Iran 'lets al-Qaeda roam free'

So much for the "AQ needs a failed state to set up operations safely" school of thought.

I would love to know how much of a handle Mossad has on these little goings-on.

Really, really large bright flashes anyone?

t-ham:

Iran is just a larger failed state, every bit as dysfunctional and brutish as Iraq, but with mullahs in charge instead of Saddam, his sons and his Baathist minions.

Sunnis and Shi'a will fight when there is something to fight over, and where there is at least a chance of winnning. The Shi'a in Yemen are more aggressive than the Shi'a in Pakistan (who make up only 20% of the population). The "Arab" country, self-described, where the Shi'a are more numerous, and now more powerful (thanks to American intervention), and what's more, next door to the largest Shi'a-ruled country in the world, is Iraq. It is in Iraq that there is, therefore, the best chance for a real Sunni-Shi'a fight.

It looks like a fair fight -- meaning it could go on and on. The Shi'a, with a 3-1 advantage in population, control of oil revenues, and access to support, military and other, from fanatical and hardened co-religionists next door in the Islamic Republic of Iran, have more advantages than any other Shi'a group in any country where the Sunni Arabs dominated. The wound to Sunni Arab pride, the horror of seeing the Land of the Two Rivers (which with Egypt is the other great site of that high Islamic civilization, its achievements or attributed achievements psychically essential to Arab myth-making and identity) fall into the hands of the Shi'a, and possibly to be incorporated into the Islamic Republic of Iran,is too hideous to contemplate. So it is safe to assume that Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., and Kuwait will supply plenty of money and arms, and there will be all sorts of Sunni Arab volunteers rushing to defend the Sunni rule over Iraq -- possibly, on their way through Syria, running into Hezbollah volunteers leaving the camps in Lebanon to go to Iraq to join the Shi'a side of the conflict. What could be better? What could conceivably do more to use up Arab and Muslim attention, foster disarray and dismay within Muslim ranks, show up the permanent violence of Islam, the sheer natural aggression of it to Infidels, who need constant examples of this so as to come to their own senses.

For the past thirty years, in formal and informal ways, the Arabs and Muslims have managed to exploit the pre-existing mental conditions of antisemitism and anti-Americanism, and have successfully misrepresented, at every turn, the Arab Jihad against Israel, and the larger Jihad that is not intermittent, but a permanent part of Islam, held back, or fallen into desuetude, only when the conditions for its furtherance are not propitious, or the wherewithal may be lacking. With oil revenues of ten trillion dollars since 1973, the Arabs and Muslims have not been lacking in the wherewithal. For that kind of money pays for mosques, madrasas, propaganda everywhere -- nearly $80 billion from Saudi Arabia alone to promote Islam. The Soviet Union spent all over the world less than a tenth of that on propaganda. And the ability to get the Europeans to admit large numbers of Muslims, without carefully considering the consequences -- without studying either the tenets of Islam, or the long history of how, after conquest, the Muslims always and everywhere treated the non-Muslims they conqueed and subjugated, is the greatest failure of a civilization since the 1930s, or perhaps in all of history. It has alreaady created a terrible problem for the civilization of Europe, has already made the lives of Infidels within their own lands much more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous -- and it was all entirely avoidable, had the experts, those of the old school, who were not either the naive apologists for Islam, or recruits to the army of Arab-financed hirelings who now have infiltrated into, and taken over, the academic study of Islam and the Middle East (along with the aiding and abetting crew, of the left-lurching, arms-smuggling ship the S.S. Palestine, those crew-members always ready to blow up the Jews, whether on refugee ships, or having landed, and made lives, in their sliver of a country) all over the Western world.

Of course, when it comes not to the "Rafidite dogs" (as many Sunnis call the Shi'a), but to the real Infidels, such as the Americans, then even one's greatest enemy, if some kind of Muslim, must be trusted, must be preferred.

The very best example of this is what Saddam Hussein did in 1991. There he was, having in 1980 attacked Iran, and conducted an eight year war against Shi'a Iran, a war that was merciless on both sides. Yet, when the Infidel Americans threatened him in 1991, he did not hesitate to move almost his entire air force, nearly 100 planes, to Iran, his past and present enemy. For whatever he felt about Shi'a Iran, was as nothing compared to what he felt about the Infdiel Americans. As it happens, those planes are still in Iranian hands, so his trust in fellow Muslims was apparently misplaced. Good.

