America Paves the Way to Drain Iran and the Arabs

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

It appears the United States was not content with what it did in the 1980s to stoke the war between Iran and the Arabs, and the resulting drain on Iranian and Arab energies that were put to work for the benefit of Saddam Hussein. America, together with Israel, would have preferred that war never stop, so that Arab and Iranian resources would keep flowing into the pockets of arms dealers. It is now trying to manufacture the elements of a new conflict by feeding disputes between the Sunnis and Shia of Iraq.

Anyone following American policy in Iraq notices that American efforts are focused on driving multiple wedges between Shia and Sunni, in the hope that this leads to internal fighting that draws in support from neighboring states, with Iran siding with the Shia and Arab states siding with the Sunnis. War would then rage in Iraq, states would put their resources to work backing the different sides, and Israel and America would sit there as spectators, watching Arab and Muslim leaders sell out their peoples with a new brand of “national” goods dressed in religious garb, reaping everything green and dry alike. Should America succeed in this scheme, it will not object to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Emirates supporting the Sunnis, and it will encourage Iran to stand with the Shia — quite apart from what it hopes to gain from divisions on the Syrian and Lebanese scenes, and everything this whole affair carries within it of a revived sectarian Islamic strife that crosses over from the past to reconnect with the battles of the Camel and Siffin.

America is doing the following:

First: it focuses, in an extreme and one-sided way, on the claim that the acts of the Iraqi resistance — which it calls terrorism — originate solely from the Arab areas known as the “Sunni Triangle.” This is a tune meant to imply that non-Sunnis are not Arabs. It also claims that those carrying out acts of resistance are members of the Baath party and Saddam’s fedayeen. In this way it tries to strip the Islamic character from the resistance, or part of it, and pin it instead on a regime whose demise most Iraqis do not regret. Nor does America lack for a justification: it says that the men of the former regime lost the privileges they once enjoyed, and are trying, through the resistance, to reclaim what they lost. In other words, it is trying to create the impression that the Shia are not Arabs, that the resistance’s connection to Islam is flimsy, that the despotic regime is trying to return through the resistance, and that the resistance’s goals go no further than the pursuit of personal interests achieved at the expense of the Iraqi people.

…the daily [reality] in Iraq — rather, it is the resistance that produces it — but his words, whenever he speaks, take priority in the concerns of politicians and journalists. And America does not hesitate to keep saying that the former regime was a Sunni regime that ruled in the name of the Sunnis, so as to make the Sunnis bear the burden of everything that happened in Iraq by way of repression, persecution, and squandered wealth.

Third: America tries to pin the resistance — which one might describe as Islamic — on al-Qaeda and on elements from outside Iraq. It conveys a message to the effect that the resistance fighters belong to an extremist organization, rejected internationally and outlawed, and that dealing with it is not truly aimed at liberation but at killing innocent civilians. It wants to claim that, were it not for elements coming from Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula generally, and the Levant, the people of Iraq would have achieved stability and American forces would have withdrawn. In other words, the presence of American forces is tied to the presence of these Arab “terrorists” who obstruct the course of construction and democracy in order to seize power by force. These, of course, are Sunnis, and they are the ones resisting so as to keep their grip on the Shia.

For this reason, America makes the small matter into a great one, and the great matter into a small one. A single thread of al-Qaeda in Iraq is turned into a mighty rope, indeed into an enormous bridge across which non-Iraqi elements cross into Iraq; while the Iraqi, Arab, and Kurdish roots of the Iraqi resistance fighters are papered over.

Fourth: whoever examines closely the recent message of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in which he called for fighting the Shia, finds it to be forged, and it is likely that it bears American fingerprints. The content of the message manufactures many enemies while preserving few friends, and I do not think a war commander intent on victory would concern himself to this degree with manufacturing hostility with others. And if al-Qaeda and Abu Musab truly cared about the Sunnis to the exclusion of the Shia, then why did they not lift a finger, all these years, in defense of the Sunnis in Iran? Had the two of them wanted to sow strife among Muslims, they would have done so.

Fifth: America is keen to ease the placement of Shia into public posts, in order to create the impression among Sunnis that the Shia are cooperating with the occupier, and so manufacture grudges among the people.

Sixth: American policy as a whole aims to shift the course of the battle from resistance against the foreigner to internal fighting.

Overcoming the danger whose foundations America is laying depends on the Iraqis themselves — Sunni and Shia, Arab and Kurd. And the principle from which Iraqis can proceed toward forging a shared understanding is that America is not the redeeming messiah who comes with his armies as a liberator in the name of God. America came to Iraq to stay, unless it becomes unable to bear the cost of staying. And if there are Iraqis who imagine they can form a government for an independent Iraqi state through elections held under occupation, then their imagining ranges somewhere between illusion and fantasy. America came to secure its own interests and those of Israel, to establish military bases in Iraq, to make the country a new launching pad for its aggressive policies against Arabs and Muslims, and to entrench its own hegemony and that of Israel. As for the danger that looms larger than the one America itself is charting, it lies in the Iraqi who believes that America came to help him.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “أمريكا تمهد لاستنزاف إيران والعرب” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.