve witnessed firsthand a real maturing of the armed opposition, especially politically. All these groups, whether big or small, feel the pressure of what they themselves call their “constituents.” After such a long time of brutal conflict, the armed opposition (e.g., to Assad) is feeling the pressure to find a way out of more war, but while securing the interests of the revolution. This has necessitated a more intensive engagement in politics and diplomatic engagement.”
(see: “The Syrian Jihad: An Interview With Charles Lister,” by Aron Lund, 24-11-2015)
Best wishes,
Frank
Frank, I don’t know if Turkey will be part of any coalition to defeat ISIS. Au contraire, Turkey has been de facto aiding ISIS by tying up Kurdish fighters who are the most effective “boots on the ground” fighting ISIS, by allowing the smuggling of ISIS’ oil through Turkey and by allowing the transitioning of people and materials through Turkey to ISIS controlled territory.
Hi John, so glad to see someone else among the voices in the wilderness writing about the CIA’s single-handed undermining and overthrow of the legitimately elected president of Iran, Mosaddegh,all on behalf of UK and US control of the oil. Bernie and Hillary should be shouting it from coast to coast but alas….
With your last comment about our homegrown terrorists not having a political agenda, I think you missed the boat.
If we define terrorism as the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims, then mass shootings like the Aurora theater event don’t fit.
James Holmes may have terrorized some people but he wasn’t a terrorist. I get it that he didn’t have an agenda (or at least one we could understand).
But there are homegrown terrorists who do have political agenda. Many of them are lone wolves, like the shooter in Colorado Springs.
From Time Magazine
Since 9/11, white right-wing terrorists have killed almost twice as many Americans in homegrown attacks than radical Islamists have, according to research by the New America Foundation.
In their June study, the foundation decided to examine groups “engaged in violent extremist activity” and found that white extremists were by far the most dangerous. They pointed to the recent Emanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston, S.C., and the 2012 attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, as well as many lesser-known attacks on Jewish institutions and on police. They found that 48 people were killed by white terrorists, while 26 were killed by radical Islamists, since Sept. 11.
While there are competing points of view among right-wing extremists prone to violence, all share a basic alienation from society based on a fear of the breakdown of the patriarchal family and/or authority in general.
The various targets of right wing propaganda and terror are the “others” getting blamed in the extremist view of the world as causing this breakdown.
Their agenda may be ill-formed and driven by irrational impulses, but it is political.
Doug, I agree with you that there are right wingers with political agendas who commit acts of violence. However, there are many others like James Holmes (the Colorado movie theater shooter) and Adam Lanza (the Sandy Hook shooter)who are clear nut cases without a political agenda.
Maybe it’s a matter of semantics or definition. I would call all nut case shooters domestic terrorists. Maybe you wouldn’t. The Aurora movie theater shooter was clearly a model for the Paris concert hall shooters even though James Holmes didn’t have a political agenda.
The recent Planned Parenthood shooter you could say had a political agenda. But I think he was just a nut case whose abortion rhetoric was just absorbed into his nuttiness.
It would be interesting to ascertain how many mass murders have been done by nut cases vs how many have been done by those driven by right wing agendas vs how many have been done by Muslims, and I know that the right wing terrorists have committed more murders than Muslims in the US from all reports.
I would agree with this guy:
“All acts of mass murder, in my opinion, are acts of terrorism. It doesn’t matter to me who the suspect is or what religion he belongs to. All that matters is that mass murder is simply an act intended to make people afraid. That is terrorism.”
Great piece of work, John. People must come to grips with that yawning gap between Sunni and Shi’ites that defines this as a conflict beyond quick solutions such as adding our own soldiers into this lethal environment. If Americans want to go and fight for either side they can volunteer themselves. Unfortunately, most Americans who are advocating this full warfare solution are beyond military age, obese, pre-diabetic and without armed service experience.
John,
Although the U.S. knew about the flows of oil from Syria to the West last July, no fighter planes were sent to attack the truck convoys. The U.S. has only recently commenced attacking IS oil fields and supply lines, spurred by Russia
John,
Although the U.S. knew about the smuggled black market flows of oil from Syria to the West last July, no fighter planes were sent to attack the oil truck convoys. The U.S. has only recently commenced striking IS’ oil fields and supply lines. This has been spurred by Russia’s pro-active airstrikes of oil truck convoys leaving Syria and facilitated by Turkey’s allowing U.S. fighter jet forces to use one of its airbases to attack IS in Syria.
