@@ The myth of the Shia crescent @@

Asia Times
September 30, 2005


The myth of the Shia crescent


By Pepe Escobar


Tehran - A specter haunts the Middle East - at least in the minds of Sunni Arabs,
especially Wahhabis, as well as a collection of conservative American think tanks: a
Shia crescent, spreading from Mount Lebanon to Khorasan, across Mesopotamia, the
Persian Gulf and the Iranian plateau.

But facts on the ground are much more complex than this simplistic formula whereby,
according to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait, Tehran controls its allies Baghdad,
Damascus and parts of Beirut.

Seventy-five percent of the world's oil reserves are in the Persian Gulf. Seventy
percent of the Persian Gulf's population is Shia. As an eschatological - and
revolutionary - religion, fueled by a mix of romanticism and despair, Shi'ism cannot
but provoke fear, especially in hegemonic Sunni Islam.

For more than a thousand years Shia Islam has been in fact a galaxy of Shi'sms. It's
as if it was a Fourth World, always maligned with political exclusion, a dramatic
vision of history and social and economic marginalization.

But now Shias finally have acquired political representation in Iraq, have conquered
it in Lebanon and are actively claiming it in Bahrain. They are the majority in each
of these countries. Shi'ism is the cement of their communal cohesion. It's a totally
different story in Saudi Arabia, where Shias are a minority of 11%, repressed as
heretics and deprived of their rights and fundamental freedoms. But for how much
longer?

The Shi'ite sanctuary

Shi'ism has been the state religion in Iran since 1501, at the start of the Safavid
dynasty. But with Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1979 Islamic revolution, for
the first time in history the Shia clergy was able to take over the state - and to
govern a Shia-majority society. No wonder this is the most important event in the
history of Shi'ism.

Asia Times has confirmed in the holy Iranian city of Qom that as far as major
Ayatollahs are concerned, their supreme mission is to convert the rest of Islam to
what they believe is the original purity and revolutionary power of Shi'ism, always
critical of the established social and political order.

But as a nation-state at the intersection of the Arab, Turk, Russian and Indian
worlds, as the key transit point of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central Asia,
the Caucasus and the Indian sub-continent, between three seas (the Caspian, the
Persian Gulf and the sea of Oman), not far from Europe and at the gates of Asia,
Tehran on a more pragmatic level has to conduct an extremely complex foreign policy.

Diplomats in Tehran don't say it explicitly, but this is essentially a
counter-encirclement foreign policy. And not only because of the post-September 11
American military bases that today encircle Iran almost completely.

Iran rivals Turkey for influence in Central Asia and rivals Saudi Arabia for hegemony
in the Persian Gulf - with the added complexity of this being a bitter Sunni-Shia
rivalry as well. Rivalry with Pakistan - again for influence in Central Asia -
subsided after the Taliban were chased out of power in Afghanistan in 2001. But
basically Tehran regards Pakistan as a pro-American Sunni regional power, thus not
exactly prone to be attentive to Shias. This goes a long way to explain the
Iran-India alliance.

It's impossible to deal with Iran without understanding the complex dialectics behind
the Iranian religious leadership. In their minds, the concept of nation-state is
regarded with deep suspicion, because it detracts from the umma - the Muslim
community.

The nation-state is just a stage on the road to the final triumph of Shi'ism and pure
Islam. But to go beyond this stage it's necessary to reinforce the nation-state and
its Shia sanctuary, which happens to be Iran. When Shi'ism finally triumphs, the
concept of nation-state, a heritage from the West, will disappear anyway, to the
benefit of a community according to the will of Prophet Mohammed.

The problem is that reality often contradicts this dream. One of the best examples
was the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Saddam invaded Iran first. Iranians reacted
culturally - this was a case of Persians repulsing an Arab invasion. But Tehran at
the same time also expected Iraqi Shias to rebel against Saddam, in the name of
Shi'ism. It did not happen.

For the Shias in southern Iraq, the Arab nationalist impulse was stronger. And still
is. This fact undermines the neo-conservative charge that Iran is fueling a guerrilla
war in southern Iraq with the intention of breaking up the country. The Ba'athist
idea of integration of Iraqi communities under a strong state, in the name of Arab
nationalism, persists. Few in the Shia south want a civil war - or the breakup of
Iraq.

