U.S. Ignores Anti-American Past Of Leading Iraq Shiite Group

by Jalal Ghazi

(PNS) -- In Iraq, the alliance between the Bush administration and the Shiite leadership has kept the latter's mass followers from joining the insurgency and provided U.S. forces with desperately needed help in establishing security. In return, the Shiites are getting a historic opportunity to get rid of Sunni domination.

Ironically, a similar alignment, this time between the United States and Sunni forces -- the Shiites' rivals -- could help the United States install preferred regimes in other Arab countries such as Syria. In return, the Sunnis could get U.S. support for their struggle for inclusion in the political process, including the right to win power democratically.

As Al Ghasan Al Imam wrote in the May 11 issue of the Asharq Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, "American pragmatism" does not mind using sectarianism to promote its great Middle East Project. The United States supported the Iraqi Shiites in Iraq because they are the majority, but that does not mean that Washington will support the Shiites in Syria; rather it will have to support the Sunni majority.

The Shiites in Iraq have fared well in their alliance with America. Al-Da'wa al-Islamiyya (Islamic Call) Party is the longest established Iraqi Shiite movement, whose members were severely persecuted by the Baathists under Saddam Hussein. Now it has become the leading Shiite political party in post-Saddam Iraq and has been strongly backing U.S. efforts in fighting remnants of the Baath Party and insurgents.

For pragmatic reasons, Washington has chosen to ignore the Al-Da'wa Party's record of anti-Americanism. Al-Da'wa is believed to be responsible for the 1983 bombing of U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait, which killed six and injured dozens. In addition, radical clerics from Al Da'wa founded Lebanon's Hizbullah organization, believed to be responsible for the Oct. 23, 1983, suicide attack that killed 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut.

Clearly, Al Da'wa Party's willingness to work with the United States in this critical time has helped soften its image within the Bush administration. This explains why the U.S. did not oppose the selection of the new Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim Jafari, head of the Al Da'wa Party.

Nevertheless, its tolerance of Shiite rule in Iraq does not erase Washington's worries about the growing influence of Shiite Iran in Lebanon and other Arab countries.

To counterbalance Shiite influence in other Arab countries, the United States has no choice but to deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is by far the largest and most prominent Sunni movement in the Middle East. Muslim Brotherhood members were persecuted by the secularist and pan-Arab nationalist Jamal Abdel Nasser. The persecution forced them to flee to many Arab countries, where they set up nuclei of what is now the strongest Islamic opposition to secular Arab regimes in Jordan, Egypt and Syria just to name a few.

The Muslim Brotherhood is now a transnational organization, which means that the United States can't be friends with the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and be its enemy in Egypt, Jordan or even West Bank and Gaza, where Hamas acknowledges being part of Muslim Brotherhood. And it is questionable whether Washington can work with the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria without alienating very loyal Arab regimes in Jordan and Egypt. There are indications, however, that the United States is not giving up easily on the Muslim Brotherhood option.

The demographic makeup of Syria's population and the Syrian government's brutal repression of the Muslim Brotherhood highlight the possibility that the Syrian Brotherhood may be in an ideal position to align itself with the United States in toppling the secular Syrian regime.

Syria has the opposite population makeup of Iraq: the Shiite ruling minority constitutes only 15 percent of the Syrian population; the Sunni majority forms 70 percent.

While several Arab regimes have also used force to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood to undermine its growing power, Damascus has used extreme measures. It banned the Brotherhood as a political party in 1958, and in 1980 it made membership in the Brotherhood a capital offense. In 1982, the Syrian army attacked the Brotherhood in the city of Hama, killing up to 10,000. (The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood puts the toll at 30,000).

Martin Indyk, the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told Al Jazeera that Arab regimes can no longer depend on the United States to support them just because they are preferable to Islamic extremist regimes. Indyk argues that "Islamic groups could fill the space that opens up with democratic reforms, as, in effect, we can say is happening in Lebanon and Palestine, and perhaps could happen in Syria and Egypt." Indyk appeared on Al Jazeera several times to defend what the Arab media refers to as the "American Islamic Dialogue."

For example, it was reported on Al Jazeera and Al-Quds Al-Arabi that retired American government officials on March 22 met with senior leaders of Hizbullah, Hamas and other Islamic organizations.

The American delegation included Frederic Hof, staff director of a 2001 commission on the Palestinian Intifada, Bobby Muller, a Vietnam veteran, and former members of the CIA and others with links to the U.S. administration.

The delegation from Hamas included Musa Abu Marzouk, deputy chief of the Political Bureau in Syria who was once declared by the U.S. Treasury Department as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT).

Alastair Crooke, a former British intelligence officer and director of the London-based non-governmental organization Conflicts Forum, mediated the meeting. He appeared with Hizbullah and Hamas officials on Al-Jazeera's talk show "Open Dialogue" to specifically talk about the "Beirut Dialogue."

The London-based Asharq Al-Awsat reported on May 3 that several meetings were held between the U.S. ambassador to Egypt and some leaders from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The meetings were mediated by the "Eben Khaldoun Center," which is directed by Sad Al Dean Ibraheam, a professor at the American University in Cairo.

The "American Islamic Dialogue" seems to signal a shift in U.S. foreign policy, in which the neo-conservative policy of using overwhelming forces against radical Islamic organizations is being disregarded. Ironically, this shift is being made possible by the collapse of the Iraqi Baath regime, once considered a major bulwark of secular pan-Arab nationalism. The Baath regime's collapse has led to the strengthening of Islamic movements in Iraq and other Arab countries, a tiger that the United States must ride in order to get anywhere in the Middle East.