A Western black market for IS oil has been operative for some time – financed by collaborators within the financial and business world of the West. So says Dr. Norman Baily of the Centre for National Security Studies and Geostrategy at Haifa University in Israel. But is there clear evidence Turkey is buying oil smuggled by IS and thus funding the world’s number one enemy, IS? Current speculation on that question is all over the place.
In response, Erdogan rejected Russia’s claim Turkey – through the Turkish national oil company – is involved in buying oil from IS. In Erdogan’s words, “The countries from which Turkey buys oil are well known” … “We are not that dishonest as to buy oil from terrorists. If it is proven that we have, in fact, done so, I will resign.”
Putin thinks Turkey downed its warplane because Russian fighter jets have been successfully destroying long truck lines of oil departing Syria headed to Turkey day and night. Others say the Turkish government must have known about the smuggling operations.
Putin himself also said that it was “hard to believe but theoretically possible” the Turkish leadership knew nothing about oil flowing into Turkey illegally. In which case, Putin urged Turkey to conduct a thorough investigation.
Concrete evidence that Turkey has overtly been supporting IS financially or any other way is lacking, although it’s known Erdogan’s son has a company that trades in Middle East oil and other products.
It’s true that Turkey has been too focused on their historic enemy, the Kurds, as opposed to IS. However, there are indications this warring conflict has markedly tempered down in recognition of Kurdish PKK and Kurdish YPG remarkable fighting successes against IS in Iraq and Syria.
Turkey appears to be waking up to reality, as is finally Saudi Arabia and Qatar who have been financing IS, that the real Middle East ‘enemy of all enemies’ is the barbaric IS.
I predict that Turkey and Saudi Arabia will never put “boots on the ground” in the fight against ISIL. I hope I’m wrong.
Some good geopolitical points but “For the most part Sunnis won’t fight Sunnis”? Right now several Kurdish armies are the only soldiers taking on IS, and those Kurds are Sunnis. There are also the courageous young Sunnis of Raqqua Is Being Silently Slaughtered who are fighting IS with words and pictures–their award winning web site:
The current civil war in Libya is Sunni vs. Sunni. Most of the thousands of Sufi Muslims who have been killed in several countries by Sunni extremists are Sunni. This far more peaceful form of Islam is followed by nearly three quarters of Pakistanis, see the Time story: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2063794,00.html as well as by millions of Sunni Muslims in West Africa. The Algerian Civil War in the 1990s that took over 200,000 lives was Sunni on Sunni, Saddam’s chemical attacks on the Kurds was Sunni on Sunni, as is the long running war between Turkey and its Kurds. The 1971 genocide in what is today Bangladesh was Sunni on Sunni, and so was the internal repression in Indonesia in the mid 1960s that may have killed up to one million people. It’s usually not a good idea to generalize about a billion plus people living on six continents who are members of wildly diverse ethnic groups and are every color under the sun. Like all other human beings, for Sunni Muslims ethnic, political, or economic issues can trump religious solidarity, depending on the local situation. “Well, who are these moderate Muslims. Are they the 5% who identify as ‘just a Muslim’ and don’t identify as either Sunni or Shiite?” No, actually they are the overwhelming majority of Muslims that polls consistently show do not back IS or al-Qaeda, they are represented by every major Islamic civic and religious grouping in both Europe and the U.S. that unambiguously condemn these attacks, they are the five Muslims killed in the Paris attacks, the 60 Muslims killed on 911, etc.
“Middle Easterners culturally are unable”–the flat out bigotry in the quote from Harold Rhode (imagine substituting Mexicans or Jews or blacks or any other group of human beings for Middle Easterners)is no surprise: he was one of the cheerleaders for the Iraq War.
