The Saudi Gerontocracy Gets Sick(er)

The relatively pro-American king of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah, is coming to the US for medical treatment.  The patient has presented with a blood clot which puts pressure on the spinal nerves already insulted by a bad disc.  The eighty-six year old king has relinquished his role as protector of the Haj to the interior minister, Prince Nayef ibn Abdulaziz and his role as chief of the National Guard to his son Prince Mitab.  Other ruling functions will be taken over by the eighty-two year old Crown Prince Sultan, who is returning from Morocco where he has been recuperating from surgery in the US early last Spring.

Sultan is next in line for the throne when Abdullah goes to his reward.  Coming next after Crown Prince Sultan is Prince Nayef who is currently second deputy prime minister in addition to his role as chief secret policeman.  Nayef is known to be a religious conservative thus standing at some remove from the current king and crown prince.

The feebleness of the monarchy is not enhanced by the physical frailty of both king and crown prince.  Complicating the matter of succession is the question of whether or not opposition of a significant sort exists to the ultimate coming to the throne of Nayef.  Even though the order of succession is well established and was underscored by the appointment of Nayef to the seemingly redundant post of second deputy prime minister, (done to expand Nayef's hands-on knowledge of how the game of politics Saudi style is played inside the royal tent) this does not assure automatically that the parade to the throne will go down as a well choreographed exercise.

Any palpable resistance to the emergence of Nayef has the real potential of rocking, even toppling the House of Sand.  Even if the ordained order of precedence is followed seamlessly, Nayef as king complicates US policy in the Mideast.  It might also bode a sharp increase in the so far low key conflict between Shite Iran and Wahhibist Saudi Arabia.

The whiff of instability or a shift in the orientation of the king has immediate implications for the US.  The recently culminated arms deal with Saudi Arabia might be in jeopardy.  The administration has requested a fast track approval process from Congress.  Ideally Congress would act favorably during the lame duck session but, more realistically, action will be postponed until the new Republican dominated Congress convenes next year.

Already some congress types including Republicans who support the deal at least nominally have raised the issue of what happens if there is regime change in Saudi Arabia.  The usual inference made from such chin rubbing is anxiety over the potential that the US equipment would be used against Israel.  Another contending inference is the AIPAC is flexing its backroom muscle.  Both inferences have some merit, particularly the latter as more than a few Democrats owe their continued tenure in office to the blessings by Jewish voters combining inherent progressive predilections with concern for the wellbeing of Israel.

There is another, totally different reason to take a long hard look at the weapons deal given the religious conservatism of Nayef.  Actuarial tables almost dictate that Nayef will make it to the throne within ten years and possibly much sooner.  His commitment to the austere, severe theology and practices of Wahhibism will have a number of effects, all of which will exhibit themselves quickly after Nayef takes charge.

The critical context here is the role played by Saudi Arabia in exporting Wahhibism throughout the Muslim and much of the non-Muslim world.  The copious spewing of petrodollars in support of Wahhibist mosques and madrassas has had significant impact upon the growth of political Islam to include the violence embracing portion.

Pakistan went from a country which wore its defining Islam rather lightly to a heartland of violent political Islam quickly after Zia took the Saudi money and force fed his "Islamization" program more than thirty years ago.  The Taliban may have been fabricated in Pakistan but only as a consequence, an easily foreseeable result of Saudi exported Wahhibism.  The same dynamic can be seen elsewhere from the Philippines to North Africa.

Even in the US, Saudi funded Wahhibist mosques and madrassas have served to create homegrown adherents of violent political Islam.  The same applies to the UK and much of Western Europe.

As a man far more religious in his character than Abdullah and, before him, Fahd, it may be expected that support for the Wahhibist Export Program will increase under Nayef.  As a significant, direct and positive correlation can be seen between the increase in Wahhibism and the growth of violent political Islam, it is not out of line to suggest that the same will occur to an even greater degree with Nayef serving as Guardian of the Two Mosques.

Iran threw down the gauntlet years ago, challenging Saudi Arabia for the role of regional hegemon.  To date the House of Saud has responded with the caution which has characterized most of its existence.  Given that Nayef takes his task of advancing the interests of the Sunni (even those who are not Wahhibist) against challenge by the "apostate" Shites, Saudi responses or counters are likely to become less and less restrained in the future.

As some of the more pessimistic (or realistic) observers of Iraq have predicted ever since the first American combat boot hit the ground in that country, the most probable first venue of confrontation between the mullahs of Tehran and the Sunni establishment will be Iraq.  The ongoing conflict between the triumphalist oriented Shia and the former masters of Iraq, the minority Sunnis, will not end soon, even if by some miracle the current political impasse achieves a simulacrum of solution.

