A "Shiite Crescent"? The Regional Impact of the Iraq War

“US policies in the Middle East . . . may have helped create the conditions for a second phase of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, which is now at long last having a significant impact among Iran’s Arab neighbors.” A “Shiite Crescent”? The Regional Impact of the Iraq War M ost of the earth’s approximately 1.3 billion Muslims are divided into two great branches, the Sunni and the Shiite. The Arab world has been for the most part ruled by Sunni regimes. They might be divided on the issue of nationalist republicanism versus monarchy, but their sectarian character colors their religious policies. Some countries, such as Iraq and Bahrain, have Shiite majorities, or, as with Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, significant Shiite minorities, but they have been repressed. Today, in the wake of the Bush administration’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the character of sectarian politics in the region has changed dramatically. The US ouster of the Sunni dictatorship politically unleashed Iraq’s Shiite majority. Elsewhere in the Middle East, Shiite masses are appraising the new situation, becoming more restive and beginning to seek new bargains with their rulers. It is the sectarian balance within states, rather than primarily the relationship among states—though the two are obviously related—that is driving these political developments. The question thus is posed: Will newly awakened Shiite populations, less enamored of pan-Arab and secularist projects than the Sunnis, push their states toward pronounced republicanism and at least vague theocracy? Although about 10 percent of Muslims worldwide are Shiites, they have an especially strong presence in the greater oil-producing Gulf area. The king of Jordan has worried aloud about the rise of a “Shiite crescent” in the Arab east that would ally with Shiite Iran and menace the traditional monarchies. Indeed, US policies in the Middle East, including the promotion of democratization, may have helped create the conditions for a second phase of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, which is now at long last having a significant impact among Iran’s Arab neighbors. A LI’ S HEIRS IN IRAQ The difference between Sunnis and Shiites goes back to disputes in the early Muslim community over the rightful successor to the prophet Mohammed after his death in 632. Shiites wanted the prophet to be succeeded by Ali ibn Abi Talib, his son-in-law and cousin, and then by his descendants thereafter. What became the Sunni branch was content to have caliphs—the respected elders of the prophet’s tribe—succeed him. The precise forms that religious authority took in the two branches changed radically over time. From the 1500s, Shiism experienced a great deal of dynamism and expansion, becoming the majority in Iran and later in Iraq. In the course of the twentieth century, the structures of authority in the two branches diverged. Shiites rallied to a handful of ayatollahs, prominent clerical jurists whose legal advice on leading a pious life was considered incontrovertible by the laity. In Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini introduced the novel doctrine that clerics should actually rule, an idea that remained controversial outside that country. In the early 1920s, the newly secular republic of Turkey abolished the Sunni caliphate, which had been claimed (to mixed acclaim) by the last Ottoman sultans. The increasingly Protestant-like Sunnis gave less veneration to their clerics and developed a range of lay, activist organizations, usually based in particular nation-states. Modern, ideological Shiite politics in Iraq began in many ways with the founding of the Dawa Party JUAN COLE is a professor of history at the University of Michigan and author of the web log “Informed Comment” (juancole.com). His most recent book is Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture, and History of Shiite Islam (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002). 