The Threat of the USA-UK-Iran-Israel (UI) Collaborative

 Conversion to Shiism and Iran's Financial Support

by Wefa M. S.

In Response to Ali Jawad's Article in the Palestine Chronicle

Arabs are now in extreme danger if they continue being indecisive and disunited about issues affecting their wellbeing and future. One of these issues is their disagreement on Iran. Additionally, to successfully resist and challenge the USA-UK-Iran-Israel (UI) powerful collaborative, Arabs’ resistance must be a collaborative effort and the public’s attitude and media coverage by comparing between the various factions of Arab resistance (be that Iraqi, Lebanese or Palestinian) must cease.

Ali Jawad's article, “Myth of Sectarianism in the 'New Middle East'” (included below) is a good example. It has many good points, but his narrative presents only part of the truth because Iran's money and the work of its religious leaders to convert Moslems, especially Arabs, to Shiism are real and on the rise in the Arab world. They are not alleged as Jawad argued in his article, some examples will be provided later in this article to prove otherwise.

Unfortunately the Moroccan and Saudi Kings and Egyptian presidents have no clean slate and have had shameful policies and actions, no doubt about that. Therefore whenever they make statements or have concerns, almost always theirs are considered alleged, propaganda or invalid. The same arguments were made about Saddam Hussein. Nothing he said or did was appropriate enough or true for Iraqis, Iraq's enemies, his Arab colleagues and counterparts or the media. His concern about Iran and its leaders’ expansionist policies and hatred toward Arabs was not due to his or Iraqis' imagination or love for wars as some like to argue. The Iranian threat toward Arabs and Arab lands has been a reality and in fact has increased many folds since the Iran-Iraq war. This statement should not be interpreted as advocating and justifying the Iran-Iraq war. Iran's expansionist ambitions for Arab lands are comparable to those of the Zionists and preceded them by two decades. Had the author followed closely how Iran had been confiscating Arab lands since 1920s and how Iranians been negatively treating and discriminating against the Ahwazi Arabs in Iran and the Iraqi and Palestinian Arabs in Iraq, he wouldn't have written his article and the Palestinian Chronicle (if objective) wouldn't have published it.

Providing financial assistance to needy Arab families in return for their conversion to Shiism by Iran is actually geared to divide Arabs and possibly Moslems. This is happening in Syria (and I personally witnessed it), in Jordan and Lebanon as well as in some Gulf States, Egypt, Libya, Sudan and Morocco. Even as early as 1981, I have witnessed Shiite conversion attempts in the UK and USA by an originally Iranian Iraqi family through its large network. Therefore the author of the article should well investigate the matter before making inaccurate statements and using the "alleged" word.

No group thus far and despite the hatred, wars and Guantanamo have been able to kill Islam and put an end to it. So in order to accomplish this tactfully, the opponents of Islam; the neoconservative and evangelist Christians, Zionist Jews and Iranians (who have been working together despite that the Khomeini revolution propagated anti-western and anti-Zionism slogans) to accomplish the following two missions simultaneously:

1. Anti-Arab policies and killing.

2. Enhancing divisions amongst Moslems by slowly chewing off the Sunni majority, knowing this majority is 90% of the one billion Moslems. The Shiite minority has therefore been utilized intentionally and unintentionally to accomplish this task. The best way to kill Islam is to divide its followers and enhance fighting from within its Umma (population). All external pressures, wars and killings have thus far failed, but these inner conflicts, if accelerate, will eventually put an end to Islam and its power, whatever left of it.

Why these policies against the Arabs?
Not because Arabs are divided and weak as some argue, not because they don't know how to work and are “filled with wrongdoings,” or that they invaded Iranians 1500 years ago, and not because of Arabs' so-called terrorism (which they knew nothing about until 1979 when Al-Qaeda was created and funded by the CIA and when Khomeini was brought to power in the same year again by the West), but because Arabs are the backbone of Islam: Language wise (the Quran is in Arabic), they were the ones who spread Islam and are the ones who still maintain it closest to its origin, they control most of the essential locations with religious significance to all Moslems (Mecca, Medina, Karbala and Najaf) and because they are rich with resources and have shown serious resistance to the US-Industrial western interests and considerable development and reforms all through the end of the 1980s despite the Iran-Iraq war. It was no coincidence that communism was clearly replaced by Islam in 1989-1990 as "the enemy" and the heaviest bombing campaign in modern history took place on Baghdad (immediately after that) in January 1991.