The Iranians have played a semi-overt and quite aggressive program of support for their co-religionists in Iraq.  To date the Saudis have been most notable by the absence of open (or even much covert) support for their Sunni cousins.  The success of the Iranians over the past couple of years in backing both openly and otherwise the Shite political slate has undercut the often repeated assertion that Arab Iraqis will be immune to the influence of the foreign Persians regardless of religious identity.

Formerly attempts at some sort of "pan-Islam" movement have foundered on the rock of nationalism.  Historically the notion that nationalism trumps religious identity has been correct.  The growth of "fundamentalist" which is to say political Islam since the Iranian Islamic Revolution has changed the game completely--particularly with respect to the Shites.  For members of this long discriminated against, marginalized minority component of Islam, the worm has well and truly turned with the success of the Iranian Revolution and the removal of the Sunnis from their position of dominance in Iraq by the American invasion.

Again due to his religious convictions it is doubtful that a King Nayef would be deaf to the plight of Sunnis across the border.  This may not mean war in its conventional sense but it will mean conflict of a sub-war nature in all its messy extent, including restrictions on the flow of oil from three very large producers of that much prized substance.

The push by Iran for its very own "Mahdi Bomb" may, to a high order of probability, convince a King Nayef to go the same course.  There is no doubt that the other Sunni majority or dominated states of the Gulf region would seek to push Nayef in this direction.  The only alternative to a quickly developing nuclear arms race in the Gulf would be success by the US and its diplomatic partners--and this is not likely.

Then, of course, there is Israel.  Depending on the details of the regional political context five years or so from now, a King Nayef might be convinced that he has a special responsibility to remove the Jewish thorn from the side of the Arab/Muslim camel.  While a strong anti-Israel stance on the part of King Nayef may not be a for sure, a realistic possibility of such coming to pass represents a very severe challenge to regional and global stability even if an Israeli-Palestinian comprehensive peace agreement has come into existence.  (Not that anyone should bet the ranch on that eventuality.)

It would behoove the Obama administration to plan on the emergence of Nayef to power in the very short term.  The House of Saud has not been particularly stable for years.  The nature of the current king as well as the next man in line do not encourage delay in considering just how Nayef might or could alter the current context--and what, if anything, the US can do to safeguard its interests with a changed context.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has not yet demonstrated the slightest capacity to think ahead, to plan for unpleasant but highly probable contingencies.  "Muddling through" might work for the British, and the French place great faith in their equivalent, "Systeme D," but kicking the can down the street is a very poor way for the US to conduct business in the Mideast--or anywhere.

But, as they say around the Oval, "Who has the can?"

Muslims Killing Muslims

If there is a component of the congeries called Islam which merits the oft-voiced description of "the religion of peace and tolerance," it is that branch called Sufism. The Sufi understanding of Islam arose in the Arabian Peninsula and was carried widely by wandering mystics.

The Sufi emphasis on equality was made to order for societies in which caste systems prevailed. As a consequence it is not surprising that Sufism took firm root in the Indian subcontinent. Following the Partition, the majority of Sufis like the majority of Muslims, removed themselves to Pakistan where Sufis had long been present. Lahore became a major Sufi Muslim center nearly a thousand years ago. To this day it has been the site of Pakistan's most important Sufi shrine.

The Data Ganj Baksh, to use the correct name for the shrine, became the target of Taliban in the latest of a long line of attacks not only on Sufi shrines but the mosques and members of other, "minority" groups within Islam. In its ideology, Taliban of Pakistan, like its assorted spiritual ancestors, has drunk long and deep at the twin wells of Salifism and Wahhibism.

The world view of these austere versions of Sunni Islam hold that the "minority" groups including Shias and Sufis are either apostates or something indistinguishable from such traducers and backsliders. Sufis had constituted a large, perhaps even a majority, of the Muslims of Pakistan prior to the campaign mounted by the dictator Zia ul-Haq, who promoted the Wahhibist form of Islam above all others as a means of regime consolidation and maintenance. The US government during the years of Zia were, of course, clueless as to the existence of different and to some extent competing forms of Islam. The folks of the Reagan administration in particular were totally uninterested in just what implications for the future of Pakistan resided in the push to Wahhibism conducted by Zia.

Pushed by Zia and fueled by Saudi petrodollars, the puritanical, austere, not to say, extremist view of Islam took firm root in the hundreds of madrassas strewn by the generous Saudis across Pakistan. These religious schools produced not only the Taliban of Afghanistan but also the groups which have become the Taliban of Pakistan.

The Koran-waving killers of Taliban in its Pakistani incarnation have established an unquestioned dominance in Punjab state, which is the heart of Pakistan as well as in the FATA and Northwest Frontier. Punjab has been the scene of numerous, previous attacks on the Sufis, most notably the March 2009 bombing of the Rahman Baba shrine. Now they have done the same with the burial place of the Sufi poet, whose name translates as "Giver of Treasures."