“What we need is a coalition, a partnership among France, Russia, Iran and the US with France, Russia and Iran supplying the boots on the ground.” Does ANYBODY out there remember the Iraq War? We tried this before. The French tried it in Algeria, killing between 350,000 to a million Sunni Muslims. ANYBODY remember how that worked out? Yes IS needs to be dismantled but just because we may have forgotten the centuries of depredations and casual brutality inflicted on the that part of the world by Western powers and corporations, the natives who live there have not. The Western military footprint needs to be as light and as hidden as possible because if there is no political solution found in the wake of their overthrow IS will just be replaced by an even more extreme group playing on Sunni grievances and disgust with corrupt foreign-backed rulers, just as IS arose after al-Qaeda was neutralized by the U.S. surge. And while I realize that blood in the streets of Paris has focused the world’s attention, the forces of Bashar Assad have murdered the vast majority of the 200,000 civilians killed in the Syrian Civil War so far, a number IS can only dream of. http://www.businessinsider.com/assads-government-still-kills-way-more-civilians-than-isis-2015-2
Or is the unwritten assumption that Syrian Sunni families “culturally are unable” to feel pain and grief the way other humans do?
Thanks, Nat, for enlightening me about Sunni on Sunni violence. The Kurds, although nominally Sunni, are ethnically distinct from Sunni Arabs. You’re right one cannot generalize about billions of people. However, you also cannot discount the centuries of Sunni-Shiite antipathy and hostility that does come down to the present day.
John, Absolutely, that long history is important; I’ve just been leery of any version of the ancient hatreds argument being the main driver of conflicts since the breakup of Yugoslavia. Then and now the economic incompetence and corruption of the rulers set the stage for extremists–be they ethnic or religious–to prey on the frustrations of millions of unemployed young people. Except for Bahrain and later Yemen, the issues at the heart of the Arab Spring were economic and political. Tragically, once the entrenched military/business elites are able to reassert themselves and shut down democratic discourse, promises of a better life in the next world can appear to be the only way out, at least for some. Up until the French Revolution the role of the Church in Europe was not too different.
Also, Nat, the drought in Syria has been linked to both climate change and the violence there.
This is from the New York Times:
“Drawing one of the strongest links yet between global warming and human conflict, researchers said Monday that an extreme drought in Syria between 2006 and 2009 was most likely due to climate change, and that the drought was a factor in the violent uprising that began there in 2011.”
‘Black or white’ labeling a Middle East country Sunni or Shiite can be but a verbal photo shot of the true picture. While 85% of the Muslim world is Sunni and 15% is Shiite, there are hundreds of different sects that bring numerous variations in Shiite-Sunni beliefs, militancy, tolerance for other religions, secularization, sectarianism, nationalism, ethnicity, etc.
What makes IS apart is that it is an exceptionally extremist religious Islamic organization that wants to return to a 7th century Islamic theology – that follows the Muhammad Prophetic model in punctilious detail, including punishment of apostates (infidels) by slavery, beheading and crucifixion.
It is the direct opposite of being a modern secular people with modern political concerns. Its ultimate aim is to establish a Single Global State. IS now controls territory greater than the UK – while using the name of Islam to commit barbaric atrocities against Muslims and non-Muslims whom they consider infidels.
In words of one Middle East scholar, “IS is ready to cheer its own near obliteration, and to remain confident, even when surrounded, that it will receive divine succor if it stays true to the Prophetic model set down by Muhammad.”
In dramatic contrast, Turkey has been a secular state since the time of Ataturk when the secular power of religious authority was reduced and eventually eliminated. Today, Turkey’s moderate Sunni-Sufi Islam will not support the radical backwardness of totalitarian Sunni Islamic sects like IS or Saudi Arabia’s radical Salafist and Wahhabist sects. Wahhabism, especially, is a force and foundation behind Saudi Arabia’s political ideology, educational system, divisiveness against Shiites.
Erdogan’s stance on Islam is clear: “There is no religion named Sunni or Shiite, but there is only one religion called Islam” … “Sectarianism is what caused Muslims to divide in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Palistine where Muslims are killing Muslims without mercy or pity.” One Middle East expert summed up Erdogan’s words ‘we want no religion called ‘Sunni’ or ‘Shiite'”: “Erdogan is saying to the Muslim world that Turkey will not join a Sunni alliance with Saudi Arabia, but an Islam alliance of both Sunnis and Shiites which also includes Iran.”
Remarkably, despite the murderous reign of Assad and his father,for decades the central cultural orientation in Syria has been a moderate Shia/Alawite Islam in relative harmony with other religions. About 74% of Syria’s 18 million people are Sunni, the balance comprising mainly, Alawites, Shiites, and Christians. Alawites are obviously the largest non-Muslim group. Assad is also an Alawite. Generally, the Syrian government doesn’t get involved in purely religious doctrinal subjects, and religious groups are not involved in internal affairs as occurs in Iran. Like Turkey, Syria has come close to a de facto separation of religion and state.