Why IRAQ first? The adversaries of the Islamic world focused on attacking Baghdad in 1258 CE because it was the center of advancement, richness and power, and in the 20th and 21st centuries again when they bombed Baghdad. In 1991 and then in 2003, they bombed Iraq NOT because:

1. Saddam Hussein was a threat,
2. of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and not because,
3. Iraq was smaller than Iran and therefore an easier target and can be better controlled!

But because regionally Iraq was the only Arab country to bomb Tel Aviv and the rest of Israel by means of technology and accurate scud missiles in 1991, which caused tremendous havoc and destruction in Israel, and that internationally Iraq's Arab leader was the only/first leader worldwide who dared to challenge the US dollar and began in November 2000 using the Euro in oil transactions. Also because Iraq's (more than 75%) majority Arabs (in comparison to other Arabs) are the most rich, educated, resourceful, steadfast, independent, are most supportive of other Arab and African countries/causes (especially the Palestinian cause) and simultaneously have been the top among Arabs in terms of resisting western ways of life (especially western companies, cultures and interests including giant agricultural and junk food businesses), who maintained their culture with a well-intact Arabic language, and who have been living in one of the richest lands on earth, be that manuscripts, ancient ruins, history, artifacts, gold, uranium, copper, oil, water, dates, palm trees, wheat, barley, professionals and hard-core scientists. Though Iraqi Arabs (compared with other Arabs) have been the least articulate verbally (and so the reason for being behind in public relations, promotion and media), they have been the most doers. We have witnessed the intensive campaign to rob Iraq from all its treasures and to eliminate its scientists and professors following the UI occupation.

Iraqis in general and their Arab majority (and Turkman) in particular have withstood eight years of Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 war with tons of uranium bombs and twelve years of sanctions. Yet all of the above didn't kill and put an end to Iraqis. So the USA had to invade Iraq and kill Iraqis by the hundreds of thousands, imprison and torture them by the thousands and displace four millions of them to make sure the job gets done. By destroying the strongest pole in the Arab world, the Zionists, the westerners and Iranians have been roaming freely in the region killing its people and robbing its resources as we've seen done in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan and other parts of the Arab world. In fact, the current conflicts and silenced crimes in Iraq are not between Shiites and Sunnis as the politicians and the media like to portray, they have been mainly anti-Arab; killing, imprisoning, torturing and displacing them. Indeed non-Arabs in Iraq have suffered as well, but the main target of the occupation has been the Arabs (Moslems of all sects) with focus on Sunnis; the most devastated of all. The vast majority of prisoners in Guantanamo have been Arabs as well. Many recent reports indicate that most of these prisoners are in fact innocent! The Moslem prisoners in Guantanamo are near entirely Sunnis from Arab countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was no coincidence to witness the yearly murder of the most influential and well-connected Sunni Arab leaders: Yasser Arafat (November 11, 2004), Rafiq Al-Hariri (February 14, 2005), and Saddam Hussein (December 30, 2006) while Bashar Al-Assad (Shiite) has been thriving and Shiite leaders were brought to power forcefully by the UI collaborative to control Iraq despite them being a minority.

Iranians have been participating alongside the USA, UK, Israel and the Kurds in the killing and imprisonment of Arabs. In light of the industrial west's population control ambitions, Sunni Moslems are considered a threat by the mere fact of their total number being 90% of the 1.1 billion Moslems.

Palestinians and other Arabs, including the author of the article below, Jawad Ali, need not to interpret the Iranian support of Hezbollah and Hamas as a sign of innocent caring and sympathy toward Arabs and their causes because this "support" is part of the plan to create division, enhance favoritism amongst Arabs and increase their dependency on Iran and the industrial west. To clarify this further:

1. Since the war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006, there has been a complete media censorship or abandonment of Iraqi resistance! Favoritism and poor comparison between factions of Arab resistance have even infected public opinion and the media with statements highlighting the superiority of the resistance of Hezbollah and Hamas when compared with the Iraqi resistance. But knowing that both Hamas and Hezbollah have been funded by Iran, the very same entity that participated in the invasion of Iraq; imprisoning and killing of Arabs in Iran and Iraq (including Iraqi Palestinians), and collaborating alongside Pakistan with the CIA to sell innocent Arabs and Afghans for the Guantanamo project, one can well understand the Iranian agenda behind the financial aid. In fact despite Iran's financial support, both Hezbollah and Hamas put together have not inflicted any comparable damage on Israel to that inflicted by the Iraqi resistance since 2003 on the USA, a leading world power and superior to Israel. Many of us were puzzled by the ineffectiveness and passiveness of Hezbollah during the recent barbaric attacks on neighboring Gaza!!

