Is a great Shia-Sunni war in the offing?

Is a great Shia-Sunni war in the offing?

Brian M Downing

Almost 1400 years after the great schism in the Islamic world, sectarian hatreds in the Middle East are higher than in centuries. Princes and mullahs exchange angry words. Proxies fight fierce local wars. Armies of regional powers purchase huge amounts of weapons and occasionally clash, for now only briefly.

ISIL, the apocalyptic Sunni war cult, is doing its best to worsen matters. Most recently, its Khorasan group encamped in eastern Afghanistan sent suicide bombers to strike a demonstration of Hazaras, a Shia people. Casualties were high. The attack was motivated not simply due to sectarian passions, but also because ISIL wants an apocalyptic war to destroy existing states and open the door to the new day.

With an abundance of hatred, aimless young men, weaponry, oil wealth, and illegitimate governments, an immense sectarian war may be nearing.

Sectarianism today

Increased hostility goes back to the Iranian revolution of 1979 and to reactions and overreactions to it. Ayatollah Khomeini called for all Muslims, not simply the Shia, to overthrow unjust rulers. This greatly alarmed rulers of the region, Shia and Sunni, secular and not.

Concerned with the revolutionary potential among his Shia subjects, enticed by the prospect of a land grab, and supported by Sunni princes, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980. Eight years of war followed, which included occasional skirmishes between Saudi and Iranian jets. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians perished on both sides.

Pakistan was concerned that its Shia minority would rise up, resulting in losing territory, as did the Bengal uprising of 1971 – a national trauma, especially for the generals. The government responded to its perceived Shia threat by further supporting a religious-nationalist creed and by supporting militant gangs that harassed and often murdered Shias. Saudi and Pakistani madrasas furthered their cooperation in disseminating an especially austere and intolerant form of Sunnism.

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 ended decades of rule by a Sunni minority and brought a Shia majority to power. Resentful of their lost status, the Sunnis fought the Shias and the US. Agreements to reconcile have led nowhere and the conflict is ongoing. Iraq is one of several conflicts that could flare into a broader sectarian war.

Yemen

Since its creation from a northern Shia section that was part of the Ottoman Empire, and from a southern Sunni region once controlled by Britain, Yemen has known decades of civil war between the two regions. Foreign powers, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Britain intervened. Paradoxically given today’s sectarian polarization, the Saudis backed the Shia north. Not so in recent years.

The Shia Houthi movement – a sectarian response to growing Saudi influence – seized the north and, with Iranian support, drove deep into the Sunni south. Sunni monarchies in the region delivered aid and a limited number of troops, including Colombian mercenaries, to defend the south. The Houthis were driven away from the southern port of Aden and battlelines stabilized well north of it. Despite the sectarian passions of backers, most Yemenis see the war as a dispute between two regions with disparate histories, not between two religions with centuries of conflict.

Negotiations come and go and stalemate continues. Iran has not sent in its own troops or the militias it has recruited from across the Shia world. Saudi Arabia, despite its proximity and sizable defense budget, has only had brief skirmishes along its border with Yemen and has been loth to send troops into the fray, save for security forces well behind the lines.

Lebanon

Censuses are risky in Lebanon. Most in and out of the country feel it’s best to simply say the population is evenly divided between Sunnis, Shia, and Christians. Several wars raged from the fifties to the eighties, supported and encouraged by outside powers. Today, Iran supports the Shia Hisbollah movement, training and arming its militias which wore down the Israeli army in the eighties. Saudi Arabia has financed weaponry for the national army, though fiscal woes may have ended this.

Lebanon has been thought to be a powder keg in a region with countless arsonists. Over a million Syrian refugees, most of them Sunnis, have fled to Lebanon. Hisbollah fights on the government side. Syrian rebel groups use sanctuaries along the border. ISIL and al Qaeda have struck Shia targets with car bombs and rocket fire in the hope of provoking a new civil war.

Nonetheless, the three sects remain relatively calm. While sectarian fighting rages across the region, Lebanese may be reflecting on decades of slaughter and sense that another round will serve no purpose. Many have taken to the streets recently to call for better trash removal.