The two suicide bombers, whose heads have been found, killed nearly fifty Sufi worshipers and wounded more than a 175 others. The interior of the shrine was turned into an abattoir. Television reportedly carried the bloody imagery across Pakistan.

Perhaps it was the sheer butchery of the attack. Perhaps the power of the imagery. Perhaps the people of Pakistan, Sufi and otherwise, are finally getting their full of violence perpetrated by Muslims against Muslims.

There is ample precedent in recent history for the development of a backlash directed at the Killers In the Name Of Allah. In Iraq, the deadly excesses of all sectarian purveyors of terror, but the al-Qaeda in particular, ultimately triggered a severe push back from the people caught in the whirlwind. Among the results were the Awakening Councils and the Sons of Iraq, both key elements in the establishment of an approximation of order in Iraq.

In Afghanistan, following the initiation of the McChrystal doctrine of "courageous restraint," the bloody work of the Taliban Slaughterers In the Name of the Prophet, ultimately has resulted in local villagers turning out with "their personal assault weapons" (to quote the Armed Services Press Service term) to aid ISAF/US/Afghan National Forces winkle out and kill the Thugs of the One True Faith. Even Afghan Sunnis, who have exhibited a very low tolerance to the notion of foreign "infidels" killing Afghan Muslims, showed their limits with being murdered by co-religionists.

The same dynamic has been seen more than a few times in recent months in the FATA. Not only have the locals applauded (pace, the US MSM) the use of Predators and Reapers, they have joined with Pakistani security forces in abating permanently the Taliban nuisance.

Taliban's barbaric excess at the Data Ganj Bakshi shrine may have marked a tipping point in Lahore, perhaps even Punjab generally. A several thousand person demonstration demanded that the government take effective action against the Malefactors of Great Faith. It is, admittedly, a very small straw in the mass of conflicting winds which is Pakistani politics today, but it is a straw nonetheless.

Zia ul-Huq was terribly ill-advised in his fervent welcoming of Saudi money and the Wahhibism it supported, fostered, and grew. The US was equally out-to-lunch with its willful ignorance of the implications for Pakistan and the region.

The time may be upon us to press the Pakistani government to return to the nation's Islamic roots and work to reinvigorate the Sufis in their midst. This would promote the interests of Pakistan in stability. It would also promote the interests of the civilized world as Sufis are inclined toward mysticism and equality (including gender) rather than seeking to kill their way to the myth of a global caliphate.

Back To Business--Iraq And Democracy

When the neocons of the Bush-Cheney justified the Great Adventure in Regime Change, two points which were made almost to the point of occasioning projectile vomiting--at least on the part of the Geek. No, not the WMD allegations. No, not the contention that Saddam was a thoroughly icky-poo person given to brutal dictatorship and bouts of aggression.

These are the two points.

Iraq deserved democracy of the more-or-less American sort complete with an independent judiciary, a federal system, pluralism, separation of faith and state, an unfettered media and, last but most certainly not least, robust free enterprise--of a properly regulated sort.

The war effort would not cost the taxpayers a doggone red cent. In fact, the US would make a profit since our companies would have an inside track on the post-war contracts including those for developing new oil fields.

Well, golly, gee, didn't that sound just grand?

Sure. If one was ignorant of such trivia as Iraqi history; the effects of prolonged internal war; the nature of Iraqi political, social, and ethnic dynamics; and the role of nationalism in the Iraqi concepts of self. Or, to put it simply and in translation: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

As if the displacement of Saddam Hussein's regime never occurred, the Iraqi government and military are favoring France in the award of contracts covering infrastructure repair and expansion as well as military procurement. In turning away from American companies and embracing French, the government of Nuri al-Malaki is not only rolling the clock back to the Seventies when France was the number one source of weapons, it is deliberately sticking its thumb in the eye of Uncle Sam.

The favoring of French companies is not so much a triumph of Nicholas Sarkozy's personal diplomacy as it is akin to declaring "great victory" as the American troops withdrew from Iraqi cities the other day. It is an expression of nationalism, of sovereignty. It is a carefully calculated gesture of ingratitude meant to solidify Maliki's credentials as a genuine Iraqi nationalist.

Maliki has ambitions. Further, he has made no attempt to hide this reality.

Chief among these is his stated desire to rid Iraq of the "consensus democracy" which was a product of the years of transition under the heavy-handed procounsulship of Paul Bremer. The current Iraqi prime minister admits that the consensus approach might have been necessary at the beginning of the post-Saddam, post-Baath period, but it has outlived its usefulness.

Maliki is now calling for an end to the special "set-asides" built into the constitution so as to "protect" the interests of the Kurds and Sunnis. In his view these prerogatives now endanger both "true democracy" in the country and the capacity of the central government to provide essential and basic services to the totality of the population.

