THE MYTH OF THE SHI’ITE CRESCENT
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times, Hong Kong
Sept 29 2005
TEHRAN – A specter haunts the Middle East – at least in the minds
of Sunni Arabs, especially Wahhabis, as well as a collection of
conservative American think tanks: a Shi’ite crescent, spreading from
Mount Lebanon to Khorasan, across Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf and
the Iranian plateau.
But facts on the ground are much more complex than this simplistic
formula whereby, according to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait, Tehran
controls its allies Baghdad, Damascus and parts of Beirut.
Seventy-five percent of the world’s oil reserves are in the Persian
Gulf. Seventy percent of the Gulf’s population is Shi’ite. As an
eschatological – and revolutionary – religion, fueled by a mix of
romanticism and despair, Shi’ism cannot but provoke fear, especially
in hegemonic Sunni Islam.
For more than a thousand years Shi’ite Islam has been in fact a galaxy
of Shi’sms. It’s as if it was a Fourth World, always maligned with
political exclusion, a dramatic vision of history and social and
economic marginalization.
But now Shi’ites finally have acquired political representation in
Iraq, have conquered it in Lebanon and are actively claiming it in
Bahrain. They are the majority in each of these countries. Shi’ism is
the cement of their communal cohesion. It’s a totally different story
in Saudi Arabia, where Shi’ites are a minority of 11%, repressed as
heretics and deprived of their rights and fundamental freedoms. But
for how much longer?
The Shi’ite sanctuary Shi’ism has been the state religion in Iran
since 1501, at the start of the Safavid dynasty. But with Grand
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1979 Islamic revolution, for the first
time in history the Shi’ite clergy was able to take over the state –
and to govern a Shi’ite-majority society. No wonder this is the most
important event in the history of Shi’ism.
Asia Times Online has confirmed in the holy Iranian city of Qom that
as far as major ayatollahs are concerned, their supreme mission is
to convert the rest of Islam to what they believe is the original
purity and revolutionary power of Shi’ism, always critical of the
established social and political order.
But as a nation-state at the intersection of the Arab, Turk, Russian
and Indian worlds, as the key transit point of the Middle East, the
Persian Gulf, Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Indian sub-continent,
between three seas (the Caspian, the Persian Gulf and the sea of
Oman), not far from Europe and at the gates of Asia, Tehran on a more
pragmatic level has to conduct an extremely complex foreign policy.
Diplomats in Tehran don’t say it explicitly, but this is essentially
a counter-encirclement foreign policy. And not only because of the
post-September 11 American military bases that today encircle Iran
almost completely.
Iran rivals Turkey for influence in Central Asia and rivals Saudi
Arabia for hegemony in the Persian Gulf – with the added complexity
of this being a bitter Sunni-Shi’ite rivalry as well. Rivalry with
Pakistan – again for influence in Central Asia – subsided after the
Taliban were chased out of power in Afghanistan in 2001. But basically
Tehran regards Pakistan as a pro-American Sunni regional power, thus
not exactly prone to be attentive to Shi’ites. This goes a long way
to explain the Iran-India alliance.
It’s impossible to deal with Iran without understanding the complex
dialectics behind the Iranian religious leadership. In their minds,
the concept of nation-state is regarded with deep suspicion, because
it detracts from the umma – the Muslim community.
The nation-state is just a stage on the road to the final triumph of
Shi’ism and pure Islam. But to go beyond this stage it’s necessary to
reinforce the nation-state and its Shi’ite sanctuary, which happens to
be Iran. When Shi’ism finally triumphs, the concept of nation-state,
a heritage from the West, will disappear anyway, to the benefit of
a community according to the will of Prophet Mohammed.
The problem is that reality often contradicts this dream. One of the
best examples was the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Saddam Hussein
invaded Iran first. Iranians reacted culturally – this was a case
of Persians repulsing an Arab invasion. But Tehran at the same time
also expected Iraqi Shi’ites to rebel against Saddam, in the name of
Shi’ism. It did not happen.
For the Shi’ites in southern Iraq, the Arab nationalist impulse was
stronger. And still is. This fact undermines the neo-conservative
charge that Iran is fueling a guerrilla war in southern Iraq with
the intention of breaking up the country. The Ba’athist idea of
integration of Iraqi communities under a strong state, in the name
of Arab nationalism, persists. Few in the Shi’ite south want a civil
war – or the breakup of Iraq.
