Americans often struggle to understand the complexities of the nation’s current involvement in Iraq and the war’s unpredicted outcome. On Jan. 11, lecturing at La Jolla Country Day School, Iranian-born scholar Dr. Vali Nasr carefully explained the Sunni/Shi’a conflict and its impact on the American presence in Iraq and the Middle East. On Feb. 5, San Diegans will have another chance to hear him speak.
The author of “The Shi’a Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future,” Nasr, a La Jolla resident since 1992, is professor of Middle East and South Asia politics in the Department of National Security at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. He is also a senior adjunct fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations.
A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Nasr taught at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of San Diego and is a regular commentator for national news media on the politics of the Islamic world and the Middle East.
Drawing comparisons to the protracted medieval Hundred Years War in Europe, the split between the Catholic and Orthodox rites of the Christian Church and the Anglo-Irish struggles, he held out little optimism for quick resolution to American involvement in Iraq or an emerging conflict with Iran.
“What began in Iraq has become far larger,” he said, tracing the impact of the American invasion on countries throughout the region.
He cited American policy-makers’ lack of understanding of the divisions between the Shi’a and Sunni, which he described as “the oldest and most sectarian divide in Islam,” with origins dating to the religion’s seventh-century founding and the dispute over the rightful successor to the Prophet Mohammed.
“It’s about identity or who you are “¦ It’s shorthand for ethnicity,” he said.
While the Shi’a or Shiites make up only 10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide, they are concentrated in the Persian Gulf region, where they comprise 80 percent of the population. Although Shiites form the majority in countries including Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain, Nasr explained, they have held little political power. In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the majority Shiites were excluded from the minority Sunni-controlled government.
“When the U.S. went into Iraq, we thought we were going to liberate the Iraqis, but we liberated the Shi’a,” Nasr observed.
Iraqi Shiites did not resist the American invasion, on instructions from the Shi’a Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who also directed Shiites to participate in voting. Al-Sistani embraced the concept of “one man “” one vote” as a mantra for the majority Shi’a in order to gain control of Iraq democratically.
What, then, produced so much violence?
Resistance to U.S. forces ” the “insurgency” ” has come primarily from the Sunnis, who, although only 20 percent of the population, feel it is their “manifest destiny to rule,” maintaining dominance over the Shi’a, Nasr explained.
“No one expected this degree of resistance from the Sunnis,” he said. “The very first thing the Sunnis want is restoration of Sunni rule. The Sunnis will not accept only 20 percent of the power.”
The Sunni bombing of the Shiite sacred shrine, the Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra, in February 2006 ” equivalent to bombing Rome’s St. Peter’s Basilica ” ignited a new phase in Shi’a-Sunni fighting. Until then, the Shi’a had shown restraint.
“The leaders said, ‘Trust the Americans. They’ll deliver you Iraq.’ When the bombing of the shrine happened, that argument fell apart,” Nasr said. “The Sunnis interpret restraint as weakness.”
That bombing triggered growth of Shiite militias, since the Shi’a felt they could no longer trust the Americans for protection. Nasr also pointed to a shift in American strategy.
“The U.S. sometime decided it couldn’t defeat the insurgency,” he said. “They decided to give more to the Sunnis. The Sunnis interpreted this, if you kick them more, they’ll give you more. We started to lose the Shi’a.”
Militia leaders including Muqtada al-Sadr gained power as moderate leaders such as al-Sistani lost credibility. The Shi’a majority expected their newly elected prime minister to give his own people priority on patronage and security.
Waiting in the wings and benefiting from American miscalculations and misunderstanding was the majority ” Shi’a Iran, the only country in the region to recognize the new Iraqi government.
“When the U.S. destroyed the Iraqi army, there was no one to restrain Iran,” Nasr stated. “If we expect to contain Iran, we should expect to be there a long time.”
Iran’s strength must not be discounted, he explained. Its rise in power is based on major societal changes joined with oil wealth. It has a young population of 70 million with a high degree of literacy, education and capability. Farsi is now the most common language on the Internet after English and Chinese. The people, he noted, are more liberal-minded than much of the region and more so than the current regime. In general they are not anti-American but hate current American policy.
He sees a high likelihood of American conflict with Iran.
“The U.S. can start a war but can’t finish it. The reality is that we don’t have the military capability to control the outcome,” he said.
Nasr sees little hope now for resolution to problems in the region without creating a new plan to address root causes, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, as recommended by the Iraq Study Group.
Nasr will present a similar lecture on the Shi’a revival on Monday, Feb. 5, at 7 p.m. for UCSD’s Institute for International, Comparative and Area Studies at the Great Hall, main campus, 9500 Gilman Drive. For more information, e-mail [email protected]. The program will be telecast Feb. 13 at 10 p.m. on UCSD-TV.