Syria

Sunnis and Shias alike took to the streets in the optimistic days of the Arab Spring to demand reform of the Assad government. They were crushed. Government troops, either misinterpreting the protests as a Sunni uprising or seeking to turn the movement into a sectarian war, came down pitilessly on Sunni towns and villages. Peaceful protest turned into one of the most vicious wars of our day.

The war became sectarian and internationalized. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and the Muslim Brotherhood backed Sunni rebels. Iran and Hisbollah sided with the Alawi-Shia forces. The Saudis held maneuvers not far from the Syrian border but have not sent them into battle.

The war is in its sixth year, deaths near a quarter million. The government retreated from large swathes of the country and retrenched in the west. Russia’s intervention last fall firmed up the government side, signaling the rebels and their backers that they could not take conquer the country. Russia’s withdrawal of some of its strength last spring signaled the government that a reconquest of the country was not possible. Russia is maintaining a stalemate and working with the US and Iran to ease the conflict and improve Russia’s position in the Middle East.

The fragmented nature of the Sunni forces is a substantial obstacle to both defeating Assad and spreading sectarian fighting throughout the region. There are dozens of rebel militias, each commanded by a warlord aligned with rivalrous outside powers, which, though capable of short-term cooperation, fight among themselves almost as much as they do the Shia enemy.

Iraq

The 2003 US invasion did not begin sectarian conflict. That went back to the creation of a repressive Sunni state in the 1920s, if not well back into the Ottoman period. The invasion did destroy the Sunni government’s ability to repress the population. In time the US invasion brought a Shia government that determined to keep its former oppressors a powerless minority.

The campaign against ISIL in western Iraq’s Anbar province involves a loose alliance of the Shia national army, Kurdish militias, and some Sunni tribal militias. This modicum of cooperation will not lead to mutual respect and accommodation. ISIL’s defeat in coming months will open a new violent chapter in Iraq’s history.

Shia and Kurdish forces see the Sunnis as ISIL supporters, often beating them and driving them from their homes. The Sunnis of Mosul and other parts of Anbar will welcome deliverance from ISIL, but then take up the cause of autonomy. They look to the north and see Kurdistan effectively free of Baghdad. To the west, Syrian Sunnis have driven Damascus’s forces from their lands are in the process of building statelets. Why not autonomy for the Sunnis of Anbar?

It’s puzzling that Saudi Arabia and other monarchies have not already armed and financed the Anbar resistance. It would weaken Shia power and break the arc from Tehran to the Mediterranean. The US has probably persuaded the monarchies not to do so in exchange for bearing the brunt of the airpower, logistics, and advisory missions in the ISIL War. How long this will continue is unknown.

The Sunnis of Anbar have considerable resources without the help of the monarchs. Historically, they are fighters. They have military experience from service in Saddam’s army, from the insurgency against the US, from the Awakening movement against al Qaeda, and from in small-scale actions against ISIL. They can build ties with Syrian rebel forces just to the west and form a confederation of statelets. Smuggling routes controlled by the sheikhs will bring in weaponry across open borders. Anbar is the most significant of the sectarian flash points.

Expansion of lesser conflicts into full sectarian war is made less likely by low oil prices. This has greatly limited the resources available to Saudi Arabia and Iran, both of which already spend vast sums of export revenue in mollifying domestic groups. Further, neither state can feel comfortable with the combat effectiveness of its army. The Saudis noted their army’s failings in Gulf War One and rather than reform it, have ever since have adroitly convinced other countries to do their fighting.

Iran fought Iraq for eight years and afterwards built up the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Lavished with modern weapons and trained hard by Russian advisers, the mullahs and general’s prided themselves on the finest army in the region. IRGC battalions in Syria, however, have not performed well, making only incremental gains against rebel positions. Putin is thought to be keenly disappointed in them.

Mullahs and generals, like many leaders, are capable of delusions and self-deception, but they cannot look upon the IRGC as they once did. They might also warily note that the US devastated the Iraqi army in a matter of days, twice.

Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.