"The Peace on The Horizon - 70 Years after The World War 2 in the Middle East"(52)

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By Areha Kazuya

E-mail: areha_kazuya@jcom.home.ne.jp

Chapter 6: Genealogy of Islamic terrorism

 

6-9(52)　Deepened chaos in the Middle East

 

The Middle East of post-World War II was a world where Arab and Israel conflicted. Therefore, it was easy to differentiate the enemy from the ally. Israel was the only one enemy of Islamic world where Arab countries, Iran and Turkey had the same religion, although the ethnicity, language and culture were different each other. They thought that they were unified ally against Israel. The United States was a close ally of Israel, therefore, many of the Middle Eastern countries considered the United States as the enemy. That is, the enemy 's ally is an enemy. However, since the United States is geologically too far from the Middle East, there was US allied country like Iran of Shah regime. Meanwhile Egypt of Nasser regime relied on the USSR.

 

It was the overwhelming victories of Israel through the Middle East wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 that changed the views of enemy or ally. After the victory of Israel, tensions in the Arab countries were tended to inside Arabs. It was the tension between secular military states such as Egypt, Iraq and religious monarchy states like Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, when the Khomeini regime of Shiite sect was born in Iran, sectarian conflict took place between Shiite and Sunni. Shiite countries of Iran and Syria has antagonized against Sunni countries. To make the problem in complicate was that Bahrain was controlled by a minority Sunni monarchy. And in Syria an autocratic by Alawi sect of Shiite minority oppressed the Sunni and Kurdish people. In Iraq the minority Sunni ruled majority Shiite. In these country the political power was reversed by minority.

 

As a result, in the Iran-Iraq war, the sectarian conflict of Shiite vs. Sunni in addition to the ethnic confrontation between Arabs and Persians came to surface in duplicate. Strangely enough the monarchy Gulf countries supported the secular state Iraq. In response, Iran supported Syria. In Lebanon proxy war took place between Syria and Israel. Iran also shook out the autocratic Sunni regime of Iraq and the Gulf states agitating Shiites residents in these countries. In addition, the United States which hated Khomeini of Iran supported dictatorship Iraq leaving their democratic principles on one side.

 

Iran was the enemy of Iraq and confronted by alone. For Gulf countries, ally’s (Iraq’s) enemy was own enemy. The former simple confrontation of Jewish Israel vs. Islamic states including both Arabs and Persians was changed into another phase. New confrontation was Shiite (Iranians) vs Sunni (Arabs) in the Middle East region. Iran and Syria were in the same situation. Israel was the enemy of Syria and Iraq was also the enemy of Syria. This time ally’s enemy was enemy. Israel was the enemy of Iran and at the same time Syria was the ally of Iran. It might sound funny that for Saudi Arabia Iran and Syria were the enemy and at the same time Israel was still enemy which was shared with Iran and Syria. Simple binary confrontation in the past was changed into polynomial stage.

 

During the age of four Middle East wars, the confrontation was a binary one between Jews and Arab-Islamic countries. But after wars the conflict in the Middle East had three or four axes of confrontation. The political environment had completely changed from binary confrontation to polynomial ones. Whether the enemy's enemy was ally or enemy? Whether the enemy's friend was enemy or ally? There was nothing clear anymore. The conflict became multi-layers. However, the distinction between enemy or ally was classified by country by country. So, it was still clear for each country that who was the ally and who was the enemy.

 

However, when the conflict took place between the government and the anti-government organization inside one country, it was difficult for the other countries to distinguish enemy or ally. The problem became more complicated if the anti-government organization split into several factions and conflicted each other or they lived together but different worlds. In Syria the superpowers of U.S. and Russia and regional powers of Iran, Turkey or Saudi Arabia wandered which sect they supported; legitimate government or opposition sector(s). Furthermore, Islamic State (IS) declared unilaterally the establishment of the state ignoring the traditional borders. The problem becomes complicated unlimitedly. Syria at present is the difficult polynomial equation to solve.

 

(To be continued ----)