Each of the three major ethnic or religious communities has been guaranteed a specific senior position in the central government with the result that the tripartite head must agree if anything major is to be done. It is a clone of the old system of allocation of offices employed in Lebanon before the comfortable arrangement was blown away in the several internal wars.

The same potential is resident within the current Iraqi situation as Maliki sees affairs. He is probably, almost certainly correct in this. While the "consensus" or office and power allocation scheme was necessary to get any organic instrument approved, it carries the germs of its own destruction within it.

Maliki proposes an accurate census be followed by a redrafting of the constitution along the lines of one person, one vote without any sort of "set asides" on the national level. The result of this would be to place the center of political power with the Shia majority. In principle this may be justified.

But, it is harder to do so in practice. The rub comes in the question of protecting the rights and, to be blunt, the community ego of the minority Sunnis and Kurds. The US has elaborate structures including the Supreme Court which carry the brief of protecting minorities against the tyranny of the majority. Even so the will of the majority often tramples both the sensitivities and the rights of the minority under foot.

Iraq does not have and will not develop in the near- to mid-term any similar institutions. There are no inherent mechanisms to assure that Sunnis and Kurds will not be ground into the dust as have been the small Christian communities in Iraq during recent months and years.

The Sunnis, who long enjoyed the exercise of power under the British and then after the Baathist overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, have no reason to believe that the Shia will treat them any more gently or with any more consideration than they treated the Shia during the long years of Sunni ascendancy. The Kurds are both very well aware of and proud of their ethnic and linguistic difference from the Arabs.

More, many Kurds are fully wedded to the idea of an independent Kurdistan as the governments of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq can attest. Under any sort of "one-person-one-vote" formula, the Kurds would have more reason than ever to seek merger with their compatriots (term used intentionally and advisedly) in Turkey and Iran.

This would, of course, send the balloon straight up, pronto.

The same would occur if the minority Sunnis appealed to their coreligionists in Saudi Arabia.

Nothing in al-Maliki's stated aspirations addresses either the Kurd or Sunni difficulty other than in terms of glittering generalities of no substance. His current over emphasis on nationalism and finger-flipping Independence from the US must be intended to counter the deep fissures which underlie the Iraqi national identity.

The validity of this approach is questionable. Both Sunnis and Kurds have demonstrated the continued will and ability to counter objectionable Shia driven central governmental acts by both the threat and use of violence.

The current capacity of the purportedly non-sectarian, non-ethnic security forces and army to be either a "school for citizenship" or an effective suppressant is open to question. So also is al-Maliki's ability to refrain from using these organs of state security as an instrument of Shia (and al-Maliki personally) domination.

An argument can be made for the desirability, even the necessity, of a strongman based central government with a few democratic trappings. This mode of autocracy wearing a skinny fig leaf of democratic respectability is commonplace throughout the Mideast and North Africa. Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Libya among others have relied on this approach for political and social stability. All have succeeded to a great extent.

In so far as Iraq has a political culture and history it is in the same mold. With the bloody overthrow of the British installed monarchy fifty years ago, Iraq became a one-party state in which dissent was poorly tolerated to say the least. The result was--until Saddam miscalculated disastrously with his launching of the Iraq-Iran War and, later, the invasion of Kuwait--a level of prosperity and stability enviable in the region.

The sanguinary effusion which followed the US invasion may have made the majority of Iraqis so war weary that the acceptance, even the eager embrace of another one-party state replete with the instruments of effective repression and some pretence of democracy is not out of the question. Al-Maliki may be counting on war weariness to bring his vision of the non-consensual democracy into existence.

His own very rapid rise from obscurity to power may have emboldened al-Maliki to believe that he has what it takes to be the strongman of Baghdad. He may be right. Or, he may not.

In any event there is no doubt that he intends to see his successful semi-coalition expand in the elections scheduled for next year. He may even be somewhat honest when he states that his "National Alliance For the State Of Law" is not a Shia instrument but rather a genuine aggregation of all Iraqis who seek a rule of law, not men nor clerics, nor outside influences.

His National Alliance has not yet provided either transparency, or a government and judicial system free of corruption, or any real coming together of the three major communities, and it may never do so. But, the National Alliance has and is creating an atmosphere of nationalism, national pride, and the appearance of national Independence even as American boots still churn the sands of Iraq.

This implies that al Maliki may have the capacity to carry off what he proposes. He may create a one-party state with both repression and aspects of democracy which will be stable or at least orderly. It is the best, realistic outcome the US government can hope for.

In the alternative, the nightmare one, Iraq dissolves under the lash of Kurdish independence, Sunni demanded intervention from Saudi Arabia and, finally, Iranian entrance to "protect" the Shia from "foreign" persecution.

Ain't democracy wonderful?

Sunni And Shi'a--Edging Toward Alliance?