2. Since the Lebanon-Israel war, the world's mainstream media have focused on Hezbollah and Hamas as victorious, resisters or terrorists (depending on the media). This is to occupy the world away from the destruction caused by the USA-UK and away from those who have been courageously resisting the USA-UK occupation. Because of this scenario, one sees many more anti-Israel and anti-Zionist peace groups and NGOs advocating, organizing events, making donations and/or protesting against Israel than against the USA-UK occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, shockingly, we witnessed almost complete silence from world communities after the invasion of Iraq: No significant events organized, no protests, no boycotts, no UN outcry, no moral/media support for the Iraqi resistance!! Following this train of thoughts, individuals who eagerly worked to see the Iraq’s anti-sanction movement in the 1990s weakened and corrupted successfully penetrated most major peace groups in the USA. The above-mentioned tactics and events have been utilized for the purpose of shifting public's attention away from the criminal actions perpetrated by the USA, UK and other western governments.

3. One of the main reasons for the creation of Israel was to occupy the Arabs away from resisting British-French colonialism and dominance. Israel still functions this way; whenever the tied is high on the USA in Afghanistan or in Iraq, a big event is created in the region either committed by or in relation to Israel or Iran to overshadow the USA-UK criminal actions and/or their defeat. Israel and Iran have been utilized for that matter. Both governments collaborated with the USA  and UK, but secretly in the case of Iran while giving the impression that its policies are anti-Zionist and anti-American. The bombing of Lebanon in 2006, the cry out about the Iranian atomic bomb, the consecutive siege of Gaza, the many elections (within six years) in Iraq, the so-called withdrawal of USA forces from Baghdad are among these attention-occupying events.

The unity of Arab resistance is therefore a must in order to create wider and stronger affects on the USA and UK and their creation, Israel. But this unity cannot be achieved when Iran is funding two of the three major Arab resistance factions while killing and torturing the third, Iraqi resistance, and especially when the Palestinians have been fighting amongst themselves and when various Iraqi resistance factions have not been collaborating well with each other.

The unity of the Iraqi resistance is a pre-requisite for the unity of Arab resistance. Such unity will not only free Iraq from the occupation, but to free and eventually unite Arabs. Iraqi Arabs are the only Arabs able to accomplish this task. After all, about 90% of the Iraqi resistance consist of  Arabs. The opponents of Arabs and Moslems know well this reality. That is why they have been collaborating to kill, displace, bribe, imprison and torture Iraqi Arabs. For the sake of Arabs (governments, media and people), Iraq must not be divided. Arabs must ensure Iraq's unity. 

The USA-UK-Iran-Israel (UI) collaborative has been working diligently to divide the Arab resistance (Iraqi, Lebanese, Palestinian and others) by killing and taming the most challenging; the Iraqi resistance, dubbing it 'terrorist' and completely depriving it from media coverage and financial support while financially supporting the less challenging resistance of Hezbollah and Hamas, and granting them continuous media coverage. Because this collaborative is well aware that any financial support from the USA, UK or Israel would be rejected by Arabs or if accepted by any resistance group would make them lose credibility and trust, therefore Iran as an Islamic country has been utilized to accomplish this task for them. In addition to financially supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran is granting financial support to needy Arab families to convert them to Shiism and gain their loyalty. By supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran is propagating support for Arab resistance, where in reality it is supporting the less challenging segment of Arab resistance (Hezbollah and Hamas), which has been confronting only Israel not the more powerful USA (plus the UK, Iran and Israel in the case of Iraqi resistance) while participating with the USA in the killing and displacement of Iraqi Arabs and in attempting to destroy the Iraqi resistance. In other words, Iran is eliminating two birds with one stone: One - to divide Arabs and their resistance through favoring and supporting some resistance groups over others, and two - to eventually divide Moslems by increasing Shiite conversions and creating conflicting loyalists.