20 Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article-pdf/105/687/20/389459/curh_105_687_020.pdf by guest on 25 May 2020 JUAN COLE The Regional Impact of the Iraq War • 21 Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article-pdf/105/687/20/389459/curh_105_687_020.pdf by guest on 25 May 2020 in the late 1950s. The party’s theorists wanted to uary 30, 2005. The religious Shiite parties had, offer young Shiites an alternative to the secular mass under Sistani’s sponsorship, formed a single party parties, such as the Baath Socialist Party and the list, the United Iraqi Alliance. It was dominated by Communist Party. These were becoming enorthe Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for mously popular in the 1950s as discontent grew Islamic Revolution in Iraq ( SCIRI). SCIRI had been with the British-installed constitutional monarchy founded in 1982 by expatriate Shiite religious dating from the 1920s. Dawa organizers sought a activists who sought asylum in Tehran during HusShiite utopia to compete with the Communist one, sein ’s crackdown. Initially SCIRI included the Dawa Party, but Dawa leaders left in 1984 to retain their which would uplift not workers as a class but pious own independence as a party. Muslims as a status group. They were convinced The SCIRI leadership had returned to Iraq after that Shiite law could provide social justice, and they the fall of Hussein, and had demonstrated a remarksought ways of incorporating consultative decisionable aptitude for grassroots organizing. SCIRI politmaking on a national scale into their vision, so long ical offices opened in villages all over the Shiite as it did not lead to the contravention of Islamic law. south, and its provincial party leaders gained popThey imagined themselves a modern Shiite response ularity. Part of the reason for SCIRI’s success probato Iraq’s rapid social change, provoked by the influx bly lay with its paramilitary wing, the Badr Corps, of oil money and by strides in urbanization. But in which was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary many ways they simply repackaged traditionalism Guards and had been and undergirded it with fighting the Baath Stalinist-style cells and regime from bases in party discipline. The king of Jordan has worried aloud about Iran for two decades. The Dawa Party trathe rise of a “Shiite crescent” in the Arab The Badr Corps often dition looked forward to east that would ally with Shiite Iran and supplied security to a Shiite Islamic republic small towns in the Shiin Iraq with a strong menace the traditional monarchies. ite south, forestalling central government. In the sort of chaos that 1968, the Baath Party afflicted provinces of the center-north, and gaining came to power in a coup led by Brigadier General the gratitude of a violence-weary public. The SCIRI Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, and it gradually cracked leadership had long been rooted in the old nexus of down on the Dawa and the Communists during the the Shiite clerisy and the bazaar merchants, and it 1970s and 1980s. In 1980, Saddam Hussein, the increasingly became the party of choice for the traBaathist dictator, made membership in the Shiite ditional Shiite bourgeoisie. Dawa Party a capital crime. The United Iraqi Alliance won a simple majority The belief in a united Iraq under a strong central in the January interim parliamentary election, and government was also characteristic of the strictly reliwas able to form a government in coalition with the gious leadership of the Iraqi Shiites, collectively Kurdistan Alliance. It chose Dawa Party leader called the marjaiyyah or “source” of guidance. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the foremost authority in the Ibrahim Jaafari as prime minister. Most cabinet holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, called for posts went either to Kurds or to members of Shiite national unity just after the fall of the Baath Party on religious parties such as SCIRI and Dawa. The conApril 9, 2003, condemned the foreign occupation of stitution hammered out by this parliament stipuIraq, and reminded his listeners that the leading Shilated that Islam is the religion of state and that the ite clergy had played a central part in the 1920 great civil parliament could pass no legislation that conrebellion against British rule, imposed during and travened established Islamic laws. after World War I. When it became clear to Sistani, In addition, various provincial Shiite religious in the winter of 2003 and 2004, that the Americans coalitions, mainly led by SCIRI, won the vote in 11 of Iraq’s 18 provinces, including Baghdad Province. did not intend to allow Iraqis to hold one-person, Each province had a provincial assembly, roughly one-vote elections—a clear interest for the Shiite consisting of between 20 and 40 members, which majority—he brought huge crowds into the streets in turn selected the governor and deputy governor. and demanded them. The Bush administration relucThat SCIRI was the leading party in most of these tantly acquiesced, and set the polls for January 2005. lists made it a force in Iraqi provincial politics and The turning point for Shiite power in Iraq came gave it grassroots