Azerbaijan and Afghanistan

Azerbaijan - where 75% of the population is Shia - could not be included in a Shia
crescent by any stretch of the imagination, even though it was a former province of
the Persian empire that Russia took over in 1828.

Azeris speak a language close to Turkish, but at the same time they are kept at some
distance by the Turks because they are in the majority Shias. Unlike Iran, the basis
of modern, secular Turkey is national - not religious - identity. To complicate
matters further, Shi'ism in Azerbaijan had to face the shock of a society secularized
by seven decades of Soviet rule. Azeris would not be tempted - to say the least - to
build an Iranian-style theocracy at home.

It's true that Azeri mullahs are "Iranified". But as Iran and Azerbaijan are
contiguous, independent Azerbaijan fears too much Iranization.

At the same time, Iran does not push too hard for Shia influence on Azerbaijan
because Azeri nationalism - sharing a common religion on both sides of the border -
could embark on a reunification of Azerbaijan to the benefit of Baku, and not of
Tehran.

And if this was not enough, there's the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, an enclave of
Armenian people completely within Azerbaijan, where Iran supports Armenia for
basically two reasons: to reduce Turkish influence in Azerbaijan and to help Russia
counteract Turkey - perceived as an American Trojan horse - in the Caucasus.

A fair resume of this intractable equation would be that Azerbaijan is too Shia to be
totally pro-Turkish, not Shia enough to be completely pro-Iranian, but Shia enough to
prevent itself from becoming a satellite of Russia - again.

On Iran's eastern front, there are the Hazaras of Afghanistan, the descendants of
Genghis Khan. In the 17th century Hazarajat, in central Afghanistan, was occupied by
the Persian empire. That's when it converted to Shi'ism. Hazaras have always suffered
the most in Afghanistan - totally marginalized in political, economic, cultural and
religious terms. Under the Taliban they were massacred in droves - as the Taliban
were surrogates of Saudi Wahhabism: that was a graphic case of rivalry between Iran
and Saudi Arabia being played out in the heart of Afghanistan, as much as a case of
pro-Pakistan Pashtuns against pro-Iranian Hazaras.

Hazaras compound a significant 16% of the Afghan population. As far as Tehran is
concerned, they are supported as an important political power in post-Taliban
Afghanistan. But once again it's not a case of a Shia crescent.

Iranian military aid flows to the Shia party Hezb-e-Wahdat. But there are more
important practical issues, like the road linking eastern Iran with Tajikistan that
goes through Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan and bypasses Hazara territory.
And there's the strong Iranian political influence in Herat, in western Afghanistan -
the privileged fiefdom of warlord Ishmail Khan. When Khan was jailed by the Taliban
in 1997 in Kandahar, he was liberated thanks to Iranian mediation. Khan is now energy
minister in the Hamid Karzai government, but he still controls Herat. The road
linking Herat to the Iranian border was rebuilt and paved by Iranian engineers.
People in Herat can't get a single TV program from Kabul, but they get three Iranian
state channels. Western Afghanistan is as much Afghan as Iranian.

Meanwhile, in South Asia ...

The Moghul empire in India was heavily Persianized. The Moghuls had been speaking
Persian since the 14th century - it was the administrative language of the sultans
and the empire's high officials in Delhi, later carried as far away as Malacca and
Sumatra. India - as much as Central Asia - was extremely influenced by Persian
culture. Today, Shias concentrate in northern India, in Uttar Pradesh, around
Lucknow, and also in Rajastan, Kashmir, Punjab, the western coast around Mumbai and
around Karachi in Pakistan. Most are Ishmalis - not duodecimal, like the Iranians.
Pakistan may have as many as 35 million Shiss, with a majority of duodecimal. India
has about 25 million, divided between duodecimal and Ishmalis. The numbers may be
huge, but in India Shiss are a minority inside a minority of Muslims, and in Pakistan
they are a minority in a Sunni state. This carries with it a huge political problem.
Delhi sees the Shias in Pakistan as a factor of destabilization. That's one more
reason for the close relationship between India and Iran.

