Sectarianism, a Weapon Against Islam

By Yusuf Fernandez

Some days earlier, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei also urged Iranians and Muslims in general to resist enemy efforts to fuel sectarianism. “Those who try to sow discord among Shiites and Sunnis are mercenaries of the enemy, whether they realize it or not,” Ayatollah Khamenei told the large crowd gathered for the speech. “The miserable Wahhabi groups are fed by petro-dollars to carry out terrorist acts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, although many of them are not aware that they are mercenaries of the enemy.” Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei added that the enemy viewed Muslim unity and the growing interest of Muslim nations in the Islamic Revolution as a threat and therefore was making every effort to foment discord among Shiites and Sunnis.

An example of this reality is Iraq, where the fall of Saddam’s Hussein regime, led to a resurgence of the Islamic movement in the country. A Shiite-led coalition won the 2005 election and it meant the birth of a new balance in the Middle East. Some media in the West wrote that “Hezbollah’s spirit”, which had been “dormant” since the 1980s, was again on the rise. All this alarmed some in the US Administration and several Arab regimes, which went back to old tactics that were used in the eighties against the Shiites, Iran and the Soviet Union: the use of extremist Wahhabi groups.

Iraqi lawmakers have increased their criticism at Saudi Arabia for funding efforts to destabilize Iraq and inciting its Sunni Muslim community against Baghdad. “There are regional powers that pay billions of dollars ... to push for the failure of Iraq's democracy,” a senior lawmaker Haidar al-Ibadi, of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki´s Dawa party, told Press TV.

Ibadi blamed “a multi-billion dollar plan by Saudi Arabia and other states” for a hike in terrorist attacks across the country, aimed at shaking people's confidence in the Shiite-led government ahead of the January polls. A member of parliament’s foreign relations panel, citing intelligence reports, accused Saudi Arabia of making efforts to incite insurgents and to wield political influence by financing Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish politicians and tribal leaders. “Saudi Arabia is not happy that Shiites lead this country,” said Sami al-Askari to Press TV, adding that other Arab countries were also meddling in Iraq’s affairs.

Maliki said has accused some foreign country of spending money to weaken Iraq and claimed that those plans would fail. The comments followed an previous report published by Nahrainnet website, which said that Saudi Arabia was employing Baathists and al-Qaeda terrorist groups to carry out terror acts in Iraq to eliminate Shiite school of thought in the country. Unlike other Arab states, Saudi Arabia has so far refrained from opening an embassy in Iraq.

“There is no indication Saudi Arabia will open an embassy in Baghdad anytime soon. The Saudis think Maliki is too close to Iran,” a diplomat in Saudi Arabia told Reuters on condition of anonymity. According to Iraqi security officials, many foreign insurgents caught in Iraq are Saudi nationals.

On June 25, Maliki strongly condemned a decree by a Wahhabi Saudi cleric who sought to incite insurgent attacks against Shiite Muslims across the globe. “We have observed that many governments have been suspiciously silent on the fatwa provoking the killing of Shiites,” AFP quoted Maliki as saying in a statement. The remarks came after Mecca´s Mufti Sheikh Adil al-Kalbani told the BBC that “Shiite clerics are definitely infidels, without question”. The Saudi Mufti has also encouraged the Saudi government to repress Shiite communities across the Kingdom. “The Shiites have no right to be represented in the (Saudi) senior scholarly committee,” he said.

Maliki's response to the remarks come one day after several massive bombings in the predominantly Shiite regions across the country killed dozens of innocent people. “We call upon the international community, Arab and Islamic countries in particular, to declare a clear position about these horrific crimes,” Maliki emphasized.

In Iran, another terrorist group Jundallah (Soldiers of God) has been launching terror attacks in the Islamic Republic. Abdul Hamid Rigi, who is brother of the leader of the group Abdul Malik Rigi, said that the latter had been an Al-Qaeda point man in Iran and accused the US to create and fund the group in order to destabilize the Islamic Republic. “The United States created and supported Jundallah and we received orders from them,” Rigi said.