support and local interests. with the results of the provincial elections on Jan- 22 • CURREN T HISTO RY • January 2006 In the December 15, 2005, elections, the religious parties ran again as a coalition, this time adding followers of the young Shiite nationalist cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, to the list. The results ensure some representation in parliament by Sunnis, since they did not boycott the elections. But the Shiite religious parties did very well again, confirming their likely dominance of Iraq for the next few years. Sunni political representation in any case does not mean an end to armed resistance or sectarian violence. Nor does it change the fact of the Shiites’ new power, based on their majority status. AN D THE SHIITE AXIS What are the regional implications of this political earthquake? The United States has overthrown a secular Arab nationalist regime and been forced to permit fundamentalist Shiite parties to come to power through the ballot box. In December 2004, King Abdullah II of Jordan gave an interview to The Washington Post in which he voiced his concern about the rise of a “Shiite Crescent ” in the eastern stretches of the Middle East. Iran already had a clerically run Shiite government. Now Iraq, he could foresee, would also be dominated by religious Shiite parties. Abdullah even suggested that hundreds of thousands of Iranians might cross the border, pretending to be Iraqi Shiites, and vote in the elections. This fear was based on complete fantasy, of course. But the anxiety is very real. Jordan is a small country of about 5 million people. It was formed as a result of the World War I Arab revolt against the Ottomans in alliance with the British, who awarded the territory between Palestine and Iraq to the Hashemite dynasty. As a result of the long period of UN sanctions, Baath repression, and the instability that followed the 2003 invasion, some 500,000 Iraqis became economic and political refugees in Jordan. They are thus a tenth of the population and one of the major ethnic groups on Jordanian soil. Most Jordanians are either from a Bedouin, East Bank background or are of Palestinian heritage, and are Sunni Muslims. Why is Abdullah so nervous about Iraq? Before the Iraq War, the region had been characterized by a Sunni-dominated, secular Iraq; a Sunni Jordan; a Sunni-majority Syria with a secular Baath government; a Sunni Palestine; a Lebanon dominated jointly by Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims; and a Sunni Saudi Arabia and Gulf. From the vantage point of Amman, Sunni-dominated Iraq had served as a bulwark against the influence of Iranian Shiism and Khomeinist ideas. Ayatollah Khomeini THE HO LY WAR SPREADS It is not only the rise to power of political Shiism in Iraq that threatens Jordan. The overthrow of the secular Arab nationalist Baath Party has provided an opening to the revivalist Salafi movement among Iraq’s Sunni Arabs. Salafism had its origins in a nineteenth-century reform movement that advocated a return to the practice of Islam characteristic of the prophet Mohammed ’s companions in Islam ’s first generation. It had a somewhat “Protestant” emphasis on sloughing off tradition. Salafism then split into modernist and fundamentalist branches. In the later twentieth century, especially under the influence of the Afghanistan jihad against the Soviet Union, some of the fundamentalist Salafis turned to violence and became known as the Salafiyyah Jihadiyyah. A major figure in this movement was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who fled his hometown of Zarqa in Jordan for Afghanistan in 1989. He returned to Jordan in the 1990s and was imprisoned. He fled again to Afghanistan, and then in late 2001 relocated to northern Iraq, where he joined the radical Ansar alIslam group, dominated by Kurdish Muslim extremists, some of whom had fought in Afghanistan. The United States military had an opportunity to bomb the Ansar al-Islam base in March 2003, but the Bush administration declined to attack. Some observers suspect that this reticence derived from the administration ’s use of Zarqawi as a pretext for attacking Baathist Iraq, insofar as Vice President Dick Cheney and others connected Zarqawi both to Al Qaeda and to Saddam Hussein. With Zarqawi and Ansar al-Islam gone, Washington would have lost a talking point in its search for reasons to invade. After the fall of Hussein ’s regime, Zarqawi’s Monotheism and Holy War (Al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad) organization, which he had begun in Afghanistan in Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article-pdf/105/687/20/389459/curh_105_687_020.pdf