The news out of Iraq riding the blast waves of suicide bombers points once again to the ongoing sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shi'a. The conventional wisdom well reinforced by daily experience is the centuries of rivalry, fear, loathing and killing which have separated Sunnis and Shi'as is alive, well and precludes any unity between the two.

Even if a common goal exists between the Islamists of both, they will never act in common. Faced by a common threat, the two will not fuse, not fight as one but constantly fritter away strengths in internecine strife.

Until recently there has been little evident reason to question the conventional wisdom. There has been no visible evidence to suggest any potential of change in the long extant dynamic.

The first real hint of rapprochement has emerged from a seemingly unlikely source, the Muslim Brotherhood. Yousef Nada posted a lengthy and well considered article on the Muslim Brotherhood's official website.

Nada contends that there is no religious justification for Sunnis to view Shi'as as apostates. Rather Twlever Shi'a should be understood as a Fifth School of Islam, an equal with the Four Schools of Sunni. He argues that the split between Sunni and Shi'a is purely political and does not represent any binding understanding of the sacred writings of Islam.

This position was criticised almost immediately by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Supreme Guide's staff, Mahmoud Ghazian. The response held that Nada's views were strictly personal and ran counter to the tenets of Sunni doctrine as well as the stance of the Muslim Brotherhood today as well as at its beginning.

Then came the surprise. The Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Mahdi 'Akef, disagreed with Ghazian. The Supreme Guide concluded that Nada's position was essentially correct. That the division between Sunni and Shi'a was far more political than religious in nature.

What politics and political realities seemed to dictate ages ago, 'Akef seemed to be saying, now could be reversed in acknowledgement of shifts in the political landscape. 'Akef paid a large measure to the changes in political realities in recent decades as he assessed the impact of the Iranian Revolution on the fortunes not only of Iranian Muslims but on the Islamic community globally.

His assessment is highly favorable. Indeed, it would be quite hard for the most dedicated Iranian nationalist to find a single syllable in 'Akef's presentation which was less than laudatory for the Revolution or its leader.

Clearly there is a strong tendentious flavor to the entire three section exchange. One cannot help but suspect the entire point-counterpoint-concluding point trialogue was a set up, a pre-planned pseudo-debate with the end goal of laying the groundwork for a working relationship between the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood and the Shi'a mullahs of Iran and their clients Hezbollah and Hamas.

Perhaps the Geek should be forgiven for thinking that this Muslim Brotherhood gambit is redolent with the fragrance of the Popular Front days of Soviet diplomacy in Western Europe in the days prior to World War II. But, the idea of Iranian Shi'a mullahs climbing into bed with the Sunnis of the Muslim Brotherhood is far less disquieting in many ways than the long ago bedding of Soviet Communists with those most hated of political scum, the Socialists.

"Hold on there, Geek! Those Sunni bombers in Iraq don't seem to be in a hurry to kiss and make up with the Shi'a they are killing."

Right, bucko, so it seems. We are well advised not to play the religious motivation too heavily in the Iraqi context. In Iraq it is not religion-as-politics, but, rather, politics-as-religion. The Sunni powered, al-Qaeda denominated insurgency in Iraq is all about regaining the ascendancy lost in the wake of the American invasion. As you will recall, the long dominant Sunni minority held the Shi'a majority in political subordination and a fair degree of cultural reprobation.

The thwacking great boot of the US invasion kicked the nifty (from the Sunni perspective) status quo into small, bloody fragments. Scared, shaken and deeply angered by the sudden change in fortune, the Sunnis, who had long been more secular than observant, suddenly discovered the power of belief to motivate fighters and suicide bombers alike. Religion is a tool to be invoked, used and exploited, but the goal is rigorously political--the re-acquisition of lost power.

Similarly the Iranians have been invoking, using and exploiting the mystical faith of Shi'a and its history as a political tool. To the mullahs of Tehran it is neither a matter of politics-as-religion or religion-as-politics but rather, religion-is-politics. The very able and resolute men at the top of the Iranian religious and political structure are pursuing the goal of regional hegemony--at the very least.

The opponents of Iranian hegemony are by and large Sunni in their affiliation. The most wealthy and potentially influential of these opponents, Saudi Arabia, is not simply Sunni but of the austere, demanding Wahhibist interpretation of Sunni doctrine. The Saudi Wahhibists, not unlike the Sunni insurgents of Iraq, are playing the politics-as-religion gambit seeking to spread Saudi authority through the Mideast (and far beyond their main region of interest) by exporting Wahhibism with its intense rejection of Shi'a as apostasy.

The Muslim Brotherhood is seeking to outflank the Saudi ploy by employing a "Popular Front" strategy of seeking an apparent melding or at least an alliance between Sunni and Shi'a. The Brotherhood has a portfolio of goals starting with the re-establishment of Islam as the solid foundation of Mideast politics but extending far beyond that initial end.

