Shiites in the Arab World

Overview of Shia populations in the Arab Middle East; notice that Iran is excluded because of Persian ancestory. From a Carnegie Endowment brief.

While changing political conditions in Iraq and Lebanon have allowed for a more assertive political role by Shiites in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, they continue to be subjected to political, social, and economic discrimination. Although reliable statistics are rare, Shiites in Saudi Arabia are believed to constitute between 8 and 10 percent of the population. They are not well represented in official institutions; t here are no Shiite ministers, no Shiite members of the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars (the country's highest religious authority), and only two Shiites in the 150-member Majlis Al Shura (consultative council). They also face limited employment opportunities; the government restricts employment of Shiites in the oil and petrochemical industries and in national security-related positions. Shiite candidates won most local council seats in recent municipal elections in the Eastern and Southern provinces, where Shiites are a majority.

Bahrain's Shiites represent around 60 percent of the local population but Sunni Muslims dominate politically and economically (the ruling Al Khalifa family is Sunni). Shiites complain that they are excluded from positions of power. Unemployment—officially estimated at 15 percent although it is probably higher—is concentrated in the Shiite community. Recently, thousands of demonstrators participated in a rally calling for constitutional reform organized by the Al Wefaq National Islamic Society and the Islamic Action Society (Shiite opposition groups; political parties are illegal). Observers are concerned that if not managed properly, these tensions could escalate into a conflict between Shiites and Sunnis.

In Kuwait, Shiites constitute around 25 percent of the population and maintain more cordial relations with the government, but are disadvantaged in representation in upper levels of government. Five Shiites were elected to the 50-seat National Assembly in July 2003 and the prime minister appointed one Shiite to the 16-member cabinet, although he later resigned.

Yemen's Zaidi Shiites, around 30 percent of the population, are concentrated mainly in the north. Since June 18, 2004, government forces have clashed in the mountains of the northwest with followers of Hussein Badreddine Al Houthi, a Shiite cleric who founded a radical group known as Believing Youth. The rebellion is not aimed at spreading Zaydi Shiism but rather is a protest against President Ali Abdullah Salih's pro-U.S. policies.

In Lebanon, the Shiite population is the largest single confessional group (approximately 40 percent). Under the leadership of Musa Al Sadr, it began to mobilize in the 1970s in response to its relative social deprivation. Al Sadr's influence led to the emergence of two major Shiite political parties: the Amal Movement and Hizbollah. Amal's leader Nabih Berri has been Speaker of Parliament (the highest political position that a Shiite can occupy according to the Lebanese Constitution) since 1992 and the party has 11 Shiite MPs in the 128-seat parliament. Hizbollah has 13 Shiite MPs and forms coalitions with other blocs in parliament. There are seven Shiite independent deputies.

The overthrow of the Baathist regime in Iraq resulted in major changes in the political representation of Iraqis. Iraqi Shiites (around 60 percent of the population) moved to the forefront of the political transition in Iraq, setting an agenda that addressed issues of Shiite political participation, the role of religion, and the coalition presence. To ensure their voting power was not diluted in the elections, leading Shiite political parties joined forces in the United Iraqi Alliance, which includes the Islamic Dawa Party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Iraqi National Congress, and the Shiite Political Council. The new 32-member Iraqi cabinet is led by Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and includes eighteen Shiite ministers.

After reading the Shia primer there is a piece about politicalization of these traditionally disadvantged populations from the Carnigie Endowment.

Not since the Iranian revolution has the issue of Shiite political development been of such interest to observers of Middle Eastern politics. The success of Shiite candidates in the recent Iraqi elections, the prominent role played by Hizbollah in mobilizing its support base in Lebanon for pro-Syrian rallies, and the success of Shiite candidates in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province during that country's municipal elections have created the impression that there is a new expression of Shiite political identity underway within the region. With the United States' push for democratization in the region, the conditions may be present to alter the Shiites' historically inferior socioeconomic status through political action.

Before hastening to conclude that the recent electoral success of Shiite political parties in Iraq presages a surge in Shiite political activism in the region, observers should look at Shiite political activism in its local context. The diversity of Shiite political interests at play is perhaps best illustrated in Lebanon Here, the pro-Iranian Hizbollah represents some, though by no means all, of the Shiite population. Hizbollah's communal rival Amal was founded by religious scholar Musa Sadr, but is now headed by non-cleric Nabih Berri and looks towards Syria, rather than Iran, for support. The leading Lebanese Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, is capable of exercising political leadership given the size of his following, but he maintains his independence from both Shiite political parties in his country, as well as from the Iranian leadership. The Shiites also maintain a strong presence in the Lebanese Communist Party.