by guest on 25 May 2020 JO RDAN had believed in Islamic governance and maintained that Islam is incompatible with monarchy. Millions of Iraqi Shiites were privately sympathetic to Khomeinist ideas. Those ideas are now on Jordan ’s doorstep, with no Baath Party buffer. Amman worries that the new Shiite axis of Baghdad and Tehran will have natural allies in a Syria dominated by Alawis (an offshoot of Shiites) and in the Shiite Hezbollah Party of southern Lebanon. Shiites may now be over 40 percent of the Lebanese population, and they will likely form a majority of the country within 20 years. A Shiite Iraq would also inevitably establish ties with the Shiite majority in Bahrain and the Shiite plurality in the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. the 1990s as a rival to Al Qaeda, and which he had bomber ’s family in Salt held a funeral for him at organized as well in Jordan and Germany, became a which they celebrated his “martyrdom.” Thousands major player. Although less than 6 percent of the of Shiites demonstrated in Najaf, and hundreds in fighters in the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement in Baghdad, demanding that all Jordanians be expelled Iraq are foreigners (an estimate based on capture from Iraq. Diplomacy by King Abdullah II and Iraqi ratios), they are disproportionately willing to underShiite notables gradually defused the crisis, but hard take suicide bombings. Tawhid has also been eager feelings linger. to carry out attacks on Shiite civilian targets, hoping In November 2005, the violence in Sunni westto provoke a civil war. ern Iraq, in which Jordanian networks are imporIn the jihadists’ view, sectarian violence could tant, spilled over into the Jordanian capital. Four make Iraq so unstable that American troops would Iraqi suicide bombers from the Salafiyyah Jihadiyyah have to withdraw, creating an opportunity for a coup struck three tourist hotels, killing at least 67 people by the allied neo-Baathist and Salafi forces of the and wounding 200. Amman ’s five-star hotels had Sunni Arabs. In fact, without a tank corps and helibegun functioning as an alternative to Baghdad for copter gunships, they would find it almost impossimeetings among prominent Iraqi politicians, and ble to again subdue the now-mobilized Shiites and were as thick with spies as had been Berlin in the old Kurds. However, with days. Zarqawi issued many experienced a communiqu é in men from the officer which he claimed to corps, military intelhave struck at the ligence, and manhotels to disrupt agerial elite in their intelligence activiranks, the Sunnis ties aimed at the might well be able guerrilla movement to inflict substantial in Iraq. defeats on the mainly The bombers were peasant or slumfrom the area around dwelling Shiites. An the city of Ramadi, inconclusive, hot due west of Baghcivil war could ensue. dad. The bomb belt A year or so into of one, a woman the guerrilla war in named Sajida MubarKhomeini’s Revenge: A Campaign Poster in Baghdad Iraq, Zarqawi’s group ak Atrus al-Rishawi, announced on the Internet that it was changing its did not detonate, and she was later captured and name to “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” and pledged interrogated. She turned out to be the sister of the fealty to Osama bin Laden. In western Iraq, Sunni leader in Iraq ’s western Anbar province of the Arabs are said to continue to refer to the organizaMonotheism and Holy War (Al Qaeda in Iraq) tion as Monotheism and Holy War, and it is unclear group, who was killed at some point in Falluja. Jorwhether it actually has operational contact with Al danian security officials said that they more than Qaeda (or, indeed, if Zarqawi is still alive). Some once discovered information suggesting that Al group or groups such as Tawhid certainly operate Qaeda in Iraq was striving to spread its activities in Iraq, but they are a small part of the guerrilla beyond Iraq. This alert set off extra surveillance of movement, which is largely Iraqi. the jihadis in Jordan. That the Salafiyyah Jihadiyyah The activities of the Jordanian Salafi jihadis in was so well penetrated by Jordanian intelligence was Iraq have enraged the Iraqi Shiites. At the end of presumably the reason Iraqi operatives were used for February 2005, a suicide bomber from Salt, Jordan, the Amman bombings instead. There were subsedetonated his payload at a clinic in largely Shiite quently substantial demonstrations in the streets of Hilla, killing over a hundred and wounding more. Jordan against terrorism. Politicians began a push to Although the main target was Iraqi recruits for the outlaw the groups