Trojan horses in the Persian Gulf

Seventy-five percent of the population of the Persian Gulf - concentrated in the
eastern borders of Saudi Arabia and the emirates - is Shia, overwhelmingly members of
a rural or urban proletariat. Hasa, in Saudi Arabia, stretching from the Kuwaiti
border to the Qatar border, has been populated by Shias since the 10th century.
That's where the oil is. Seventy percent of the workforce in the oilfields is Shia.
The potential for them to be integrated in a Shia crescent is certainly there.

Another historical irony rules that the bitter rivalry - geopolitical, national,
religious, cultural - between Iran and Saudi Arabia has to played out in Saudi
territory as well. A Shia minority in the land of hardcore Sunni Wahhabism - and the
land that spawned al-Qaeda - has to be the ultimate Trojan horse. What to do? Just as
in Iraq under Saddam, the Saudi royal family swings between surveillance and
repression, with some drops of integration, not as much promoting Shias in the
kingdom's ranks but heavily promoting the immigration of Sunnis to Hasa. Deeper
integration has to be the solution, as the access to power of Shias in Iraq will
certainly motivate Saudi Arabian Shias.

Kuwait lies north of Hasa. Twenty-five percent of Kuwaitis are Shia - natives or
immigrants, and they provoke the same sort of geopolitical quandary to the Kuwaiti
princes as they do to the Saudis. Although they are a religious, social and economic
minority as well, Shias in Kuwait enjoy a measure of political rights. But they are
still considered a Trojan horse. South of Hasa, in Qatar, where also 25% of the
population is Shia, is the exact same thing.

And then there's Bahrain. Sixty-five percent of Bahrain is Shia. Basically they are a
rural proletariat. It's the same pattern - Sunnis are urban and in power, Shias are
poor and marginalized. For decades, even before the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran
had insisted that the Shias in Bahrain were Iranians because the Safavid dynasty used
to occupy both margins of the Persian Gulf. Tehran still considers Bahrain as an
Iranian province. The Shia majority in Bahrain is prone to turbulence. Repression has
been inevitable - and Bahrain is helped in the process by, who else, Saudi Arabia.

But there are some encouraging signs. The small Bahrain archipelago is separated from
Saudi Arabia by just a bridge. Every weekend in the Muslim world - Thursday and
Friday - Saudis abandon Wahhabi suffocation in droves to relax in the malls of Manama
and its neighboring islands. Women in Bahrain are closer to women in Tehran than to
Saudi. They wear traditional clothes, but not a full black chador, they drive their
own cars, they go about their business by themselves, they meet members of the
opposite sex in restaurants or cinemas. For them, there are no forbidden places or
professional activities.

The locals tend to believe this is due to the relative modernity of the al-Khalifa
family in power. Even the South Asian workforce is treated much better than in the
neighboring emirates.

Bahrain is not particularly wealthy - compared to the other emirates - and unlike
Dubai it does not strive to become an economic powerhouse. There are plenty of
schools and a good national university - although most women prefer to study in the
U.S. or Lebanon. But all this can be illusory. Shias won't stop fighting for more
political participation. Six months ago there was a huge demonstration in Bahrain,
demanding a new constitution. Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Iran's Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Khamenei are extremely popular in Bahrain.

There are only 6% of Shias in the wealthy United Arab Emirates. But they can compound
a problem as acute as in Kuwait or Qatar because of the enormous trade and business
Iranian influence in Dubai.

The whole equation of Persian Gulf Shias has to do with a tremendous identity
problem. The key argument in favor of them not being an Iranian Trojan horse is that
first and foremost they are Arabs. But the question remains in the air. Are they most
of all Arabs who practice a different form of Islam, which the Sunni majority
considers heretic? Or are they Shias bound to pledge allegiance to the motherland of
Shi'ism, Iran? The answer is not only religious; it involves social and political
integration of Shias in regimes and societies that are basically Sunni.

Shi'ism in the Persian Gulf may be "invisible" to the naked eye. Only for the moment.
Sooner or later the sons of Imam Ali will wake up.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI30Ak01.html


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