There is an unstated fear of Shiite politicization among Western policy analysts that is, in large part, based on the outcome of the Iranian revolution and a belief that Shiite politicization is always directed by clerics—and hence automatically anti-American. Such a view ignores the fact that Iranian-style theocratic rule is attractive to only a small percentage of Shiite political groups. Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, for instance, moved his elements of the Dawa Party away from Iran to avoid becoming too closely beholden to Iranian views of political leadership. Just as American fears that the Soviet Union was behind all socialist political movements during the Cold War blinded the United States to the real sense of political and economic injustice that spawned many such parties, policy analysts need to look critically at the circumstances that the Shiites find themselves in within each country before they assume that all Shiite political roads lead to Tehran.

All of this is not to deny there is a Shiite ideological construct that is extraterritorial in nature, or that Iran actively influences some Shiite political parties. In Iraq for instance, Iran's historic and educational links with its co-religionists in the south of the country provide a firm basis for cross-border influence-peddling. At the same time, the late Ayatollah Khomeini's notion of wilayat al faqih (governorship of the jurist) provides an ideological bridge that links the Iranian leadership to other Shiites in the region. Lebanon's Hizbollah and Iraq's Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) are two examples in which ultimate authority on issues of political ideology (as opposed to concrete policies) rests with Iran As Hizbollah has found in multireligious Lebanon, however, the conditions that allowed the concept of wilayat al faqih to be implemented in Iran do not exist in Lebanon Hence clerical political leadership for them remains a distant goal, rather than one that is achievable in the short or medium term.

Democratization offers the Shiites a way of overcoming their political disenfranchisement through the use of their demographic strength. The Iraqi election gave the estimated 60 percent of the population who are Shiites the ability to achieve the strong political voice denied them in the past. In Lebanon, both Shiite parties advocate changes to the electoral law that allocates to Shiites far fewer parliamentary seats than their numbers would justify. While the Shiites' attempts to alter the political status quo throughout the region go back over 40 years—from the attraction of leftist parties to the intellectual activity of Najafi scholars in the 1950s and 1960s—what is different now is that there is a more permissive international environment for transforming demographic strength into political power. That does not mean that countries will become clones of Iran if the Shiites attain political power; it will be local conditions and local leaders who determine the political direction of the Shiites.

Hizbollah, Israeli forces clash in border area

from Reuters:

The clash raised tensions on the Lebanese frontier two days after a rocket fired from south Lebanon landed in a northern Israeli town, damaging a building but causing no casualties.

Hizbollah said it was shelling an Israeli position in the area in response to "Israeli assaults." Minutes earlier, witnesses said Israeli forces had begun shelling a hillside east of the Lebanese border town of Kfar Shouba.

Witnesses said several Hizbollah shells had struck the Israeli Rweisat al-Alam post.

The Israeli military said guerrillas in Lebanon fired six rockets or mortar bombs which fell near an Israeli army post along the border.

Four explosions and gunfire had been heard in the Shebaa Farms, on the border between Lebanon, Israel and Syria's Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, earlier on Friday.

Two explosions were also heard in the area overnight.

Picture power: Death of an Iraqi soldier

Unseen in US

The first Gulf War was done entirely under the US Department of Defense Pool system, which means any press organisation that was a member of that pool had access to everyone else's work.

The film was processed and when the image got to the AP office in New York, they all made copies for themselves to show people but then they pulled it off the wire.

They deemed it was too sensitive, too graphic for the editors of the newspapers that are part of the co-op - too graphic even for the editors to see, not even to let them make the decision of what the market they served could see.

So, basically, it was unseen in the US.

In the UK it was published by the London Observer and I was actually going through Heathrow and I picked up the newspapers and I saw it was quite big, and that was basically the scene I thought I was going to see in all the newspapers around the world, since everybody had access to the image.

It caused quite a controversy in London, which is what images like that are meant to do. They're meant to basically cause a debate in the public: "Is this something we want to be involved in?"

How can you decide to have a war if you are not fully informed? You need to know what the end result will be, what the middle result will be.

And since then, it's an image that has a life of its own. It's been published hundreds of times, you can find all over the internet, it just keeps going and it's published as much today as it ever has been.

If we are going to engage in war, then we must understand the consquences of those actions regardless if they are just or unjust. It is important that we realize the cost to our soldiers and their families as well as our enemies. The full interview from the BBC.

Hezbollah confident of poll boost

from BBC:

As elections near in Lebanon, the pro-Syrian and Shia Hezbollah movement can expect to maintain its share of political power and influence.

Mr Mansour believes that there is no reason for Hezbollah to disarm.

"The arms that we have are only directed against the Israelis," he says.

"If they do anything against us, we have to be ready for that. We are a political party and a resistance movement."

For a clear sign of Hezbollah's military role, all you have to do is drive a mile or so from Nazih Mansour's home to the border fence with Israel.

Within seconds, a Hezbollah soldier in camouflage uniform comes out from a bunker. He carries a walkie-talkie but no gun.

It's Hezbollah that runs this border zone, not the Lebanese army.

