Shia
vs Sunni Civil War?
No, I Dont Believe It
By Robert Fisk
04 March 2004
The Independent
Odd,
isn't it? There never has been a civil war in Iraq. I have never heard
a single word of animosity between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq.
Al-Qa'ida has never
uttered a threat against Shias - even though al-Qa'ida is a Sunni-only
organisation. Yet for weeks, the American occupation authorities have
been warning us about civil war, have even produced a letter said to
have been written by an al-Qa'ida operative, advocating a Sunni-Shia
conflict. Normally sane journalists have enthusiastically taken up this
theme. Civil war.
Somehow I don't
believe it. No, I don't believe the Americans were behind yesterday's
carnage despite the screams of accusation by the Iraqi survivors yesterday.
But I do worry about the Iraqi exile groups who think that their own
actions might produce what the Americans want: a fear of civil war so
intense that Iraqis will go along with any plan the United States produces
for Mesopotamia.
I think of the French
OAS in Algeria in 1962, setting off bombs among France's Muslim Algerian
community. I recall the desperate efforts of the French authorities
to set Algerian Muslim against Algerian Muslim which led to half a million
dead souls.
And I'm afraid I
also think of Ireland and the bombings in Dublin and Monaghan in 1974,
which, as the years go by, appear to have an ever closer link, via Protestant
"loyalist" paramilitaries, to elements of British military
security.
But the bombs in
Karbala and Baghdad were clearly co-ordinated. The same brain worked
behind them. Was it a Sunni brain? When the occupation authorities'
spokesman suggested yesterday that it was the work of al-Qa'ida, he
must have known what he was saying: that al-Qa'ida is a Sunni movement,
that the victims were Shias.
It's not that I
believe al-Qa'ida incapable of such a bloodbath. But I ask myself why
the Americans are rubbing this Sunni-Shia thing so hard. Let's turn
the glass round the other way. If a violent Sunni movement wished to
evict the Americans from Iraq - and there is indeed a resistance movement
fighting very cruelly to do just that - why would it want to turn the
Shia population of Iraq, 60 per cent of Iraqis, against them? The last
thing such a resistance would want is to have the majority of Iraqis
against it.
So what about al-Qa'ida?
Repeatedly, the Americans have told us that the suicide bombers were
"foreigners". And so they may be. But can we have some identities,
nationalities? The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has talked
of the hundreds of "foreign" fighters crossing Saudi Arabia's
"porous" borders.
The US press have
dutifully repeated this. The Iraqi police keep announcing that they
have found the bombers' passports, so can we have the numbers?
We are entering
a dark and sinister period of Iraqi history. But an occupation authority
which should regard civil war as the last prospect it ever wants to
contemplate, keeps shouting "civil war" in our ears and I
worry about that. Especially when the bombs make it real.
Copyright: The Independent