Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
USA Today
April 10, 2007
Pg. 8
By Andrew Mills and Brian Winter, USA Today
BEIRUT — Tensions between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites have begun to feed the centuries-old rivalry between the Muslim sects in other countries.
Sectarian fighting in Pakistan over the weekend left 15 dead. In Lebanon, a power struggle between the Shiite opposition and the Sunni-dominated government has spilled into street demonstrations several times this year and fanned fears of civil war.
In both cases, local politics and rivalries have been the main factors at work, but some academics and regional leaders say that growing animosity over the violence in Iraq has worsened Sunni-Shiite relations.
"The mess in Iraq has fed sectarian consciousness in the Muslim world," said Augustus Richard Norton, a professor at Boston University and author of Hezbollah: A Short History. "It's a war in which Shias are intentionally targeted by Sunnis and vice-versa. That threatens to spill over elsewhere."
With the spread of satellite TV, the Middle East has been bombarded with images of the carnage in Iraq that tend to be more graphic than those seen on American TV. "If you see a bombing, you see pictures of kids with their brains blown out," Norton said. "It has an emotional impact."
Sunni-Shiite discord will be a topic at a May 3 summit on Iraq's security. The meeting will be attended by Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as the United States.
President Bush has warned that sectarian violence would intensify across the Middle East if U.S. troops withdraw prematurely from Iraq.
Iraq's leaders fear their country is already a battlefield. "There is a feeling of rising regional tension that negatively affects the situation in Iraq," Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Saturday.
Leaders from Shiite-dominated Iran and Sunni-led Saudi Arabia met last month to defuse tensions, despite a growing strategic rivalry between the two countries. The leaders called sectarian tensions "the greatest danger threatening the Muslim nation at the present time," according to the official Saudi Press Agency.
The two Islamic sects split in the seventh century in a dispute over the true heir of Islam's prophet Mohammed. In most Islamic countries other than Iran, Sunnis have long enjoyed political prominence and economic advantage.
Iraq's election of a Shiite-led government and Iran's rise as a regional power have emboldened other Shiites, said Ned Walker, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt who teaches at Hamilton College. "In virtually every country where they have a Shiite population … they've been treated poorly."
In Lebanon, Shiites are the largest religious group. Many Shiites are now demanding a greater role in government through the militant movement Hezbollah, which is funded by Iran.
"Sunnis and Shiites, we are like brothers. The problem is that our political conflict goes back centuries," said Hicham al-Bokhary, sheik of a Sunni mosque in Beirut's Lower Basta neighborhood.
"The tension here flares when there's a political problem, and then things go back to normal," al-Bokhary said. "But I fear that one time, it won't go back to normal, and it will turn to civil war."
April 10, 2007
Pg. 8
By Andrew Mills and Brian Winter, USA Today
BEIRUT — Tensions between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites have begun to feed the centuries-old rivalry between the Muslim sects in other countries.
Sectarian fighting in Pakistan over the weekend left 15 dead. In Lebanon, a power struggle between the Shiite opposition and the Sunni-dominated government has spilled into street demonstrations several times this year and fanned fears of civil war.
In both cases, local politics and rivalries have been the main factors at work, but some academics and regional leaders say that growing animosity over the violence in Iraq has worsened Sunni-Shiite relations.
"The mess in Iraq has fed sectarian consciousness in the Muslim world," said Augustus Richard Norton, a professor at Boston University and author of Hezbollah: A Short History. "It's a war in which Shias are intentionally targeted by Sunnis and vice-versa. That threatens to spill over elsewhere."
With the spread of satellite TV, the Middle East has been bombarded with images of the carnage in Iraq that tend to be more graphic than those seen on American TV. "If you see a bombing, you see pictures of kids with their brains blown out," Norton said. "It has an emotional impact."
Sunni-Shiite discord will be a topic at a May 3 summit on Iraq's security. The meeting will be attended by Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as the United States.
President Bush has warned that sectarian violence would intensify across the Middle East if U.S. troops withdraw prematurely from Iraq.
Iraq's leaders fear their country is already a battlefield. "There is a feeling of rising regional tension that negatively affects the situation in Iraq," Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Saturday.
Leaders from Shiite-dominated Iran and Sunni-led Saudi Arabia met last month to defuse tensions, despite a growing strategic rivalry between the two countries. The leaders called sectarian tensions "the greatest danger threatening the Muslim nation at the present time," according to the official Saudi Press Agency.
The two Islamic sects split in the seventh century in a dispute over the true heir of Islam's prophet Mohammed. In most Islamic countries other than Iran, Sunnis have long enjoyed political prominence and economic advantage.
Iraq's election of a Shiite-led government and Iran's rise as a regional power have emboldened other Shiites, said Ned Walker, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt who teaches at Hamilton College. "In virtually every country where they have a Shiite population … they've been treated poorly."
In Lebanon, Shiites are the largest religious group. Many Shiites are now demanding a greater role in government through the militant movement Hezbollah, which is funded by Iran.
"Sunnis and Shiites, we are like brothers. The problem is that our political conflict goes back centuries," said Hicham al-Bokhary, sheik of a Sunni mosque in Beirut's Lower Basta neighborhood.
"The tension here flares when there's a political problem, and then things go back to normal," al-Bokhary said. "But I fear that one time, it won't go back to normal, and it will turn to civil war."