Graeme Wood in his extraordinary treatise, “What ISIS Really Wants” (see: sums up IS’ grotesque allure by reference to George Orwell’s review of Mein Kampf in March 1940:
_______________________________________________________________________
George Orwell confessed that he had “never been able to dislike Hitler”; something about the man projected an underdog quality, even when his goals were cowardly and loathsome, “If he were killing a mouse, he would know how to make it seem like a dragon.”
The Islamic State’s partisans have much the same allure. They believe that they are personally involved in struggles beyond their own lives, and that merely to be swept up in the drama, on the side of righteousness, is a privilege and a pleasure – especially when it is also a burden.
Fascism, Orwell continued, is …
psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life … Whereas Socialism and even Capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler said to them, “I offer you struggle, danger, and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet … We ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.
_______________________________________________________________________
Nor underrate, as Graeme Wood warns, in the case of the Islamic State, its religious or intellectual appeal.
Frank, Erdogan is a politician and like a lot of politicians one cannot always take their words at face value. He talks the talk, but he’s not walking the walk. He needs to cut off the illegal smuggling of oil through Turkey by ISIS. There are other measures he could take if he is really on the side of fighting ISIS.
John,
Yes, there’s the usual politics and polemics politicians are prone to, especially in the esoteric ‘today my ally, tommorrow my enemy’ political-cultural dynamics of the Middle East. For me, this often makes it almost impossible to decipher who’s doing what to whom?
After Russian accusation the airplane downing came as revenge from their bombing of oil truck convoys going to Turkey by a government that knew it, Erdogan has gone public that this charge against his government is slander … if true he’ll resign. We shall see!
Ending the war in Syria cannot happen without both Russia and Turkey’s strong presence. So far Turkey has bombed both IS as well as the Kurds who are fighting IS in Syria and Iraq. INSANE! Simultaneously, Russia has been targeting not only IS but also anti-Assad forces in Syria some of whom are backed by Turkey and the U.S. INSANE!
This again illustrates the counter-productive, conflicting, cultural chaos that has taken place for centuries in the Middle East up to today.
This is a long discussion thread, and it seems I can only absorb part of it at a time. Consequently, I’ve only read about 1/2 the comments so far! But do intend to read and reflect on them all before offering my 2-cents worth.
For now, a 1/2-cent’s worth: Is ISIS the next Hitler, and will it take WW-III to stop them? Will anything short of military annihilation (war) stop ISIS?
After reading just the title of this piece, I was reminded of something the owner of local middle eastern restaurant told me about a year ago. He and his wife moved here from Baghdad just a few years ago. They had previously owned a restaurant there, and came here to escape the violence. One night at dinner I asked him point-blank, so what is this conflict in Iraq all about anyway? His answer: the Sunnis and the Shiites hate each other, and will fight each other to the death. If they can have it out on Iraqi soil, then neither of their main countries (Iran and Saudi Arabia) will suffer the consequences. Iraq will. After all these years this was the first explanation of the Iraqi conflict that has made sense to me. And John, your account just corroborates this story. Thank you.
Paul, thanks for the comment. It’s nice to be corroborated by someone who was actually there as sad as the situation is.
So the solution appears to be redrawing the borders of middle eastern countries to create three new countries: Sunnistan, Shiastan, and Kurdistan. Isn’t this similar to the concept of partitioning Iraq put forward by VP Joe Biden? What prevented that idea from being taken seriously in Washington?
One of the most sensible contrarian down-to-earth approaches I’ve examined about ISIS – and its potential regional and global revolutionary power threat and what to do – is Stephen M. Walt’s (Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School) just published paper, “ISIS as Revolutionary State,” Nov.-Dec., 2015 issue, Foreign Affairs.
He lays out a common-sense case for why the ISIS revolution will NOT spread and why the Islamic State should NOT be hyped as a threat. In his words, “the Islamic State’s emergence does NOT herald the beginning of a revolutionary tidal wave.”