Azerbaijan and Afghanistan Azerbaijan – where 75% of the population is
Shi’ite – could not be included in a Shi’ite crescent by any stretch of
the imagination, even though it was a former province of the Persian
empire that Russia took over in 1828.
Azeris speak a language close to Turkish, but at the same time
they are kept at some distance by the Turks because they are in the
majority Shi’ites. Unlike Iran, the basis of modern, secular Turkey is
national – not religious – identity. To complicate matters further,
Shi’ism in Azerbaijan had to face the shock of a society secularized
by seven decades of Soviet rule. Azeris would not be tempted – to
say the least – to build an Iranian-style theocracy at home.
It’s true that Azeri mullahs are “Iranified”. But as Iran and
Azerbaijan are contiguous, independent Azerbaijan fears too much
Iranization.
At the same time, Iran does not push too hard for Shi’ite influence
on Azerbaijan because Azeri nationalism – sharing a common religion
on both sides of the border – could embark on a reunification of
Azerbaijan to the benefit of Baku, and not of Tehran.
And if this was not enough, there’s the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,
an enclave of Armenian people completely within Azerbaijan, where
Iran supports Armenia for basically two reasons: to reduce Turkish
influence in Azerbaijan and to help Russia counteract Turkey –
perceived as an American Trojan horse – in the Caucasus.
A fair resume of this intractable equation would be that Azerbaijan
is too Shi’ite to be totally pro-Turkish, not Shi’ite enough to be
completely pro-Iranian, but Shi’ite enough to prevent itself from
becoming a satellite of Russia – again.
On Iran’s eastern front, there are the Hazaras of Afghanistan,
the descendants of Genghis Khan. In the 17th century Hazarajat, in
central Afghanistan, was occupied by the Persian empire. That’s when
it converted to Shi’ism. Hazaras have always suffered the most in
Afghanistan – totally marginalized in political, economic, cultural
and religious terms. Under the Taliban they were massacred in droves –
as the Taliban were surrogates of Saudi Wahhabism: that was a graphic
case of rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia being played out in
the heart of Afghanistan, as much as a case of pro-Pakistan Pashtuns
against pro-Iranian Hazaras.
Hazaras compound a significant 16% of the Afghan population. As far
as Tehran is concerned, they are supported as an important political
power in post-Taliban Afghanistan. But once again it’s not a case of
a Shi’ite crescent.
Iranian military aid flows to the Shi’ite party Hezb-e-Wahdat. But
there are more important practical issues, like the road linking
eastern Iran with Tajikistan that goes through Mazar-e-Sharif in
northern Afghanistan and bypasses Hazara territory. And there’s the
strong Iranian political influence in Herat, in western Afghanistan –
the privileged fiefdom of warlord Ishmail Khan. When Khan was jailed
by the Taliban in 1997 in Kandahar, he was liberated thanks to Iranian
mediation. Khan is now energy minister in the Hamid Karzai government,
but he still controls Herat. The road linking Herat to the Iranian
border was rebuilt and paved by Iranian engineers. People in Herat
can’t get a single TV program from Kabul, but they get three Iranian
state channels. Western Afghanistan is as much Afghan as Iranian.
Meanwhile, in South Asia …
The Moghul empire in India was heavily Persianized. The Moghuls
had been speaking Persian since the 14th century – it was the
administrative language of the sultans and the empire’s high officials
in Delhi, later carried as far away as Malacca and Sumatra.
India – as much as Central Asia – was extremely influenced by Persian
culture. Today, Shi’ites concentrate in northern India, in Uttar
Pradesh, around Lucknow, and also in Rajastan, Kashmir, Punjab, the
western coast around Mumbai and around Karachi in Pakistan. Most are
Ishmalis – not duodecimal, like the Iranians. Pakistan may have as
many as 35 million Shi’ites, with a majority of duodecimal. India
has about 25 million, divided between duodecimal and Ishmalis. The
numbers may be huge, but in India Shi’ites are a minority inside a
minority of Muslims, and in Pakistan they are a minority in a Sunni
state. This carries with it a huge political problem. Delhi sees the
Shi’ites in Pakistan as a factor of destabilization. That’s one more
reason for the close relationship between India and Iran.