that believe in “excommunicanew regime’s police or soldiers who were receiving tion ” (takfir) of other Muslims who do not agree with their militancy. physical examinations, the bomb ’s victims were The Jordanian regime, a pro-Western Sunni mostly civilians, including children. Then reports monarchy, thus feels increasingly squeezed between surfaced in the Arabic press that the suicide Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article-pdf/105/687/20/389459/curh_105_687_020.pdf by guest on 25 May 2020 KARIM SAHIB/ AFP/ G etty Imag es The Regional Impact of the Iraq War • 23 24 • CURREN T HISTO RY • January 2006 A LARM IN SAUDI ARABIA Saudi Arabia’s monarchy has not had the Hashemites’ secular pragmatism, and is far more intimately allied with Sunni Muslim clerics. Those of Saudi Arabia adhere in the majority to the puritanical Wahhabi branch of Islam, which itself has in the past not hesitated to pronounce other Muslims “unbelievers” for not practicing with the requisite rigor. The Saudis, like the Jordanians, deeply fear the influence of Khomeinism, with its insistence that Islam and monarchy are incompatible. Saudi Arabia had strongly backed Iraq’s war against Iran between 1980 and 1988, and relations between Riyadh and Tehran were bad until the mid- to late 1990s. The Wahhabi branch of Islam is fiercely anti-Shiite. Within Saudi Arabia, the Shiites are thought to constitute some 10 percent of the population. But they live largely in the strategic Eastern Province (al-Ahsa), the site of the kingdom ’s vast oil reserves, where they make up a significant number of the workers on oil rigs. Saudi Shiites have traditionally been repressed and unable to conduct their rituals in public, and have from all accounts taken heart from the rise of new allies in Basra and Baghdad. Many Saudi Shiites follow Grand Ayatollah Sistani of Najaf, raising fears in Riyadh that they will be more loyal to him than to the House of Saud. The increasing alarm with which the Saudi elite views the rise of Shiite power in Baghdad, growing Iranian influence, and the ethnic separatism that threatens to pull countries apart was apparent in remarks made by Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in September 2005. He accused Iran of moving substantial numbers of men, as well as goods and matériel, into Iraq. The charge in fact is absurd. But it mirrors the accusations of hard-line Iraqi Sunnis, who have never reconciled themselves to the Shiite majority in Iraq and so are always positing large Iranian population transfers into the south. Al-Faisal also said at the council meeting that Washington and Riyadh had “fought a war together to keep Iran out of Iraq after Iraq was driven out of Kuwait. Now we are handing the whole country over to Iran without reason.” This allegation is bizarre, since the United States and Saudi Arabia did not in fact fight a war to keep Iran out of Iraq, although they do appear to have colluded in allowing Hussein to put down the Shiite uprising of March and April 1991, with great brutality. Many Iraqi Shiites have never forgiven the United States and its Gulf War allies for this inaction and even perfidy (given that President George H. W. Bush had called for the uprising). The foreign minister ’s remarks sparked an increase in Sunni-Shiite tensions in the region, and a testy exchange between al-Faisal and Iraqi Minister of the Interior Bayan Jabr. Jabr is the nom de guerre of Bayan Sulagh, a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which al-Faisal implied was an Iranian puppet. He angrily replied that Iraqis did not need lecturing on democracy from Saudi Arabia (an absolute monarchy), saying that Iraqis had invented civilization and needed no advice from some Bedouin on camelback. Jabr is a Turkmen Shiite and not an Arab at all. His retort recalled ancient non-Arab taunts that Arabs were desert-dwelling lizard eaters. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiar Zebari (a Kurd) hastily intervened to deplore Jabr ’s outburst as “inappropriate,” apologizing for it profusely. Zebari had to sit at conference tables with al-Faisal, and knew that Iraq’s future depended on good relations with the kingdom. Several members of the Iraqi parliament called on Jabr to apologize or step down, saying that he had insulted all Arabs, including those of Iraq. Jabr weathered the storm, and IraqiSaudi relations returned to frostily correct. But the outbreak of frankness in Gulf discourse, which is notoriously reserved in public, points to severe regime anxieties over the new geopolitical posture of Iran and Shiism in the area. REGIO N AL PRESSURES M O UN T Among Iraq’s Arab