The potential of even a relatively short-lived tactical alliance between Iran and the Brotherhood is (or should be) of major concern to the secularist regimes such as that of Egypt. For decades now the secular leaning rulers of Egypt, Syria, Iraq as well as the purportedly Islamic "conservative" sheikdoms of the Gulf have depended on a continuation of antipathy between Sunnis and Shi'as to continue their regimes. The Brotherhood's new gambit threatens the continuation of the so far successful approach of "divide and rule."

The imponderable in play, the perhaps "knowable unknown" is the degree to which the assorted highly inflated egos of the leadership of the Brotherhood, its "national" subordinates and the mullahs of Iran and Iraq can accommodate themselves to the requirements of a political relationship of mutual goals and shared perceptions of threat. In any uneasy alliance, the question of just who will be "first among equals" surpasses all others. Absent the sort of iron discipline that could be imposed by Joe Stalin seventy years ago, the clash of egos and parochial interests can destroy the possibilities raised by unity.

The Popular Front could and did survive the pre-war stresses of national politics and personal ego only to be shattered by the Nazi-Soviet pact in August 1939. After that fatal wound, it could never be effectively resurrected in the post-war years despite repeated Soviet efforts in that direction. The Popular Front was a weapon which could be used only once.

Whether the Muslim Brotherhood effort will prove successful to even the slightest extent is yet to be demonstrated. It is too early to predict success or failure. It is not too early to see the exchange on the Brotherhood's website as other than what it is--a wakeup call to policy makers in the West. It is a clear warning that the reign of conventional wisdom is over.

Identity Politics--It's All The Rage

Usually when the term "identity politics" is invoked one thinks of the US political tableau. For years now much of the American political dynamic has rested upon the rolicking gavotte of assorted victim groups and their competing claims for redress, protection and compensation.

Identity politics is playing an increasingly large role on the international stage. Nowhere is this more evident than on the shores of the Persian (or is Arab) Gulf. Here national affiliation either intertwines with religious and linguistic identity or wars against it.

The relation between identity politics and regional stability came into very sharp focus just over a month ago when an Iranian official, Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri , who is an advisor to Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei blandly asserted that Bahrain was not a sovereign state but rather Iran's long lost fourteenth province. Well, on one level this was no big deal. Nateq Nouri was right, sort of.

Way back when Iran was still Persia between 1602 and 1783, Bahrain was a province of the country. Later it bounced in the vacuum at the margin of the Ottoman Empire, finally enjoying (if that is the right word) the sloppy, haphazard suzerainty of the British Empire until 1970. Following a UN sponsored referendum in which the locals voted for independence rather than a return to Iranian authority, Bahrain came into sovereign existence.

Since 1971 the Tehran regime both under the Shah and the mullahs has huffed and puffed asserting its "historic" claim to the strategic outpost island. Even as recently as 2007 when the Iranians made the assertion of proprietorship the the world, the region (but not the Bahraini royal house) greeted the pronunciamiento with a yawn.

This time was different. The Arab states generally went exoatmospheric in fast-burn mode. The yowls of outrage and keening of animus culminated with Morocco severing relations with Iran.

So, why the immense escalation in reaction? Why the quick change from indifference in 2007 to the screams of Arab solidarity in the face of Persian provocation last month?

Some features of the Bahraini reality certainly have not changed. The population in the island-state is roughly two-thirds native born and one-third outlander. That percentage has not shifted appreciably in the past two decades. The majority of the population is Muslim. Again no change. The majority of the Muslims is Shia. That also isn't a new development.

The royal house and elite generally are Sunni. Once more, no change. Iranian supported subversive and terror oriented groups litter the Shia landscape. Say it again, with feeling, "No change here."

"So, what the heck has changed?" You ask.

To which question the Geek replies, "The context. Or at least a couple of essential factors in the context."

The first factor to have shifted in recent years is, to put it bluntly, Iran is getting ever more uppity. Some of this is pure talk as when President and Orator-in-Chief Ahmedinejad announced in February that Iran was now a super-power and no country in the world would consider threatening it.

But, as the Arab Gulf states well realise there is an unpleasant amount of reality beyond the Orator-in-Chief's grandiose pronouncement. The Iranians have developed an impressive military capacity which was displayed at sea in December 2008 with a series of naval exercises which demonstrated capabilities and threat potential far surpassing the Arab ability to equal, let alone counter.

Perhaps more to the point, Iran has fought a war within living memory. The war was a long, bloody stalemate yet the Iranian military demonstrated a capacity to learn as it fought. No Arab force has fought an opponent to a stand still since the Arab Legion back in the days of Glubb Pasha did so. (Not even the short-lived, even if surprising, success of the Egyptian Army in 1973 equals what the Jordanian unit did in 1948.)