Trojan horses in the Gulf Seventy-five percent of the population
of the Persian Gulf – concentrated in the eastern borders of Saudi
Arabia and the emirates – is Shi’ite, overwhelmingly members of a
rural or urban proletariat.
Hasa, in Saudi Arabia, stretching from the Kuwaiti border to the
Qatar border, has been populated by Shi’ites since the 10th century.
That’s where the oil is. Seventy percent of the workforce in the
oilfields is Shi’ite. The potential for them to be integrated in a
Shi’ite crescent is certainly there.
Another historical irony rules that the bitter rivalry – geopolitical,
national, religious, cultural – between Iran and Saudi Arabia has to
played out in Saudi territory as well. A Shi’ite minority in the land
of hardcore Sunni Wahhabism – and the land that spawned al-Qaeda –
has to be the ultimate Trojan horse. What to do?
Just as in Iraq under Saddam, the Saudi royal family swings between
surveillance and repression, with some drops of integration, not as
much promoting Shi’ites in the kingdom’s ranks but heavily promoting
the immigration of Sunnis to Hasa. Deeper integration has to be the
solution, as the access to power of Shi’ites in Iraq will certainly
motivate Saudi Arabian Shi’ites.
Kuwait lies north of Hasa. Twenty-five percent of Kuwaitis are Shi’ite
– natives or immigrants, and they provoke the same sort of geopolitical
quandary to the Kuwaiti princes as they do to the Saudis. Although
they are a religious, social and economic minority as well, Shi’ites
in Kuwait enjoy a measure of political rights. But they are still
considered a Trojan horse. South of Hasa, in Qatar, where also 25%
of the population is Shi’ite, is the exact same thing.
And then there’s Bahrain. Sixty-five percent of Bahrain is Shi’ite.
Basically they are a rural proletariat. It’s the same pattern –
Sunnis are urban and in power, Shi’ites are poor and marginalized.
For decades, even before the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran had
insisted that the Shi’ites in Bahrain were Iranians because the
Safavid dynasty used to occupy both margins of the Persian Gulf.
Tehran still considers Bahrain as an Iranian province. The Shi’ite
majority in Bahrain is prone to turbulence. Repression has been
inevitable – and Bahrain is helped in the process by, who else,
Saudi Arabia.
But there are some encouraging signs. The small Bahrain archipelago
is separated from Saudi Arabia by just a bridge. Every weekend in the
Muslim world – Thursday and Friday – Saudis abandon Wahhabi suffocation
in droves to relax in the malls of Manama and its neighboring
islands. Women in Bahrain are closer to women in Tehran than to
Saudi. They wear traditional clothes, but not a full black chador,
they drive their own cars, they go about their business by themselves,
they meet members of the opposite sex in restaurants or cinemas. For
them, there are no forbidden places or professional activities.
The locals tend to believe this is due to the relative modernity of
the al-Khalifa family in power. Even the South Asian workforce is
treated much better than in the neighboring emirates.
Bahrain is not particularly wealthy – compared to the other
emirates – and unlike Dubai it does not strive to become an economic
powerhouse. There are plenty of schools and a good national university
– although most women prefer to study in the US or Lebanon. But all
this can be illusory. Shi’ites won’t stop fighting for more political
participation. Six months ago there was a huge demonstration in
Bahrain, demanding a new constitution. Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei are extremely
popular in Bahrain.
There are only 6% of Shi’ites in the wealthy United Arab Emirates.
But they can compound a problem as acute as in Kuwait or Qatar because
of the enormous trade and business Iranian influence in Dubai.
The whole equation of Persian Gulf Shi’ites has to do with a
tremendous identity problem. The key argument in favor of them not
being an Iranian Trojan horse is that first and foremost they are
Arabs. But the question remains in the air. Are they most of all
Arabs who practice a different form of Islam, which the Sunni majority
considers heretic? Or are they Shi’ites bound to pledge allegiance to
the motherland of Shi’ism, Iran? The answer is not only religious; it
involves social and political integration of Shi’ites in regimes and
societies that are basically Sunni. Shi’ism in the Arab Gulf may be
“invisible” to the naked eye. Only for the moment.
Sooner or later the sons of Imam Ali will wake up.