Is this a example of the age old divide and conquer
strategy. If it is, it seems exceedingly risky since
it could lead to even more chaos in Iraq and perhaps
spread to other countries as well.
By the way there is apparently little if no hard
evidence that Iran has provided any quantities of IEDs
for the Iraq insurgents. If they do provide any it
certainly would not likely be for Sunnis.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
--- Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> A perfect propaganda campaign on the part of
> pro-Washington regimes in
> the Middle East. -- Yoshie
>
>
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/world/middleeast/17shiite.html>
> January 17, 2007
> News Analysis
> Hangings Fuel Sectarian Split Across Mideast
> By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
>
> CAIRO, Jan. 16 The botched hanging of Saddam
> Hussein and two
> lieutenants in Iraq by its Shiite-led government has
> helped to
> accelerate Sunni-Shiite sectarianism across an
> already fragile Middle
> East, according to experts across the region.
>
> The chaotic executions and the calm with which Mr.
> Hussein confronted
> the gallows and mocking Shiite guards have bolstered
> his image among
> many of his fellow Sunni Muslims.
>
> But something else is happening too: a pan-Muslim
> unity that surged
> after the summer war between Israel and Hezbollah,
> the Lebanese Shiite
> militia, is waning.
>
> And while political analysts and government
> officials in the region
> say the spreading Sunni disillusionment with Shiites
> and their backers
> in Iran will benefit Sunni-led governments and the
> United States, they
> and others worry that the tensions could start to
> balkanize the region
> as they have in Iraq itself.
>
> "The reality of the current situation is that we are
> approaching an
> open Sunni-Shiite conflict in the region," said Emad
> Gad, a specialist
> in international relations at the
> government-financed Al Ahram Center
> for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "And
> Egypt will also be
> a part of it as a part of the Sunni axis. No one
> will be able to avoid
> or escape it."
>
> This changing dynamic in the region, described by
> many scholars,
> analysts and officials in recent days, is a result
> not only of the
> hangings, the Iraq war and the Lebanese political
> struggle. It has
> also been encouraged by Sunni-led governments like
> those in Egypt,
> Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and some Sunni religious
> leaders alarmed by
> the rising influence of Iran, the region's biggest
> Shiite power. Far
> from Cairo, in a sprawling farming village in the
> Nile Delta region
> north of the city, Hamada Abdullah, a Sunni Muslim,
> said that after
> the war between Hezbollah and Israel, he posted a
> small picture of
> Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, on the
> bare wall of his
> home. It did not matter that Sheik Nasrallah was a
> Shiite Muslim
> aligned with the Shiite state of Iran.
>
> To Mr. Abdullah, Sheik Nasrallah was first and
> foremost a bold Arab
> resistance leader. But since the hanging of Mr.
> Hussein and since
> Hezbollah has pushed to topple the Sunni-led
> government in Lebanon, he
> has begun to reconsider.
>
> He says he is suspicious of Sheik Nasrallah and his
> politics. "His
> whole army in the south of Lebanon, they are
> Shiites," Mr. Abdullah
> said. While some American officials and Sunni
> leaders say that
> increased tension leads to reduced Iranian
> influence, others say that
> sectarian loyalties are difficult to control.
>
> "When Hezbollah did what they did in Lebanon in the
> summer, no one
> thought of it as a Shiite party; it was a
> nationalist party," said
> Taher Masri, a former prime minister of Jordan. "Now
> with the events
> in Iraq culminating in the way Saddam Hussein was
> executed and the
> lack of condemnation and total silence of Hezbollah,
> many people are
> examining the position of Hezbollah as a Shiite
> party."
>
> Some of the region's Sunni-led governments and
> religious leaders used
> the hanging of Mr. Hussein on a Sunni Muslim holy
> day as a weapon in
> the jockeying for regional power.
>
> "Sunni states are using this sectarian card to
> undercut Iran's
> influence because they feel that Iran was able to
> penetrate the Arab
> world after the fall of Iraq, which was acting as a
> shield against
> Iranian influence," said Marwan Kabalan, a political
> science professor
> at Damascus University.
>
> Sunnis make up a vast majority of the Islamic world.
> Shiites, who lead
> Iran and the Iraqi government, are the next largest
> sect. The two
> split over who would lead Islam after the death of
> the Prophet
> Muhammad.
>
> While the two have theological differences and
> similarities the
> gathering conflict is being stoked by a
> determination by Sunni leaders
> to preserve, or reinvigorate, their waning influence
> in the region
> while emboldened Shiites have pressed for more
> influence.
>
> After the war between Hezbollah and Israel, Shiite
> leaders seemed to
> reach their zenith as an antidote to a Sunni Muslim
> leadership widely
> viewed as corrupt, impotent and stooges of the West,
> analysts said.
>
> Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Sheik
> Nasrallah of
> Hezbollah, each won wide followings across the
> region for their
> willingness to defy the United States. Hezbollah and
> its allies
> pressed for more power in Lebanon and when rebuffed,
> began
> demonstrations intended to topple the government.
>
> Now, fueled by state controlled media in many Sunni
> Muslim states, a
> divide, or at least an estrangement, is growing
> across the Middle East
> between Sunni Muslims and Shiites. Egyptians, for
> example, are
> inundated nearly daily with headlines, commentaries
> and television
> reports alleging Shiite transgressions.
>
> An Egyptian-government controlled satellite service,
> called Nilesat,
> has been broadcasting across the Arab world Al
> Zawraa, a television
> station that shows what is billed as heroic footage
> of the Sunni
> insurgency in Iraq, American soldiers being killed
> and wounded, and
> unflattering images of Shiite leaders.
>
> "Raising the ugly face of Shiites, expanding Iranian
> influence in the
> region," read a headline in a recent edition of Rose
> el-Youssef, a
> pro-government Egyptian newspaper.
>
> In December, a top religious leader close to the
> Saudi royal family,
> Abdul Rahman al-Barak, said that Shiites, whom he
> called
> rejectionists, were worse than Jews or Christians.
>
> "By and large, rejectionists are the most evil sect
> of the nation and
> they have all the ingredients of the infidels," he
> wrote.
>
> Such talk is causing a creeping sectarian tension,
> political analysts
> said. In Mr. Abdullah's village in the Nile Delta
> region of Egypt,
> where many people had posted a picture of Sheik
> Nasrallah, there is a
> growing sense of disunity with Shiites that mirrors
> partly
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