One hopes that those planes will be used by the Shi'a, and that the Sunnis, in turn, will do everything they can to destroy them. Even though a number of supporters of the Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project in Iraq pin their hopes on the Shi'a as being distinctly better (see Reuel Gerecht, see Amir Taheri, see Fouad Ajami whose unwillingness out of filial piety or intelligent careerism to discuss the Matter of Islam combined with his undeniable personal appeal and, within limits, probity, has helped to lead a number of Infidel colleagues astray, to judge by recent naively approving remarks about Islam by the normally hard-headed Ruth Wedgewood. One must conclude that the personal charm of two of her colleagues at Johns Hopkins, those "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslims Fouad Ajami and Azar Nafisi, have through that charm, and that unwillingness to go the Ibn-Warraq route, helped to mislead Professor Wedgewood. At least, that is the most plausible explanation one can offer.)

Shi'a or Sunni, Khomeini or Bin Baz, what does it matter? Let them fight. Infidels don't have a dog in that fight. Or rather, our dog is the fight itself.

A permanent fissure running right through Iraq, and inevitable once Saddam Hussein had been deposed, and enough time had passed (and more than enough time has passed) for the Shi'a to seize control of large areas (of course they want the Americans to remain, both to engage in as much bloodletting and weakening of the Sunnis as possible, and to train not the "Iraqi" army or "Iraqi" police but the Shi'a , who under Saddam Hussein naturally could not get much, if any, training. And if the Americans also distribute more billions, or even military equipment -- well, think the Shi'a, why not? And what do we care about American casualties or Infidel interests? We don't.).

Why is it everyone can display low cunning, and pursue their own interests, except the United States, now serving as a surrogate for the Shi'a of Iraq? What the article above shows clearly is that the Shi'a are just as malevolent toward Infidels as are the Sunnis.

One more reason to stop making things easier for the Shi'a. After all, the Shi'a in Iraq, and the Shi'a in Iran, are along with Wahhabi Saudi Arabia the greatest beneficiaries of the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Time to let them sort it all out themselves -- and hope that it takes a decade. Or two. Or three.

Robert makes an excellent point here.

To base American security policy on the hopes that Shia and Sunni will end up being locked in perpetual conflict is foolhearty at best.

The poster above, attempting to score points, suggests that the article in question shows the folly of relying on Sunni-Shi'a hostility. But all that the story shows is that, when it comes to hating and fighting the Infidels, Shi'a and Sunni may share a common interest. Thus, as noted in a different posting above, it is entirely possible for the Wahhabis to hate the Shi'a of Iran, and vice-versa, or for Saddam Hussein to loathe the Islamic Republic of Iran, and vice-versa. But that does not mean that Saddam Hussein hesitated before entrusting his air force to the custody of Iran. Nor does it mean that the Sunnis would necessarily applaud the destruction of the Iranian nuclear project, if only they could be assured that the bombs would fall only on Israel (and if the "Palestinian people" die too, who cares? They were only there as the shock troops of the Jihad, and otherwise were treated with utter indifference, and deliberately kept wherever possible, to score political points with the Western world, in so-called "refugee camps" and not permitted, save in Jordan, to become citizens).

One heartening example of what is happening in Iraq, and that it makes no sense for Infidels to deplore, is headline-fresh:

"Baghdad 'ambush' leaves 20 dead

A number of police and Mehdi Army fighters were injured
At least 20 Shia militiamen and Iraqi policemen have died in clashes with Sunni insurgents, Iraqi officials say.
Most of those killed were Mehdi Army militiamen loyal to radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr. Two Iraqi policemen were also killed and others wounded.

A spokesman for the militiamen said they were ambushed as they went with police to aid a comrade kidnapped by Sunni militants near Baghdad.

Some reports said the clash resulted from tensions between the communities.

Whether it involves insurgents or not, it is clearly a case of Sunnis fighting Shias - an alarming development in a country where the fear of civil war is increasingly coming to the fore, says the BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad.

The battle took place in the town of Nahrawan, some 15 miles (25km) south-east of Baghdad.

Growing tensions

Amer al-Husseini, an aide to Moqtada Sadr, told the Associated Press news agency that the militiamen raided a house to free the hostage and captured two militants but were ambushed leaving Nahrawan.

Interior Ministry special forces later went in to seal off the area.

The town has a mixed Sunni and Shia population, and some Arabic television stations said the clashes came against a background of tensions between the two communities.

Sunni-based militant Islamic insurgents in Iraq are openly waging a war against the Shia community, says our correspondent.

There has also been a growing phenomenon of Sunni citizens being abducted and killed in quite large groups, either as communal revenge or perhaps to aggravate sectarian tensions, he adds."

What is foolhardy -- or "foolhearty" -- is to believe that the Sunni-Shi'a split is trivial, and cannot be counted on. It can -- but only if the Infidels, the Americans, get out of the way. For god's sake, this is one fight we have no business trying to break up. It is idiotic to do so.

