Sectarian Strife On The Agenda

With only two days to go until the "conference of neighbours", the neighbours are arguing - and it's not over who has the lawnmower.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan — who opposed the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam — have remained deeply suspicious of the Shiites, accusing them of sidelining Iraq's Sunni minority and being proxies for extending Iran's power in the Middle East.

Earlier this week, the Cairo-based Arab League said its delegation to the conference would press for changes in Iraq's constitution and government to give Sunnis more political power. Arab nations argue such a step is necessary to ease the Sunni-led insurgency that has bloodied Iraq for three years.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa suggested that Arab governments would take their proposals to the U.N. Security Council, a move that would be seen as challenging the legitimacy of Iraq's government, led by Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The Shiite coalition that dominates al-Maliki's government on Thursday angrily denounced Moussa's comments, saying they were a "flagrant interference in Iraq's internal affairs" and "ignored the march of the Iraqi people to build a free and democratic state."

"While we regret these irresponsible positions which incite discord and acts of violence inside Iraq, we hope they will not cast their shadow on the conference," the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance said in a statement.

Iraq's Shiite deputy parliament speaker, Khalid al-Atiyah, said Moussa's comments "might encourage some parties to take some Arab countries to their sides to accomplish their political desires" — referring to Iraqi Sunnis.

The Shiites and Kurds who dominate Iraq's government have long accused Arab states of failing to support them because of bitterness over the Sunnis' fall from power. Under Saddam, the Sunni minority ran the country, and the other two communities were brutally suppressed.

Shiite anxiety has deepened as the United States — the Iraqi government's top ally — has begun working more closely with its Arab allies to resolve a series of Mideast crises, including Lebanon, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iran's controversial nuclear program.

Shiite leaders fear Sunni Arab governments are maneuvering to back former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi to form a new coalition with greater Sunni support — and they fear the Arabs are seeking to sow divisions within al-Maliki's coalition. On Wednesday, a key Shiite party, the Fadhila Party, withdrew from the pro-al-Maliki United Iraqi Alliance citing "faulty sectarian policies."

Arab nations, in turn, have expressed concern over rising Iranian influence among Iraqi Shiites — part of what they and the United States fear is Tehran's growing power in the Mideast.

On Wednesday, the former Saudi ambassador to Washington prince Turki al-Faisal warned that an Iran-backed Shiite axis would lead to "the collapse of peaceful coexistence across the spectrum of the Arab society with all its sects and creeds."

You know, the current state of affairs in the Middle East is, at least in the short term, the best of all outcomes for those who feared a Clash of Civilizations between Islam and the West. Instead, it's looking more like we will get a clash between Sunni and Shiite all across the region. If Sy Hersh is correct, then that's partly as a result of deliberate neoconservative-led US and Israeli policy to exploit and create these sectarian fractures whenever and wherever possible. The other part, of course, is that the Sunnis and Shiites don't seem to need much encouragement to carry on their feud.

The US two chief negotiators at the conference will be Zalmay Khalilzad and David Satterfield. The latter was named but not indicted in the AIPAC/Larry Franklin Pentagon mole case while the former is one of the original members of the Project For The New American Century. I'm not optimistic about the chances of those two working for a Sunni/Shiite reconcilliation.