Reinforcing the demonstration of Iranian military potential is the clear success of the Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon. Not only did Hezbollah inflict unacceptable losses on the IDF in the course of a poorly planned and pathetically executed Israeli incursion, the group has been politically successful beyond expectations becoming the de facto controlling force in Lebanon's government.

Even more recently the defiant attitude and policies of Hamas have added luster to the Iranian threat. Put simply the Arab states correctly see the Iranians, Shia the lot of them, have a demonstrated capacity to penetrate Sunni populations with vigorous success. As subversives, the Iranians have shown a rare talent.

The second contextual factor to have changed is an Arab loss of confidence. There are a number of contributory considerations at work here. One is the continued inability of the Arab states working in concert or individually to do anything effective in the perpetual Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Militarily the Arab states have been a nullity. They have been scarcely more effective in their application of diplomacy. Even the use of the "oil weapon" has been bootless.

The collapse of last year's oil bull market is a second fact which the Arab Gulf states must consider. Far from being immune to the economic web which entangles the globe, the oil producers can be the first to feel the baleful effects of contraction in the western economies. Members of the Arab elite blessed with a memory might recall that after the oil embargoes of the 1970s, western countries, particularly the US, embarked upon successful conservation programs which cut demand for the only revenue generator the Arabs possess.

The rhetoric in the US concerning alternative sources of energy or the moves to open off-shore fields to development represent a long-term threat to Arab financial underpinnings even as demands for increased social spending to buy regimes' peace grow apace. Making the picture bleaker is the emergence of new rivals such as Brazil's off-shore deposits and the expansion of long standing competitors such as the development of Mexico's seabeds.

The oil consideration loops into another consideration. How long will the US continue to have a national and strategic interest in the Gulf region? Since the US has more than sufficient sand to meet its requirements indefinitely, the only remaining reason for our interest in this unpleasant area has to be oil.

The day will come when the US has a sufficient alternative to Gulf oil. When that day will come is imponderable at the moment. But, (here it comes, the big "but") the hoary and somewhat irrelevant They-Put-A-Man-On-The-Moon based apprehension of the enormous potential of American technological invention and innovation is going to come sooner rather than later.

Making this apprehension teeter on the border of genuine fear is the fact that the US has a president (or at least its own Orator-in-Chief) that seems to be firmly committed to the development of alternatives to Mideast oil. And, a Congress willing to spend gigabucks in that direction.

So, how long can the feudal kingdoms of the Gulf expect the American military (including nuclear) umbrella to extend one millimeter beyond the borders of Israel? That thought can be (and apparently has become) a real stomach clencher around the Gulf littoral.

Then there is the matter of religious identity. Sunni Muslims have been comfortable for centuries looking down their collective clerical noses at the apostate Shia. Shias have always been the despised minority. They were consigned to the furthest marches of Islam, the outland of Persia, the margin of the Arab world in Iraq. Shias? Piffile!

Shia roared back with a vengeance in the Iranian Revolution. It has been roaring ever since. Fighting successfully against Iraq--even though Iraq received US support. Standing off the Great Powers led by the US and UK as Shia Iran developed its military, missile, and nuclear capacity.

Shia whispered as well. Extending its subversive tentacles throughout the Muslim states. Even reaching to the Western Hemisphere, the bailiwick of the Great Satan.

It is small wonder that Shia is seen as the superman version of Islam to so many among the youth of Islamic countries--particularly Arab states. Shia kicks butt! Youth admires butt-kickers. Youth (defined as those under 25) represents the absolute majority of the Arab population. Many, how many is one of those famed Rumsfeld "unknowable unknowns," youth are gravitating to the Shia camp.

Wahhabist and Salafist clerics as well as the states which give them homes and support are faced with a genuine challenge. From the perspective of the government either the option of confrontation or that of accommodation pose grave, possibly unacceptable risks. A choice will have to be made. The clerical tiger on which the feudal states ride will demand it.

Sunni versus Shia joins with Arab versus Iranian as the sharp and threatening dividing line within the heartland of oil and Islam. The Chimera of Arab solidarity shimmers more and more like a desert mirage.

The mullahocracy will do nothing in the near or mid-term to perfect their claim to Bahrain. The lesson of Iraqi ambitions in Kuwait is too recent. Besides that, there is no need. The need is simply to perturb the Arab states of the Gulf. That need has been filled.

By simply kicking the Arab anthill, the weaknesses, the uncertainties, the failures of Arab solidarity have been both exposed and exacerbated. The paradox is that the seeming single voice of outrage greeting the February announcement failed to disguise the weakness of both the Arab states and the Arab identity.

At the same time the boldness of the announcement, taken in context, reinforced the Shia-as-superman image which Iran has been projecting for decades. This means the appeal of Iranian branded Shiaism has been boosted in the critical target population--Arab youth.