Just go read a bit in the Encyclopedia of Islam, for god's sake. Or, if you prefer, consult the reprint of T. P. Hughes' Dictionary of Islam, pp. 572-579.

A few excerpts:

"The Suni Muslims call them the Rafizi, or the forsakers of the truth. The Sh'ahs strenously maintina that they are the 'orthodox' Juslims, and arrogate to themselves (as do also the Sunnis) the title of al-Mu'minun, or the 'True Believers.'...

"The spirit of division, which appeared among the followers of Muhammad, even before his death, broke out with greater violence afer it..."

"The greeat and radical difference between the Sh'ahs and Sunnis..."

But there is also this observation, made in 1885 when Hughes' "Encyclopedia of Islam" (recently republished in India) was written: "within the past fifty years the religious bitterness of Shiite and Sunite is sensibly in decline."

But that was before the great rise in Iranian power, and the rise in the Shi'a percentage of the population in Iraq, and furthermore, before the rise of the Wahhabis to their current position of power, and it is they who have regarded the Shi'a as virtual Infidels.

No one can ignore the constant Sunni attacks on Shi'a, including the bombing of Shi'a mosques, in Pakistan. Nor the resentment felt by the Shi'a in Hasa province. Nor the similar resentment and rage, which the American presence has had nothing to do with, of the Shi'a for the way they have been treated by the Sunnis.

The other day there was a silly report in The New Duranty Times on the "old Baghdad Sunni elite" coming together to listen to a celebrated Iraqi musician. No doubt the people in attendance, like the author, really believed that they were in fact equivalent to a similar group of cultivated Westerners, but in fact this, the best that ye olde Baghdad had to offer, the cultivated "Sunni elite" that had sat out Saddam Hussein and in this new world, we were led to believe, had nowhere to go, were comical, for their actual cultural achievements or understanding were not those of Paris or Rome or London, but more like some provincial American backwater, where the town's well-off babbitts, because they occasionally read that month's Book-of-the-Month-Club biography or thrilling tale, are said to represent the summit of cultivation. That "old Sunni elite" had a few Shi'a members, and of course in the old days before all the Jews had to leave, entirely dispossessed, no doubt that Jewish element in Baghdad also contributed to a thin cosmopolitan veneer, but its existence should not be used to obscure the Sunni seizure, and retention, of power, throughout the history of modern Iraq.

And that has had consequences. And now, if we will only step out of the way, only stop squandering men's lives, money, materiel, the morale of the army and the willingness of the civilians to engage in a long Cold (and sometimes Hot) War against the world-wide Jihad, and against all of its instruments, those consequences will work to our advantage.

How perverse, how obstinate, how silly not to let them.

I'll just reiterate my own position. Hugh presumes that abandoning Iraq is the Machiavellian answer that will somehow enhance the security of the West.

I say that a democratic, unitary, federal Iraq ensures:

1) That Iran doesn't absorb the Iraqi south into an Iranian super-state with vast new reserves of oil wealth

2) That Al Qaeda in Iraq doesn't create an unfettered Taliban-style state in the Sunni heartland that will be used as a base to spread jihadi terror throughout the region and the world (the way Fallujah was once used as a base to spread terror throughout Iraq)

3) That Iraqi Kurdistan prospers in its autonomy, unthreatened by a prospective Sunni-Shiite Civil war or Turkish (and possibly Iranian) strategic dictates

4) Keeps Iraq in the Western orbit and sets an example of democracy in the region.

All four goals are jeapordized should we leave without the Iraqi security forces being adequately trained.

One thing about these kinds of arrangements are the temporary nature they tend to have. Sooner or later the honeymoon will be over, when one side fails to be ideologically out of sync with the other.

Not that I'm holding my breath waiting to see anything serious come of it, but the new Iranian prez is doing a bang-up job of completely discrediting the government internationally. May they succeed in isolating themselves to an extent that Saddam never managed to accomplish.

Here's some things to consider, when trying to unravel the Islamic knot.

Yes, Shi'a and Sunni are united by a visceral hatred of the kufr.

But there is more to this picture of Wahhabbiyah and Shi'ah convergence than otherwise considered by the supposedly brightest of luminaries, and to get a picture one must look at the strategic goals of the Saudis and try to grasp the nuances of Arabic.

We are told that Taliban means Students, and refers to the Madrassa students whose recruits fed the Taliban (and still do) but Taliban means Follower of the Student, and the student is Ali ibn Abu Talib, which means Exalted son of the father of the Student. This Ali (and I have some doubts that such was his name) is the first Shi'a Imam and the fourth Sunni Caliph who died by being delivered a mortal blow to his head.

