Opening up the paper today, I see that I apparently talked up a war... ;-) One should not buy into the deliberate confusion in the news story in this link depicting the conflict as Sunni vs Shia, etc. In fact Houthi are not Shia in the sense of Twelvers (modern Iran, some parts of Lebanon). They are Zaydis who do not consider themselves Shia, in that way. Zaydis, are the oldest branch of the Shia and the largest group and original Shia before the Safavid Dynasty in the sixteenth century usurped the name for its own political purposes (everything is political). Currently the second largest group, are the closest to the Sunnis and do not believe in the infallibility of Imāms after Husayn. Zaydis believe that in the last hour of Zayd ibn Ali, he was betrayed by the people in Kufa who said to him: May God have mercy on you! What do you have to say on the matter of Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab? Zayd ibn Ali said, I have not heard anyone in my family renouncing them both nor saying anything but good about them...when they were entrusted with government they behaved justly with the people and acted according to the Quran and the Sunnah. In terms of Islamic jurisprudence it is also close to Sunns. While these things are not important to me (and somewhat ridiculous), it theologically should prevent Yemenis Houthi from participating in the war of Irans ruling clergy against the majority of the Arab and Islamic world. But there is a catch. The Islamic Republic of Iran has historically been adept at finding small bands of disaffected or isolated groups in highly strategic locales in the Arab world and converting them to their rigidly hierarchical, authoritarian clerical form of beliefs, under their political and social leadership, to use them in to their own ends, and as a bargaining chip. After the initial efforts of conversion, even if harshly conservative social strictures are not followed, the Iranians recruit and train a militant group to do its bidding and to fight alongside a core of its elite special forces, the Pasdaran. These forces are then unleashed on the traditional enemies of the IRI, i.e. Arab nationalists, rival religious leaders and communities. A virtual police state within the state is set up in these areas and Iran proceeds from there to use the community in its grand strategy, Arab pawns in the much more sophisticated and pragmatic hands of the Iranian state. The fact that Iran and the U.S. have the same aims in the region and cooperate towards these shared goals is masked by noora kushti propaganda which gives the necessary cover. The Sunni population has been subject to another, related version of this intrigue by the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded in cooperation with the West and the CIA as well. It operates on similar lines (not surprisingly, considering the IRI and the Muslim Brotherhoods shared roots) but usually the Brotherhood make its appeal to either the educated and more class aspirational, or those who are already disaffected religious zealots. In Yemen, the Brotherhood leaders of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform (or al-Islah, the coalition formed by Hashid tribal leadership, businessmen and Islamist groups of various kinds) participated actively in Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference. And this is where the Yemeni Brotherhood went wrong as far as the West is concerned. The Brotherhood on a local level has been known to be venal and corruptible (if one can call it that), and the suspicion of the U.S. was that the Saudis and UAE were buying the cooperation of the YCR with the government. The West felt that the international Muslim Brotherhood leadership which it is allied to was losing grasp in Yemen on the ground. The fall of Morsi in Egypt took away a handy patron for the Brotherhood. Qatars flip flop, as it now has pulled its support from the Muslim Brotherhood due to its own fear of what the fall of its neighbors to Brotherhood-Western forces could result in, has also undercut the Brotherhoods position in Yemen. Iran and their militants recently militarily ran through the capital of Yemen but in the end, Yemen is too populated, varied and spread out to make this a final win in securing Yemen as a base. Even holding Sanaa has proven to be impossible for any party. The Brotherhood is still very well funded with a large organization. This rivalry then has made the situation that more complicated. The Saudis and UAE have not been content with just throwing money at the old government, then anyone who would take it to stop the fighting. They have funded their own religious and militant organizations and entered the fray with their won special forces, with some cooperation from Egypt and other Arab states. It is an unusual display of organization by the Saudis, who as a rule are monumentally incompetent at creating structures of influence. The irony here is that they have also peeled off some of the local Muslim Brotherhood militants to their side who genuinely fear what will happen with Western and IRI success. And of course there are U.S. special forces, contractors, and intelligence crawling all over the country and coming head to head with forces sponsored by the Saudis, Egypt and others. In some ways this has parallels to the situation in Libya. The differences is that in Yemen there is much more at stake, namely the attempt to overthrow the Gulf states and to put the oil wealth and the region into the hands of the West. So for all of you who were glued to your television when the Arab Spring was on and a few protestors were getting bludgeoned, you really are missing the actual gory show. #revolutionswontbetelevised
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 17:10:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015