A number of recent international news reports are worrying for the state of the world in general and the Middle-East and West Asia in particular. One report says that President Bush is contemplating sending another 30,000 US troops to Iraq rather than start pulling them out as demanded by the American people and recommended by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group set up by President Bush himself. Another says that if the Americans were to pull out of Iraq the Saudis would pour in arms and money for the very Sunni minority in Iraq that is infested with Al-Qaeda and is exacting the greatest toll of American lives. A third claims that the US has given the green light to US oil companies to stake their claims on Iraqi oil – which is largely in the Shia or Kurd areas of Iraq – until the country is partitioned and the oil wells run dry. Another report insists that the Israelis have trained and are readied with American backing for a tactical nuclear air strike against Shia Iran’s nuclear installations. The latest news is that the Americans have gone and bombed alleged Al Qaeda elements in the civil war in Somalia between corrupt warlords supported by Western-backed Marxist Ethiopia and oppressive Sunni Islamic revolutionaries infiltrated by Al Qaeda under the banner of the Union of Islamic Courts. Meanwhile, the finger-wagging war between US-backed Pakistan and US-occupied Afghanistan over the resurgence of the anti-Shia Taliban-Al Qaeda nexus shows no sign of abating. Is there a link between these apparently contradictory and conflicting developments? What do they foretell?
It seems that President Bush is on the verge of a last ditch effort to redeem American power by enlarging the theatre of war in the short term. Mr Donald Rumsfeld, the blundering defence secretary, has been replaced by Mr Robert Gates, the coldly efficient CIA man. Gen John Abizaid, head of Centcom, and Gen George Casey, commander of US and all allied forces, have been replaced by Admiral Richard Fallon and General Dave Petreaus respectively. Gen Abizaid was opposed to US troop enhancement in Iraq and advocated a regional solution involving Iran and Syria as also recommended by the Iraq Study Group. Admiral Fallon, however, is better placed to deal with the new agenda because he is an old hand at the use of sea and air power as envisaged in the developing situation against Iran. This explains the context of the Israeli air strike threat against Iran as well as the recent American air strike against Islamic militias in Somalia and suggests the potential role of the American naval fleet in the Gulf and elsewhere. Meanwhile, Mr Zalmay Khalizad, an Iraq and Afghan hand, has been pulled out of Iraq and dispatched to the UN, while Mr Ryan Crocker, an old Middle-East Arabist, is being shunted from Islamabad to Baghdad to defend the new doctrine.
This plan meets with the approval of the hard-line Wahhabi-Sunni government of Saudi Arabia. The rise of anti-America Shia Iran as a contending power in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, along with the continuing resistance of Syria to Israeli and American policy in the region, dominates the current ME agenda. But the rise and revival of the Shia in the Sunni-ruled states neighbouring Iraq (Kuwait, Bahrain, Lebanon and even Saudi Arabia and the Gulf) threatens to upset the balance of national power and American interests in the region. The blowback from this could have far-reaching consequences.
At the moment, the spectre of extremist Wahhabi and Salafi Sunni anti-Shiaism and anti-Americanism is haunting the Muslim world in which Sunni governments are generally dictatorial and pro-America while the Sunni masses are anti-America and pro-radical Islam. Worse, Al Qaeda seems to have made common cause with the Sunni extremists. But the problem is compounded by the support of Shia Iran for the resistance movements against Israel in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria which is undermining the influence of the Sunni governments of the Middle East with these anti-Israel forces. Therefore a hasty and unplanned American withdrawal from Iraq after democratising it by giving effective power to the majority Shia, who would be inclined to lean towards Shia Iran for succour, would have two grave consequences: it would be a signal for foreign Shia and Sunni intervention and further bloodletting between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq; it would also force the Sunni governments of neighbouring states to dig their heels in and resist democratising their countries for fear of empowering the local Shias in their midst. An Israeli attack on Shia Iran would compound the Shia-Sunni national-state divide in the ME. Everywhere in the Muslim world, it would lead to political chaos, state repression, sectarian warfare, Arab de-identification and mass anti-Americanism.
The ripple effects of Sunni militancy in association with Al Qaeda are bound to touch Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Afghanistan and Pakistan and encourage anti-America regime-change across the Muslim world. If extremist Sunnis believe that “a war on America is a war on the Shia, and a war on the Shia is a war on America”, then we might be looking at new forms of terror in the near future.