Following are a selection of his concluding thoughts:
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“Radical revolutionary states do not tame their behavior unless other states teach them that relentless extremism is costly and counterproductive. This means IS must be contained for the foreseeable future, until it moderates its revolutionary aims or even abandons them entirely …
To succeed, a policy of containment must prevent IS from conquering other countries and imposing its radical vision on them. (Mr. Walt makes a point that while IS may now control a territory greater than that of the UK, it’s mostly empty desert). Because IS is weak -(edit: qua troops, aircraft, power-projection capabilities, small population, undeveloped economy where annual revenues of +-$500 million are one-tenth of Harvard’s annual budget) – and because its core message is so corrosive, preventing further expansion should not be beyond the capacity of the frontline countries with the most at stake, with only modest help from the U.S….
The Kurds, Iraq”s Shiites, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, the Gulf monarchies (edit: and Russia) are NOT going to stand by and watch the Islamic State grow … Washington should provide intelligence, weapons, and military training to aid such efforts, but it should keep its role as small as possible and make crystal clear that stopping IS is largely up to local forces …
It follows that U.S. airpower (edit: and allied airpower) should be used solely to prevent IS from expanding its territory (edit: and utilizing oil resources, communication systems including its digital propaganda and terrorist world network); trying to bomb it into submission will inevitably kill innocent civilians, strengthen anti-American sentiment and bolster IS’ popularity …
Regional actors will no doubt try to pass the buck and get Americans to do their fighting for them. U.S. leaders should reject such ploys politely but firmly and pass the buck right back. The Islamic State is NOT an existential threat to the U.S., to Middle East energy supplies, to Israel, or to any other vital U.S. interest. So U.S. forces have no business being sent into harm’s way to fight IS …
A U.S. led campaign against IS also risks heightening its appeal: if the world’s mightiest country keeps insisting that the group is a grave threat, then its claim to be the most faithful follower of Islam will gain credence. Taking the lead would also encourage free-riding by local powers with far more at stake … the more the U.S. does, the less incentive local actors will have to get their own houses in order …
This hands-off approach requires American leaders to remain cool in the face of beheadings, terrorist attacks, the destruction of antiquities, and other provocations. Such discipline is not easy to maintain in the era of partisan politics, 24-hours cable news, and it runs counter to the interventionist instincts (editor’s note: and reflex obsession) of much of the U.S. foreign policy establishment (edit: and military industrial establishment).
But not every foreign tragedy is a threat to U.S. interests, and not every problem needs to be solved by American power.”
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AMEN! Something to think about seriously … Mr. McCain.
I think the US should take a secondary role in the fight against ISIS, not because I think ISIS is not a threat, but because US policy in the Mideast is bankrupt and is at a dead end. Let Russia, France and others take the primary role. The US has wasted too much treasure both financial and in human terms. Let others step up to the plate.
John,
I agree and Prof. Walt is implying the same. His original emphasis is that ISIS is simply by far inherently NOT sufficiently strong to be a truly revolutionary force (when compared also to past revolutionary forces) of any lasting significance … assuming the Middle East locals contain and isolate this sect.
Being a “blue collar” worker, there’s so much I don’t know about the midddle east. Thank you so much for this great article.
And it would appear that President Obama is taking Professor Walt’s advice.
Prof. Walt says (I quote from Frank’s post here), “if the world’s mightiest country keeps insisting that the group is a grave threat, then…” the world might start believing “the world’s mightiest power”, and ISIS will become just that, a grave threat, the exact opposite of what we seek.
On the other hand, failure to obliterate ISIS means we will continue to allow them to exist, at our peril? While obliteration will most likely only give rise to another yet even more horrific terrorist entity than ISIS ever was. This leads me to Nat Kreiger’s posts, “the economic incompetence and corruption of the rulers set the stage for extremists”, and “just because we may have forgotten the centuries of depredations and casual brutality inflicted on the that part of the world by Western powers and corporations, the natives who live there have not.”
The US would be well advised to clean its own house instead of trying to dominate others… we can only control our own behavior; and cannot ultimately control the behavior of others.
I’m still reading.
John, thank you for bringing this very important conflict to light. I often felt “Where is Sadam Husain when we need him”? I know he was brutal and had brutal tactics but perhaps we could have bargained with him to at least give up torture and we would not fight him to the death.
Yes, Grace, he kept the lid on a seething cauldron of rattlesnakes. Now that that lid is off, thanks to George W Bush, it’s going to be exceedingly difficult to stuff them all back in, put the lid back on and find another Saddam to sit on it.