“They (US officials) told us whom to shoot and whom not to. All orders came from them. They told us that they would provide us with everything we need like money and equipment.” Iran has in the past blamed US and British agents based in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan for launching attacks on border provinces with significant ethnic minority populations. Sistan-Baluchestan, where Jundullah operates, has a large ethnic Sunni Baluch minority. The group claimed a May 28 bomb attack on the Shiite Amir al-Momenin mosque in Zahedan in which more than 20 people were killed and 50 wounded.

The situation is similar in Lebanon. During the 2006 war, Wahhabi sheikhs bowed to Saudi pressure and issued fatwas attacking the Shiites. However, the stupid nature of this position, especially at a time where Hezbollah was engaged in a decisive war with the Zionist entity was a blow for the promoters of the fatwa, because even some important Saudi religious leaders, such as Sheikh Salman al-Auda, came out in support of Hezbollah, which also enjoys huge grassroots support among the Saudi population.

Shortly after the Lebanon war, some extremist groups, such as Fatah al Islam and Al-Qaeda fi Bilad as Sham (Al-Qaeda in the land of Levant), emerged with an anti-Hezbollah and anti-Shiite message. In an interview on CNN International’s “Your World Today” on 22 May 2007, famous US journalist Seymour Hersh explained that there were US clandestine operations in Iran, Lebanon and Syria. These operations would be aimed at strengthening Saudi-supported Islamic groups and weakening Iran-backed Shiites at any cost, even if it meant backing extremist Wahhabi jihadists.

According to Seymour Hersh, these operations would have been guided by Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security Advisor neocon Elliot Abrams and Saudi Arabia’s national security advisor, former ambassador to Washington and old CIA-collaborator Prince Bandar bin Sultan. He said that the operation included generous and active support to Al-Qaeda-linked groups, such as Fatah al Islam and Usbat al Ansar.

Hersh said that “a by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al-Qaeda.” “The “redirection,” as some inside the White House called “the new strategy”, sought to “promote a sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.” And he described the scheme of funding Wahhabi radical groups as “a covert programme we joined in with the Saudis as part of a bigger, broader program of doing everything we could to stop the spread of the Shiite world.”

“We are spreading the money around as much as we can,” a former senior intelligence official told Hersh. “In this process, we are financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. ... It is a very high-risk venture.” In some cases, the clandestine operations relied on Saudi Arabia and Bandar to provide the funding so that they remain secret. Bandar and the Saudi government would have assured Washington that they would keep any dangerous groups potentially strengthened by the new policy “under control”.

In this sense, Hersh pointed out that the current situation is “much like that during the conflict in Afghanistan in the 1980s –which gave rise to Al-Qaeda– with the same people involved in both the US and Saudi Arabia and the “same pattern” of the US using jihadists –in that case against the Soviet Union- that the Saudis assured us they could control.” When the CNN asked Hersh why the Administration would be acting in a way that appears to run counter to US interests, he says that, since the Israelis lost to them in the July 2006 war, “the fear of Hezbollah in Washington, particularly in the White House, is acute.”

Hersh´s findings were confirmed by the Reuters reporter David Morgan. “There is Saudi money coming in to Wahhabi extremist groups with the specific intention of confronting the Shiites and Hezbollah in Lebanon,” a former senior intelligence official who closely monitors the Middle East told him. “Experts said significant sums have also been given to militant groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and Palestinian refugee camps. In the latest influx, contributions have gone to Wahhabi-run charities and institutions. The recipients included Osbat al-Ansar, which the State Department describes as a terrorist group linked to Osama bin Laden´s Al-Qaeda network, according to former intelligence officials and independent analysts,” Reuters said. He said that money had also gone to Fatah al-Islam, which fought the Lebanese army in May 2007.

Similar plans were also denounced in Pakistan. On June 22, Liaqat Baloch, SecretaryGeneral of the Jamat-e- Islami (JI) party, told reporters in the southern port city of Karachi that the US and Israel were fomenting sectarian strife in the country in order to destabilize the country and accused the extremist groups of pursuing and US-Israeli agenda. His comments come after a string of sectarian attacks on Shiite Muslims in recent months undermined the already deteriorating security of the country, Press TV reported.

Countless incidents have taken place in Dera Ismail Khan and Kurram Agency over the past few months. Taliban-linked Wahhabi groups in Parachinar, Hangu district and much of the Kurram tribal agency have committed a series of massacres on Shiite Muslims. Some local sources say more than 2,000 Shiite community members have been killed in the region since 2007. He concluded the religious parties will have to rise to fight the conspiracies waged against Islam under the current circumstances.