Captured Al-Qaeda kingpin is case of ‘mistaken identity’

An article from The Times about confusion between Libbi and Liby. Whoops.

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as "a critical victory in the war on terror". According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists' third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as "among the flotsam and jetsam" of the organisation.

Another Libyan is on the FBI list — Anas al-Liby, who is wanted over the 1998 East African embassy bombings — and some believe the Americans may have initially confused the two. When The Sunday Times contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby, the wrong man.

Although British intelligence has evidence of telephone calls between al-Libbi and operatives in the UK, he is not believed to be Al-Qaeda's commander of operations in Europe, as reported.

The Oz of the Middle East

This guy nailed Dubai in five days but the most important section of the article is the last paragraph. Truer words cannot be spoken of the fake quality of Dubai except that those of us who live here do care that we essentially live in a giant compound. Read the entire article about what visiting Dubai is really like. Working and living here is a different story.

Down gleaming silvery escalators they glided, eyes afire and credit cards in easy reach. As a warm Tuesday night hung languidly over the Persian Gulf, a multicultural pageant of shoppers, diners and drinkers fanned out into the majestic, wintry-cool shopping mall beneath the Middle East's tallest building, the 1,163-foot Emirates Office Tower in Dubai.

Indian matrons in colorful saris and Middle Eastern women in black veils strolled through the pristine, white marble corridors, pausing to consider the worthiness of Gucci totes, Bottega Veneta shoes and Cartier diamonds. White-robed Middle Eastern businessmen, fat gold watches glittering from the edges of their sleeves, talked into green-glowing cellphones. Three Arab men in baggy jeans, looking like cast members from an Al Jazeera version of "The O.C." chatted warmly with three young European-looking women in spangly tops. Just behind them, boisterous British expatriates in business suits tried to push into the fray of Ladies' Night at an overpacked bar called Scarlett's.

Dubai is a metropolis of bone-white apartment blocks, green palm trees and amazing, odd juxtapositions. Thudding jackhammers mingle with the call to prayer. At Nad al Sheba racetrack, old-world camel racing by day gives way to glitzy thoroughbred action by night (the $6 million purse for one annual race in Dubai is, of course, the world's richest). Cruising the city by taxi on a five-day visit in February, I was reminded of the hot, flat sprawl of Tampa or Houston - until I glimpsed a fully veiled woman driving alongside my cab and saw two men in checkered headdresses pulling their Lamborghinis parallel to chat. Glossy financial magazines share rack space with titles like International Falconer.

In a dark corner nearby, a beanpole-like bald man from Liverpool looked at the odd old-young crowd and ersatz North African décor and made a remark that is probably repeated at least once every day in Dubai. "The whole thing is totally fake," he said to his date, "but no one seems to care."

Al-Jazeera Puts Focus on Reform

An article from the Post about Jazeera.

The Arab world's most-watched satellite channel has been reviled in Washington since it began airing Osama bin Laden tapes and footage of insurgent strikes on U.S. troops in Iraq. Yet as the Bush administration struggles to design a public diplomacy program for its democracy campaign, al-Jazeera has become a leading vehicle for the region's budding reform movements.

"It's still the enemy. It still does stupid things," a senior State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. When Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick was in Fallujah last month, "al-Jazeera reported his convoy was attacked. There was not a germ of truth. It was sensational, unprofessional and unsubstantiated, and fit into the past pattern of its coverage. Whatever else it's doing, the reaction here was: 'There they go again.' "

"It is the satellite channels that show the greatest potential for ushering in political change in the region . . ." the report says. "Inadvertently or not, they offer a locus for the Arab street to vent, formulate and discuss public affairs. They bring Arabs closer together, breaking taboos and generally competing with each other and their respective governments for the news agenda. All in all, Arab satellite stations have pushed ajar the door of democracy and flanked state monopoly on media."

I have never understood why the Bush administration hates Al Jazeera so. Well, actually I do. Jazeera shows images of dead Americans and that is not conducive to gaining national support at home. The administration has also made Jazeera into a larger entity because of ongoing harping about its broadcasts; they have helped to grow their "monster".

I don't see Jazeera in this light. I think Americans should see more dead from wars around the world; particularly of our own soldiers. We should be reminded of the very real human costs of our wars. Political events that lead to war increase human suffering. We should be reminded of this. When I watch a CBC newscast or documentary I am likely to see a images of those killed in war. That is necessary. War is killing. How can you talk about war in an abstract political way without acknowledging the killing? It's not being honest.

Jazeera may occasionally screw up some coverage, but I've yet to watch a news channel that doesn't at time misreport the facts and have to make corrections. What Jazeera does provide is access to a portion of the political pulse of the region; much more so than enduring the state run broadcasts. Al Jazeera is not an enemy. It is one tool to understand the region and can be a forum for reaching its viewership.