Washington Pushes Shia-Sunni Politics To Divide West Asia Again

It is difficult to fathom how Israel has been able to get away with a genocide, and all out military action against two sovereign nations. Difficult as Americans too had not expected this level of complicity and support from their President Joe Biden who has turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the worst kind of human atrocities seen by the modern world, surpassing even Vietnam. The brutal annihilation of an entire people with schools and hospitals and women and children being killed with bullets, bombs and now starvation confounds. The justification of this makes it absolutely impossible to understand, as a genocide is unfolding on camera and the world that has made much of Hitler and his concentration camps is watching with just a few small countries finding the conscience to speak out.

It has been American lie after lie to justify the all consuming desire to control the Middle East, to sanitise the region for the expansion of Israeli Zionism, and to have the power to turn on the tap for the gas and oil that the ME is so rich in. The region has been in the US and now Israel led war for almost a decade and a half. The countries supporting the Palestinians have been systematically targeted. Iraq was the first, with the world watching in shock and awe as US fighter jets bombed the sanctions hit country day and night for several days. Then the mighty tanks filled with soldiers and embedded journalists, triumphant at having conquered a country without an army and without weapons. The excuse for the attack in which entire villages were wiped out, was that Saddam Hussain was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. Journalists like this writer who visited Iraq just before the invasion knew that this was a big lie as the country was badly hit by the years of sanctions, and literally struggling to survive. The surveillance was such that the government could not move a rifle without the alarm bells ringing, let alone build a nuclear bomb or they said weapons.

The truth was out soon, but not before Iraq had been destroyed. And while this was admitted by the Americans, it was just power for the course. The projection was of terrorists and jihadis all grouped together in the targeted country, with not one of the hundreds of western big media journalists who visited Iraq bothering to write about the rich civilisation of Mesopotamia; the culture of Iraq; the sophistication of the people, their passion and their desire to live a better life. It was all about spreading the American lies to justify a barbaric invasion that the western world at least condoned. And the rest of the world watched, stupefied.

Since then it has been unending. The attack on Gaza, the atrocities, the killings, has stoked protests in the younger generations across the world. Protests have increased, Israel and Netanyahu condemned, Biden called out —but nothing absolutely nothing has come in the way of the leveling of Gaza and now the attacks on the West Bank. The Palestinians have been literally finished, there is nothing left, but even then Israeli fighter planes are bombing a starving, ill and maimed population day after day. The brutality is unbelievable, as Israel, armed and supported by the US and some other governments, has been allowed to run amok – in violation of all rules of human law.

Targeted assassinations are now justified. As is the death of the Palestinians. The attacks on Lebanon where the south in particular has been destroyed and scholar and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah killed. The focus now has shifted to Syria where President Bashar al Assad left within days, but despite the proclaimed regime change Israel has carried out over 800 strikes on the hapless country, killing and wounding, and occupying more and more territory. Again there is no army, no fight back, but the bombing continues as the world watches, America endorses, and the peoples protest.

In the midst of all this are the Arab regimes. Autocratic rulers, sycophants who have never stood up for the Palestinians. Not even when Yasser Arafat was alive and most capitals in the world were keen to resolve the issue. The Arabs treated the Palestinians like dirt, simply because they were secular and educated and progressive and unlike Saudi Arabia for instance, did not base their existence on the support of oil and religion. All the despots occupying the top positions in the region played their own games with Sunni vs Shia dominating the political discourse until recently. The Israel war is also a sign of worry about the rapprochement between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran – or at least the beginnings of it – as a united region strikes fear in Tel Aviv.

So even this time around Saudi Arabia did not jump to Washington’s bugle, Turkey did and Erdogan joined Israel in destroying Syria. Syrians told this writer repeatedly that while they had no love lost for Assad they would now rally behind him, as the alternative was far worse and would lead to unimaginable persecution of the minorities and a fragmentation of Syria. They said this after the first sign of trouble at Homs a few years ago, and as Salafists brought together by the Americans and their allies in the region, were gathering at the borders. Assad had in his last years worked for a pluralistic society and it was very visible to all of us who visited the beleaguered country more than once. The same motley group of al Qaeda and ISIS remnants were brought together again by their controllers and armed sufficiently to walk into Syria and topple the regime. In that, Assad decided to leave, and as some commentators have said, perhaps to give Russia and others time and the opportunity to retrieve lost ground in the region. But more of this later.

The celebrations are limited to the Salafists and their western backers. And of course to some misguided Syrians who left their country and are bursting crackers with little to no idea of what they are really celebrating. The man commanding this new army that is looting and burning Damascus is himself a wanted terrorist, and plays hardline Sunni politics. It is apparent that the West has decided to bring in the worst face of the Salafists into Syria and thereby drive a wedge into the Sunni-Shia amity that was slowly taking shape earlier. America and Israel are happier in a divided West Asia, and this conflict has been blurred by Shia Iran, and a Shia Hezbollah giving support to Sunni Palestinians. It also suits regimes like in the Gulf and Jordan and Egypt who have kept a long distance from the Palestinian issue, and can now continue to do so, without pressure from the Arab street that was quite disgusted with these governments. But will now be assuaged or so they hope with the tensions of a Shia -Sunni divide.

Iran of course knows better than the rest that it is the main target. And while it has Russia’s support, this might or might not fructify into a real defence. The extreme leadership in Syria will give it a rough time, and the almost certain persecution of Shias and others in the country will make it difficult for the Iranian government to withstand the pressure from their own people. The axis of resistance thus has been dealt a severe blow and the installation of puppets in Syria, supported by supposedly more legitimate puppets like Erdogan, spells deep trouble for the Middle East that has been unable to rise to levels that could keep it out of American control. Israel of course, will pay a price for this but then Benjamin Netanyahu is as expendable as Erdogan although both do not realise it as yet.