Shiite Muslims in Pakistan's Kurram and Hangu agencies have been facing a serious humanitarian crisis since November 2007 when pro-Taliban, Wahhabi militants cut off the areas from the rest of the country, imposing a crippling blockade on the Shiites communities in the region. Many trucks carrying much-needed medical supplies for the beleaguered Shiites have been attacked and destroyed.

Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province has also witnessed several instances of violence directed against the Hazara Shiite community in recent months. Several Shiite religious gatherings have also been targeted in central province of Punjab over the past some months.

Iran has repeatedly cautioned Islamabad over the “silent massacre” of its Shiite community by the Taliban in the country. “The incidents that have occurred against Pakistan's Shiite community are a plot to create conflict between the region's Sunni and Shiite population,” said Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani.

In Gaza, the Islamic resistance movement Hamas was militarily challenged last August by another Al-Qaeda-linked extremist group, Jund Ansar Allah (the Soldiers of God), which barricaded inside a mosque and declared an Islamic emirate independent of the Hamas government. Hamas security men took over the mosque and put an end to the rebellion. Ten extremists and six Hamas men were killed in the gunfire. Jund Ansar Allah had been behind some bombing attacks against Internet cafes and other sites and kidnappings. This and other similar groups have used the blockade of Gaza to gain recruits and influence.

Another Al-Qaeda-linked group, Gelgelt, whose ideas are also based on Wahhabism, has also been operating in Gaza against the Hamas government. This group was responsible for a bombing attack on a wedding party in Khan Younis (Gaza) last July, which injured more than 60 people. It has also kidnapped some foreign journalists as well as humanitarian relief workers in Palestine.

According to the Egyptian publication Al-Ahram, these groups have been “used in the past by Hamas's opponents to embarrass and demonize Hamas's political movement.” A source told Al-Ahram that “Mohammed Dahlan, a key Fatah leader, succeeded in recruiting some of these groups to work against Hamas during the period between the parliamentary elections in January 2006 and Hamas taking control of Gaza in mid-June 2007. The source noted that Dahlan managed to use the leaders of Gelgelt groups to destabilize Hamas's rule. During that period, Gelgelt groups abducted a large number of foreigners, including British journalist Alan Johnston. The Palestinian security source added that Hamas's takeover in Gaza eroded the power of Gelgelt groups, and Hamas security forces freed Johnston. However, the last six months have witnessed a number of bombings, which confirms Gelgelt's resurgence.” The Hamas government in Gaza has also revealed documents proving that Al-Qaeda loyalists who clashed with the Islamic resistance group's security forces were backed by a number of Arab countries in order to destabilize Gaza.

Hamas and its government have decided to wage an “intellectual war” on the followers of Gelgelt organizations, along with security measures. A source from the Hamas movement told the Al-Ahram that “many of the Hamas clergy had begun to visit members of Gelgelt organizations, and those who show sympathy with their ideas, inviting them to a private forum to persuade them to alter their ideas. According to the source, this move by the Hamas clergy has achieved great success, as dozens of young people had withdrawn from the ranks of Gelgelt organizations.”

In Yemen, a lawmaker, Yahya al-Houthi, denounced in an interview with Press TV que Saudi Arabia and Al-Qaeda were helping the Yemeni government in its crackdown on Houthis, a dissident Shiite group. “In recent months (Yemeni President) Ali Abdullah Saleh has taken many recruits of Al-Qaeda who were afraid of falling into the hands of their regimes in countries like Egypt, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. His plan was to use these fighters from Al-Qaeda to battle the Houthis in Saada,” he said.

According the Yemeni dissident, Saudi Arabia is propagating Wahhabi ideology in Yemen and the country is used as a base for Al-Qaeda operatives. He said a training camp had also been set up for Al-Qaeda members in the Waila region. “The areas of Malahit and Hasana which the Houthis have taken control over were also the areas where weapons were transferred from Saudi Arabia to the terrorists,” the lawmaker added. Yemen, which has long been in conflict with the Zaidi Shiites, launched its “Operation Scorched Earth” in August to root out the group.