neighbors, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have been the most deeply affected by the geopolitical changes since the fall of the Iraqi Baath. The mainly Sunni Kuwaitis hated Saddam Hussein so much because of his 1990 invasion of their country that they appear to be willing to Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article-pdf/105/687/20/389459/curh_105_687_020.pdf by guest on 25 May 2020 two forms of Muslim fundamentalism —the theocratic tendencies of the Iraqi and Iranian Shiites, and the radical Sunni jihadis of the Zarqawi stripe. The US invasion of Iraq unleashed both forces, providing them with a new arena in which they could operate freely. The Shiite religious parties are more likely to make their peace with the Hashemite rulers of Jordan (who had incurred their ire by siding with Saddam Hussein) as they become mainstream parliamentary parties in control of the Iraqi government. The radicalization of Iraq ’s Sunni Arabs, and their alliance with extremist Jordanian Salafis, are probably a longer-term and more menacing development for Amman. The Regional Impact of the Iraq War • 25 Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article-pdf/105/687/20/389459/curh_105_687_020.pdf by guest on 25 May 2020 accept the rise of Shiite and Kurdish power in king, was forced to resign. Although the Bush adminBaghdad with few complaints. istration paints its Iraq policy as one of democratizaBahrain, an island nation of some 450,000 citizens tion and cooperation with even fundamentalist and half as many guest workers, has been ruled by a religious parties willing to contest elections, it has Sunni dynasty for over two centuries. With the not publicly commented on the problems in Bahrain. Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, some Shiites in The island nation ’s Shiite majority has interpreted the Bahrain —who comprise two-thirds of the nation ’s change of regime in Baghdad and the rise of Shiite citizenry—became politicized. During the 1990s democracy sanctioned by Sistani as encouragement there was substantial political dissidence and alleged to redouble their efforts to elect a sovereign parliasecret police crackdowns. In 2002, a new young king ment that they can dominate. held parliamentary elections for a lower house of 40 Syria has been under a great deal of pressure by seats, but appointed the upper house and the prime the United States because its territory is used by minister. Shiite activists were outraged that the parjihadis seeking to infiltrate Iraq (although it should liament ’s prerogatives had been so circumscribed, be noted that volunteer fighters also enter from Jorand that the lower house could be overruled by the dan and Saudi Arabia, which are never cited as appointed upper chamber. They mounted a successsources of infiltration by US government spokesmen). Syria’s Baath Party was a bitter rival of its counterpart ful boycott of the elections, which led to dominance in Iraq, and the fall of Hussein may have been welof the lower house by Sunni fundamentalists (who come in Damascus. But were not even representhe advent of so many tative of the minority US troops next door was Sunni community of The old sectarian balance in the eastern Arab not equally welcome, Bahrain ’s citizens). world, with Sunni rulers and Shiite ruled, nor was Washington ’s Bahrain ’s Shiites conis coming unraveled as Shiite masses are diplomatic pressure on tinue to agitate for a fully elected sovereign mobilized into new forms of sectarian politics. Syria to stop the infiltration and to withdraw parliament. Their movefrom neighboring Lebment has gained momenanon. (The Ford administration had given the Syritum from Sistani’s political emergence in Najaf. The ans a green light to put a large peacekeeping force in majority of Bahrain ’s Shiites are Akhbaris, who Lebanon in 1976 to quell civil war, but they had long decline to give blind obedience to the rulings of outlasted their welcome.) ayatollahs, and who believe that scripture and Once the Syrians had withdrawn their remaining other sacred texts are a sufficient guide for the troops from Lebanon in the spring of 2005, however, believer. A substantial minority, however, is of Iramuch of the wind was taken out of Washington ’s nian or other foreign extraction and belongs to the sails with regard to Syria policy, and the regime has Usuli school that predominates in Iraq and Iran, so far weathered the changes. Syria’s major ally in which does mandate obedience to an ayatollah. In Lebanon, the fundamentalist Shiite Hezbollah Party, recent years it is alleged that some Bahrainis who continues to support Damascus