Because he is called by Muslims The Exalted son of the father of the Student, they then concocted a genealogy that his fathers name was Abu Talib (they certainly have no idea of who his father was), maybe it was the brother of Muhammad's father, however the name Abu Talib means father of the Student.. and who was the first student of Muhammad (The Praised one Ubal Qassim)? None other than this Ali.

My personal opinion and assessment is that the Saudis used the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, as an excuse to spread Wahhabiyyah influence and doctrine into and amongst the denizens of South Asia (Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran) and that the real purpose of Osama was to create a synthesis, a syncretic union between Shi'a and Wahabbi Islam.

And that was the Taliban, the Followers of Talib, the first student of Muhammad.

More clues emerge. The Shi'a wear Turbans, while the Arabs wear the ghutra and iqal (the scarf head covering with the "camels hair" band holding it on. They also wear a thawb (the long white night shirt), their dress is completely different from the Iranian Shi'a.

In Shi'a Islam a black turban means that one is suppose to be descended from Muhammad, which supposedly makes them special, even holy, with mystical powers, but anyway a privileged class and are designated by the title Sayyid. There are so many Sayyids now that the Title has become an epithet like Mister. A white turban is for commoners, especially clergy or mullahs not descended from Muhammad.

Osama abandoned Arab Dress, and adopted Shi'a dress and turban, and in the last video released of him, he was posturing as a Mehdi (Islamic Savior) replete in Gold Tunic, which would be otherwise blasphemous. And Osama is now revered as a religious figure, although he has no religious training at all beyond his childhood madrassa.

While it is true, that Wahhabi muslims, especially the clerics consider Shi'a to be mushrik (polytheists), setting aside their doctrinal differences, there is a lot, too much in fact, in common between Wahhabi Shari'a and Shi'a Sharia, and in Islam today more than anything Shari'a is most important.

The deviancy of Shi'a Islam, from Wahhibiyyah Islam as regards the status of women is perhaps something that will be worked out in the future, but for the time being it serves the propaganda purposes of Shi'a Islam to allow women to vote, drive cars (in Iran) however there is only one woman in Iran who still drives for a living, a school bus driver who is a hold over.

Shi'a Islam restricts the professions women can engage in, just as the Wahhabis (and Sunnis) do, they do allow (for now) women to vote and hold public office, but I think that such is a public relations stunt that will go away, when they no longer have to try and "prove" that they are 'honoring women', as regards giving the women the vote, that is tactical, in as much as women generally don't have their own mind, and follow the instructions and leads of the man, and more than men are heavily invested in the status quo (whatever that may be) the woman's vote can be assured to continue the regime, since women seem to be more afraid of change than men.

Anyway, when the Mullahs, emirs, "kings" and Presidents no longer have Jews and infidels of the west as a distraction and deflection to mitigate and dilute the dissatisfaction of their own public, Islam will most certainly devolve to the bloody feuds that were the hall mark of Islam, until they found a common enemy (the Jews and the Crusaders) to unite against.

The Succession of Caliphs, Sultans and Imam's was not peaceful, there was serious blood feuds, murders, assassinations, strangulations and poisonings.

It is my opinion, at the present, that the real mission of Osama was to forge a union between Wahhabbi and Shi'a Islam, via supporting and funding the mujahideen and fedayeen, and in that he has succeeded, and all with the blessings, financial and logistical support of the Saudi Royals. He is their man doing their business, in fact it was the Saudis who encouraged and helped the CIA recruit Jihadis for Afghanistan in Egypt, Algeria and No Africa, while they did their own recruiting in Saudi Arabia. They snookered the west, not hard to do because of the visceral knee jerk reaction against "communists".

Actually the Soviets moved into Afghanistan at the behest of it's government, when outraged and inflamed muslims attacked a school in Herat that dared to educate girls, they rounded up the teachers and principals and beheaded them, and then set out across Afghanistan to replicate the process. The government could not cope with such an "insurgency" so they asked the Soviets to help them, and now the rest is history. If we had stayed out of it, there would not have been an Osama, a 9-11, no world wide Jihad organization,
blowback blowback, blowback either this country is grossly incompetently led, or greed outweighs common sense, or there is a nefarious Grand Chessgame in progress, the goals of which we are kept in the dark, or all of the above.

Nariz,

1) If Osama was to unite Sunni and Shia, why did the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies work so feverishly to slaughter the Hazaras?

2) If the Soviets entered Afghanistan at the invitation of the Afghan government, why was the Presidential palace bombed by Soviet planes, killing Afghan President Hafizullah Amin?

Cornelius:

The Soviets have the same weird idea as to what an invitation to invade is, just as Palestinian Authority spokes people have a unique understanding of what innocence means when it comes to Israel arresting or assassinating leaders of terror organizations.