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Middle Eastern Failures
by Allan Topol, [IMAGE]2011

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT MILITARY.COM, November 01, 2011

Photo Courtesy: Julie Zitin
[Allan Topol / AllanTopol.Com] United States Middle Eastern policy has been seriously flawed. American decision makers have viewed the Arabs as a single monolithic people. To our detriment, we have failed to recognize the intense animosity between Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims.

Their conflict, the great schism in the Muslim world, originated in 647, only thirty five years after the death of Mohammad. Some with great intensity, who would later be called Sunnis, insisted that Mohammad's successors be elected by a Council of elders. Others with equal fervor, who would later be known as Shiites, demanded that his successors must be descendants of Ali, the husband of Mohammad's daughter Fatima. A bloody Muslim civil war ensued, culminating with Ali's assassination.

In the subsequent thirteen centuries, there has never been a reconciliation, or even peaceful coexistence. Indeed, over the years, violence between the two has repeatedly flared and the animosity has intensified.

Regardless of what one thinks about the U.S. war in Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein, one fact is inescapably clear: Our policy makers did not adequately take into account the great Sunni Shiite divide. If they did, they never explained it to the American people. Only when the U.S. had boots on the ground and had toppled Saddam, did we realize that we had landed in the middle of a bitter civil war.

There was not and had never been an Iraqi nation. There were Sunni Iraqis and Shiite Iraqis artificially forged together by British might or Saddam Hussein's reign of terror.

Scarcely a week goes by that this sectarian hatred does not explode with bombings by one group against the other. We entered an Iraq ruled by Sunnis. We will leave Iraq controlled by Shiites. When we leave, the Sunnis will not be lying down in harmony with the Shiites. At least we should recognize one thing: After us, the sectarian deluge.

Similarly, in Lebanon the conflict is between Lebanese Shiites, once the poor and down trodden, whom Iran and Syria have armed, and the generally more prosperous secular and educated Sunni Lebanese. In view of the hatred between Sunni and Shiites, the modern State of Lebanon is not a single nation. Both were forced together under French rule. In Lebanon, as in Iraq, creative thinking is called for that takes into account the Shiite Sunni conflict. Perhaps instead of a single state, a loose federation of communities as in the former Yugoslavia.

In Syria the conflict is between Assad, from a minority Shiite sect and the Sunni majority which has long been chafing under Shiite rule. It is only a question of time until the conflict explodes into a full scale sectarian civil war.

There is a joker in this Arab deck. That is Iran -- non Arab but Shiite. The driving force behind Iran's meddling in the Arab world from Bahrain to Lebanon is to aid Shiites.

Now the rulers in Tehran have their sights set on the largest prize of all: instigating a conflict with Saudi Arabia dominated by the Sunni monarchy. The recent Iranian botched attempt to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington was an early round in this battle which will grow more intense over time.

With all that Saudi oil, the prize is huge. And the Iranians will have a proxy in the impoverished Shiites living in the eastern part of Saudi Arabia, which happens to be the center of the oil.

Unfortunately, the Arab spring will not usher in an era of Middle Eastern peace and tranquility. The Sunni Shiite wars will dominate for the foreseeable future. American decision makers must recalibrate their policies to take this into account.