Not bad for a single television clip, eh? But, the founder of the Revolution was the most underrated practitioner of absolutist politics in recent generations. The old Ayatollah Khomeini would be proud of his successors.

(Some) Iraqis Want US Out--

Perhaps we should oblige.

Not that long ago the current administration was talking of a prolonged American stay in Iraq. The end of US combat operations would not be synonymous with the end of US presence. John McCain and Robert Gates both made reference to the Korean analogy. Both were of the view that the situation within Iraq and adjacent states would compel the Iraqi government to acknowledge the necessity of an on-going American deployment.

The view espoused by these two men and so many others ignored the reality of history as a force in contemporary Iraqi politics. The prospect of the Iraqis accepting a prolonged US force presence with utter equanimity requires ignoring two salient features of the Iraqi experience over the past seventy-five or so years.

First, it is necessary to pretend that the British never occupied Iraq in the aftermath of World War I. Along with that it is essential to ignore the impact of the British economy-of-force approach to counterinsurgency in the Twenties.

Dubbed by the responsible officials of HMG, "The Imperial Policing Scheme," this product of cheapness and enthrallment with advanced technology employed bombers against insurgents. Well, not the trigger-pullers exactly, more like their families. Bombing villages and nomadic camps might have been a cheap way of killing Iraqis and it even might have played some role in ending the resistance to the British military occupation.

It sure as hell left a foul cloud in the memories of Iraqis generally. The foul cloud was renewed year to year in the Iraqi educational system in the long years following the withdrawal of HM Forces after World War II. No matter who wears the uniform, the Iraqi view is that foreign military forces are occupation forces. Period.

The second feature of the recent Iraqi experience focuses on the role of the minority Sunni population during both the occupation period and the years of Baathist rule. The Sunnis became the chosen "native" component of the on-the-cheap British semi-Raj. They kept this favored position during the short-lived post-war monarchy and expanded it during the Baathist decades.

Shiites have a sneaking suspicion that the Americans would compel or inveigle a recapitulation of this past Sunni supremacy if given sufficient time. Certainly the American views of secular, multi-party democracy fueled this suspicion.

The most obvious exponents of a hidden American agenda to restore the Sunnis to former power are those such as al-Sadr. But, he and his more-or-less pro-Iranian ilk are far from the only Shiites who harbor the sneaking fear that given sufficient time the Americans can and will reduce the Shite majority to their former powerlessness.

More cynically, it is payback time from a Shiite perspective. The American shadow might fall across the bright goal of Sunni squashing.

Whether one takes the cynical view or not, the end result is the same. The Shiite majority sees itself repressed and stripped of its freedom of action by any long term US presence.

Freedom of Shiite action is encoded in the constant refrain of "protect our sovereignty."

Freedom of Shiite action is behind the willingness of the Kurds to keep the Americans around. Of course the Kurds would be better off if the US left. They have the political coherence and military capacity to carve out and defend an economically viable Kurdistan. But, a rational appraisal of risks suggests to many, if not all, Kurd leaders that taking a pro-US stance at the moment is the better option.

So, where are the Sunnis in all this?

It would seem to be in the better interests of the Sunnis to keep the Americans around. They are quite aware that payback is a medivac and the inhibitory effects of the US forces would lessen the risks of a possible Shiite Night of Very Long Knives.

Many Sunni politicos and (more importantly) tribal leaders are quietly in favor of a continued US presence perhaps without time limits. But, even with self-interest involved, Sunnis remember the Imperial Policing Scheme. They were primary targets of the lumbering biplane bombers of the day. The idea of occupation rests heavily on their minds, no less than it does on the Shiites.

Perhaps the time has come to take the Iraqis at their word. Iraq is their country. The Iraqis, whether in government or not, must decide if they want a unitary state even if it is populated by three not completely compatible "nations."

The Iraqi political/religious leaders must know that they have two alternatives. One is a unitary state complete with messy compromises of power and revenue sharing. The other is fragmentation complete with proxy war as Iran sides with Shiites and Sunni Arab states move to "protect" their Sunni Arab Iraqi comrades.

The second option would not fit well with the grandiose goals of nation-building so often and loudly proclaimed by the current administration, but would it impair core US national or strategic interests?

No. Probably not. Unless one wishes to posit that the price of oil is a or the core US interest. We have accomplished the minimum necessary strategic goal. We have assured that the opposition can't declare a military victory over us. We cannot "not-lose" in Iraq.

Perhaps we should accept that standing down our military efforts on the expiration of the current UN mandate is an acceptable option. We could use the next few weeks to do two things: Wait for the Iraqis to re-evaluate their stance on our presence and start packing for an orderly exit.

An exit and redeployment to Afghanistan. Afghanistan, a place where we can still loose.