strongly, and Hezbolhad been Akhbari traditionalists have increasingly lah has picked up powerful behind-the-scenes supbecome followers of Sistani. Sistani, of course, had porters in the newly liberated Iraqi Shiite community. come out for one-person, one-vote elections as Iran even suggested, in the fall of 2005, that Baghcompatible with Shiite law, giving heart to Bahraidad, Tehran, and Damascus form a security pact. nis who want more popular sovereignty and less monarchical authoritarianism. ISLAM IC REVO LUTIO N , PART 2 When US Marines and a Shiite militia fought in the The 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War was intended by holy city of Najaf in the spring and late summer of Hussein to bottle up fundamentalist Shiism and to 2005, Bahrainian Shiite clerics and crowds waving keep it from having a major impact in Iraq and the banners showing Sistani’s somber visage mounted Gulf. The Arab world, including Saudi Arabia and protests in Manama, the capital, against the presence Jordan, had lined up behind Hussein (as had the on Bahraini soil of an American naval base. In one United States), and Iran had indeed been boxed in. incident in spring 2005, the Interior Ministry By its recent intervention in Iraq, the United States attempted to crack down on a demonstration, resulthas changed that dynamic completely. The discreding in the injury of 20 protesters, some of them iting of the secular, Arab nationalist Baath Party of prominent. The Interior Minister, a relative of the 26 • CURREN T HISTO RY • January 2006 tary Shiism is a legitimate goal, even though that message might make the US Fifth Fleet uncomfortable. In Lebanon, with its Shiite plurality and militant Hezbollah Party, Shiite influence has if anything grown, and has gained new backing from Iraqi allies. The Alawi ruling elite of Syria has so far managed to tough out pressure from Washington and to retain control. Has the Shiite Islamic Revolution unleashed in Iran in 1979 entered a second phase? There is cause to believe so. The first phase brought to power as rulers for the first time the Shiite clerical corps and replaced most civil law with Shiite canon law. The Khomeinists were deeply disappointed that no Arab state adopted their new system, since their aspirations had been pan-Islamic. Until 2003, Iranian Khomeinist influences had been largely contained in the Arab world, although Tehran had a foothold in Lebanon through the radical Hezbollah Party. With religious Shiite parties now operating freely in Iraq, and even influencing government policy and the wording of the new constitution, Khomeini’s ideas have finally entered a phase of wider practical influence. Whatever happens, it seems evident that the old sectarian balance in the eastern Arab world, with Sunni rulers and Shiite ruled, is coming unraveled as Shiite masses are mobilized into new forms of sectarian politics. Bush ’s invasion of Iraq unwittingly set off a religious tsunami, which has yet fully ■ to make landfall. Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article-pdf/105/687/20/389459/curh_105_687_020.pdf by guest on 25 May 2020 Iraq has unleashed significant political and social change in the eastern reaches of the Arab world. Once-isolated Iran has emerged as a major regional player. Tehran is developing warm and positive links with newly Shiite-dominated Baghdad, and exercising new influence in the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia has lost a key ally (King Fahd had referred to Hussein as his “brother ”). The anti-Shiite Wahhabis can only gnash their teeth as they see the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq come to power next door. Riyadh fears that its own Shiites will become more restive, putting in doubt Saudi control of its vast oil reserves in the Eastern Province. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has long been uncomfortably wedged between Israel and the Palestinians on the one side, and the Baathist socialists and the traditional Gulf monarchies on the other. Both King Hussein and his successor, King Abdullah II, had managed to find a modus vivendi among these four forces. The Jordanian regime is therefore dismayed to see the status quo unraveled and the rise of a fifth movement, Shiite religious republicanism, come to the fore next door. If the Sunni Arab regimes have felt a chill blowing in from Tehran and Najaf, and fear catching cold, the Shiite masses in the region are starting to show signs of wanting new relationships with their rulers. The Bahraini Shiites have become increasingly restless, taking from George W. Bush and Grand Ayatollah Sistani a message that parliamen-