Horror on Shiites: A turning point for the region

Alexandre Adler, the distinguished French "politilogist" with whom I had a thrilling conversation yesterday, described the Iraq and Pakistan assaults on Shiites, as June 22, 1941, the date of the attack of Hitler’s armies on the then Soviet Union. The analogy, partly in his wording, is this: "From the outbreak of World War II in 1939 until the German attack on the Stalinist Soviet Union in 1941, the war was between the democracies and Hitler’s Nazism. During those two years, thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union were involved in an implicit alliance. It was broken by the former’s attack on the latter, after which the Soviet Union became allied with the democracies that ultimately brought down Nazi Germany. This declaration of war on the Shiites on March 2, 2004 will bring Iran and the United States closer in the context of the Greater Middle East."

If the suicides bombings were only on the Iraqi Shiites, then the case had do be scrutinized within the context of the reconstruction of Iraq. However, since they also targeted the Pakistani Shiites, it has to be analyzed in a broader picture. That broader picture in which we see a new page opened in Al Qaida’s all-out war on the Shi’a brings forth an inevitable involvement of Iran in the "political equation". In this respect, the interests of Iran and the United States converge on Iraq and the compromise performed by the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in reaching a deal for the "Provisional Administrative Law" in, being an American blueprint for a "road map" in bringing out the post-Saddam Iraq could be considered a tacit accord reached between Tehran and Washington. It has also taken into consideration that Iran, following the recent elections, elevated the former president Hashemi Rafsanjani in a position of power, along with the powerful clergy, foremost Ayatollah Rohani. This "centrist" line known as its pragmatism, are keen to open new vistas towards the United States and also keen to prove that better relations with Washington is not in the monopoly of so-called Iranian reformists. In Washington, it is those Republican "realists" who are calling the shots during this period of election campaign, while the "neo-cons" are lying low. More or less, the same parties on both sides of the fence, are engaged as the Irangate case of the 1980’s.

Despite the lack of confidence, especially, on the American side because of the ill-fated Irangate affair that had been run by Hashemi Rafsanjani in Iran at that time, Americans seem not having much options other than gaining tacit cooperation of him and his group, for the execution of their "road map" in Iraq. Without an Iranian cooperation and coopting Tehran who has considerable inroads in the Shiite majority in Iraq, Americans would be in an impossible situation to work according to their declared timetable, transferring the sovereignty to the Iraqis by the end of June 2004 and probably withdrawing some troops before the U.S. election date.

This scenario -if it is not the actual reality, but only a scenario- suggests that the culprit behind the attacks on Shi’a is the working of Al-Qaeda, and most probably of an Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarkawi. Zarkawi, a Jordanian by descent, an Arab-Afghan, is known to be an advocate of an all-out offensive on Shiites, according to a captured document, in order to encourage a Shi’a-Sunni civil war in Iraq and elsewhere to destabilize chances for a "Pax Americana", in other words the synonym for the much-acclaimed "the Greater Middle East Initiative" of the U.S. He has been in close touch with the Iraqi Kurdish affiliate of Al-Qaeda, the Ansar al-Islam, supposedly the culprit of the recent Erbil bombings.

How could a single person, an individual like Zarkawi might have such power to declare of war on the Shiites in such a broad geography? A valid question. But, as long as Al-Qaeda enjoys the support of certain elements in key positions of Pakistani military and within the Saudi royal family, "the Al-Qaeda phenomenon" has to be understood in a much wider geopolitical context.

I am aware that deciphering the imbroglio of the Middle East is formidably difficult and complex for the "beginners" (including Turkey’s foreign policy establishment); nevertheless, everybody can remain reassured that the latest attacks on Shi’a indicate a growing weakness of fundamentalist-terrorism in the region and its desperation in not being able to hamper the reconstruction process in Iraq.

And, consolidating it, as it is, that is in its new "paradigm shift" that is a new country based in its territorial integrity on mainly the Shiite-Sunni Kurdish axis is in the interest of Turkey.