Who is doing what in Iraq?

In the background are various Arab experts' alarmist assessments that the US is planning to create an arc of Shia power stretching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon, on one side, and possibly through Gulf Sheikhdoms to Saudi Arabia, on the other. Along the way, that will destroy ME peace and stability. The great Sunni powers' sway over the whole region will be gone -- a frightening thought for today's dominant classes and rulers.

The second was the strange case of two British military spies being arrested after a chase by Iraqi policemen, who were later, supposedly, handed over to (presumably) Muqtada as Sadr's militia. Later the British army stormed Basra's jail, destroying it partially, and recovered those spies. Thereafter there was a spate of stories about the militiamen having infiltrated into the newly recruited Iraqi police. But there was not a word about what were those spies doing from any western source. Then, how come the British army needed to smash the jail wall which has not been described as a private or militia jail. Were they actually handed over to Muqtada's men? Not a sound can be heard on such questions.

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I have before me the transcript of an al-Jazeera story. One quotes it firstly because it comes from an independent Arab source and secondly because the story was also initially published in two British newspapers before suddenly disappearing completely from media screens and pages. Al-Jazeera's story says the spies were in Arab costume, they had enough high explosives to blow up any building, cause grievous human losses, and had a timing device in the Cressida car they were driving. This was in Basra, a predominantly Shia town. Several British writers on the internet have accused British forces of fomenting Iraq's sectarian divide by targeting Shias and blaming it on Sunnis. That is the classic tactic of dividing communities for staying on in Iraq until they have successfully pacified and reshaped it according to their own wishes.

Thirdly, the latest stories out of London now openly accuse Iran of providing sophisticated equipment to Muqtada's militia. Tehran is also accused of egging on the Sunnis in Iraq -- an astounding claim that defies common sense. Wouldn't Sunnis see something sinister in Iran urging them to attack Shia targets? One dismisses these stories as being unrelated to Iraq; they appear to be a part of an American-led campaign to demonise Iran as much as possible, so that a climate of opinion is created to expect some American or Israeli military action against Iran on the nuclear question.

The first conclusion one draws about Iraqi developments from 2002 onward is that it was curious that the Anglo-American leadership had quickly picked on the western Arabists' pet theme of Iraq being an extremely brittle state: a state with a Shia majority being ruled and oppressed by a Sunni minority. Oppression of Kurds also added to its basic instability. From the beginning, Paul Bremer, the Bush administration's viceroy, talked in, and dealt with, political matters in terms of Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds, emphasising these sectarian entities. Much of it was about their relative shares of power and money. Then there is no doubt that the US experts chose the majority of its favourites from Shias among the Iraqi dissidents abroad. Entire reconstruction talk and action was based on sectarian considerations and areas were identified by the sect dominant there. Shia sectarian hatred of "Sunni" Saddam's oppression and murders, no doubt also a fact, was exploited. And Americans did rely more on Shias, alienating the once-dominant Sunnis.

To this explosive mix, is added the Jordanian and Saudi fears of the rise of a Shia Iraq in the heart of the Arab world. Age-old animosities, barely below the surface almost in all Arab countries, have been semi-dormant. New emphases on sects can only tend to revive those divisions. Although the Shia numbers do not constitute a majority everywhere in the Arab world, but they are large enough to cause major social change, if they were to be given equal civic rights in a democratic dispensation. In this age and clime, how can such significant minorities as Shias in Saudi Arabia (four million?) or Kuwait or Yemen be ignored, while they are a clear majority in places like Lebanon and Bahrain. A greater degree of equality of all citizens can no longer go on being denied, if for no other reason than Americans having undertaken the job of reordering the whole ME. What they mean by Freedom and Democracy may be nothing more than a new stooge. But in the process the old, old divide may become deeper and may even explode grievously diminishing the hopes of peace and progress of the Arab world.

A very large number of Arabs, Shias as well as Sunnis, do not regard either the US or Britain or most other European powers, to be their well-wishers. Few can miss the significance of Arab oil and the region's importance for all aspirants to world domination. There is also the Israel factor: both Americans and Europeans, especially the British, are sworn supporters of the Israeli actions, including all their land grabbing for almost 90 years, including the refusal to accept back those whom they (Israelis) had driven out of their homes. It is now widely seen that the US wants to dominate the ME more completely through satellite regimes that are to be controlled by Israel. Many Arabs believe that the US-UK combine is deliberately fanning the fire of a Shia-Sunni civil war in Iraq and their conduct speaks loudly enough.

Insofar as the old Arab-Ajam (non-Arab) conflict and the Cold War's more recent resurrection in the shape of Saudi Arabia-Iran rivalry is concerned, it too looks to being orchestrated by the Americans. While America cannot make Iran do its bidding, few Saudi actions on the international stage can take place without an American inspiration. No one can minimise the stifling influence of the US in Saudi governance. If so, it has, inevitably, two contexts: one is to increase pressure on Iran vis-a-vis its atomic program; that is a major consideration, as already noted. But it is also a major factor in enlarging the scope of the largely manipulated Shia-Sunni civil war. Saudi intervention -- how old is it? -- can make the flames of this Iraqi struggle engulf large swathes of the ME. One doubts whether any Saudi minister would happily see a region-wide civil strife along Shia-Sunni lines unless he was pushed into it.

While all Arabs need to embrace human equality and create a more democratic dispensation given the current international climate of opinion, with or without kings, they have to realise that a widespread Shia-Sunni civil war will knock out the Arab ME as an actor in world politics. That will not serve any Arab purposes. Their societies will unravel and governments may get blown away. At any rate, social stability from now on will have to be based on human equality and democracy rather than on the inherited privileges of a few and the servility of the many. But the Arabs have to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps in both economic and political spheres. Foreign intervention in their affairs can only be at the expense of common Arab interests.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.