Some time ago, Sarah Palin, the woman once loved by the US media for her telegenic looks and histrionics complete with that sensuous Alaskan drawl – impeccably imitated by Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live – had a word of advice for President Barack Obama. Speaking at a ‘Faith and Freedom Coalition’ meeting, Palin warned against a US military intervention in Syria saying, “both sides are slaughtering each other as they scream over an arbitrary red line, Allahu Akbar. I say let Allah sort it out.” This is rich coming from someone who cheered for America’s ‘shock and awe’ in Iraq and Afghanistan and the neocon designs of tearing down the Middle East to refashion it as part of the so-called New American Century project. It is of course an old debate whether the US or the international community should intervene (or not) in Syria – or for that matter in any conflict – with equally compelling arguments being proffered by both sides. It’s a moot point now that Obama has decided to arm the opposition. The US – and the west – is already involved in Syria. But it is hard to disagree with Palin about the nature of this conflict. What is going on in Syria is indeed nothing but mass slaughter with the barbaric Baathist regime and rebels and assorted militias, sects and tribes competing to add to the misery of the Syrian people. What began as a people’s uprising, obviously inspired by the winds of change blowing across the region, against the long and dark decades of Baathist tyranny has been transformed into a no-holds-barred civil, sectarian war of terrifying proportions. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, once admired for taking on Israel, has been fighting on old ally Assad’s side shocking many across the region. Hamas, on the other hand, is in the opposite camp. It’s getting really crazy and chaotic out there, blurring old dividing lines and creating new ones. As Assad hangs on to power, defying all predictions about his early end and chanting ‘After me, the deluge’, the country around him crumbles and melts away. The toll has already crossed a staggering 200,000, not to mention the all-round devastation that the great Levant country, one of the oldest and historically richest in the world, has witnessed in the past four and half years. Millions have been driven from their homes and are fighting for survival in neighbouring countries such as Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq etc. The Syrian conflict has already spilled over into the ever fragile Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq with battles being fought at several levels across the volatile region with the Arabs, Turks, United States and European powers on the one side of the divide and the Baathists, Iran and Russia of course on the other. This may be a small price to pay considering the larger disaster that stalks the vast region, stretching from Anatolia in the north to the Arab Maghreb in the south in the form of violent sectarian conflict. Indeed, the whole of the Muslim world, at least its strategic centre, now sits on a ticking time bomb with battle lines being drawn from Palestine to Pakistan. What the international liberators sowed with the Iraq war – successfully pitting the Sunnis and Shias against each other – has come to bear a rich harvest of sectarian hostilities never seen in the past. They have burst open the gates of hell and the blaze now threatens to consume the whole of the Islamic world. What happened in Iraq under the benign gaze of the western champions of freedom, with sectarian killer squads and Al-Qaeda terrorists targeting the two communities and in the process wiping out entire neighbourhoods is now being replicated across the region. Preying on regional rivalries and insecurities and making the successful use of their classic stratagem of ‘divide and conquer’, the world powers have been playing the Arabs and Iranians against each other. While Iran and its nuclear aspirations and military ambitions are painted as the clear and present danger to the Arabs, the Iranians have been persuaded into believing that the whole of the ‘Sunni’ Arab world has ganged up against them and is out to destroy them with the help of the west. This game has been played with such finesse and dexterity that both sides and their media have now more or less embraced the same divisive agenda and narrative, little realising how they are being played like pawns in the hands of you know who and where all this will eventually end. As my friend Ramzy Baroud argues, Iraq’s historical dilemma, exploited by the US for immediate gains, has now become a pan Arab and Islamic dilemma. The media is fomenting the conflict, using terminology loaded with sectarianism and obsessed with creating the kind of divide that will lead to nothing but all-round misery, war and catastrophic consequences for the entire Muslim world. In response to a recent piece on the dangers of increasing sectarian tensions, a perceptive reader questioned my argument that it is a recent phenomenon and largely a western construct. “What about the long wars fought between the Sunni Turkey and Shiite Iran?” he asked. Of course, Turkey and Iran did fight several long and bitter wars stretching over four centuries. However, those were between the two competing empires – Ottoman Turkey and Safavid Persia – for regional hegemony and can hardly be seen as sectarian in nature. The same is true of the long and catastrophic war between Saddam Hussain’s Iraq and the post-revolution Iran in the last century – another senseless conflict that richly contributed to the coffers of western arms manufacturers – and other historical encounters between the Arabs and the Persians. They were nothing but regional struggles for power and territory. Indeed, never in the fifteen centuries of Islamic history have the two sects been engaged in such an open tug of war. Their followers have always lived in harmony and at peace with each other without being excessively conscious of each other’s identity or their minor difference of opinion that had its genesis in the early history of Islam and occurred fifteen centuries ago. They never let it dictate their lives and affect their relations with each other. They share a rich history and have contributed equally to the golden age of Islam for more than a thousand years, which in turn influenced European renaissance. That shared history and legacy is at stake today. If the saner majority on either side does not act to rein in the extremists in their midst and stop this mindless, mutual demonisation and bloodletting, it could have unimaginable consequences for the Ummah. What we share is much too precious and stronger than what divides us. We worship the same God and follow the same Prophet (pbuh) and the same Book. Is that not enough to bring us together? The genie of sectarianism must be coaxed back into the bottle before it wreaks more havoc. The writer is a Middle East based columnist. Email: aijaz.syed@hotmail.com