Paul Bremer, the governor of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) following the occupation in April 2003, made sure that Iranians and Kurds are the majority in parliament, in main political parties, ministries and embassies despite that they together count for less than 20% of the Iraqi population. He specifically ensured that Shiite leaders are to govern Iraq. It is time for non-Iraqi Arabs to pay attention to these highly significant events and begin prioritizing.

Other Arab leaders (specially Sunni) must take precaution and unite (even if it is difficult to achieve). Otherwise they would be the next victims of the UI collaborative. Because this collaborative already murdered three leaders; Arafat (poison), Al-Hariri (car bomb) and Hussein (hanging on the first day of a religious holiday)  Next other leaders may be ousted/killed through militias or revolutions. Every time a country's leader is killed, hundreds if not thousands of that country's people die. 

Islam will become part of the endangered species without the presence of Arabs; a reality not well recognized by Moslems including Arabs, but the opponents of Moslems understand it.

* Words/sentences in orange include a link. 

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04/28/2009

Myth of Sectarianism in the 'New Middle East'

By Ali Jawad

One of the lasting legacies of the failed US-led war on Iraq is without doubt the rise of sectarianism in the general discourse on Middle Eastern politics. Sectarianism has been pitched as the ‘modern’ story of the Middle East, yet its driving causes and true nature remain subject to sweeping and misplaced generalizations, particularly in the Western media. The subsequent rooting of a sectarian political discourse in understanding the dynamics of the Middle East, flavoured by myths and fallacies, primarily serves to further the interests of imperialist and colonialist powers in the region. At another level, this discourse seeks to insulate discredited Arab leaders (i.e. Moderate “allies”) from the grievances of their own peoples as invented threats posed by an “other” are hyped up to disorientate the power of the masses.

In this regard, the recent scathing attack launched by the Egyptian Public Prosecutor (EPP) against Hezbollah, despite being somewhat expected, was revealing insofar as its sectarian dimension is concerned. Buried in between a long list of accusations against a “Hezbollah cell” uncovered in Egypt, the EPP stated the accused were "planning to carry out hostile operations within the country (Egypt) and attempting to spread Shiite thought in Egypt”.

During recent times, it has become fashionable for Middle Eastern premiers and oil-kings to protest against an ethereal threat posed by Shiism. The summoning of the “spread of Shiism” pretext, as seen above in the case of Egypt, is essentially used as a political tool. Further, the Egyptian line of attack in this respect is by no means an anomaly. In mid-March of this year, the kingdom of Morocco severed diplomatic ties with Iran accusing Tehran of “cultural infiltration” and attempts to “implant the Shiite Muslim ideology” in the country. In the emirate kingdoms of Bahrain and Kuwait, allegations of Iranian interference in the former, and charges claiming the formation of an insidious “Kuwaiti-Hezbollah” in the latter, are similarly propped up and dealt with within a strictly sectarian context.

Politically, the use of sectarianism in the present Middle Eastern context serves several purposes, which can broadly be divided into local, regional and international dimensions. To identify these dimensions, it is necessary to probe below the surface of this worn out, yet doggishly resurgent, charge of Arab leaders against the threat posed by “Shiism” in order to reveal the causative factors behind this renewed focus on sectarianism.

First, by positing a so-called “threat” posed by a Shiite sectarian agenda, Arab leaders conveniently conceal and deflect attention from the deeply entrenched socio-economic disparity that exists between Shiite communities and their counterparts in several Gulf nations. In countries like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, Shiites are forced to locate themselves on the peripheries of society under the juggernaut of systemic discrimination. Further, an environment of heightened sectarianism also provides an effective red herring for these kingdoms to silence demands calling for fairer representation and accordance of rights.With respect to Shiite communities and their development in the Arab and national contexts, this factor presents a massive hurdle in the way of reform. As an example, the case of Lebanon underlines the central importance that the ability to pressure the central government plays in effecting change. Until the late Seventies of the last century, i.e. more than three decades after the National Pact (al-Mithaq al-Watani) was signed, Shiites found themselves relegated to the outer rims of Lebanese society. Downtrodden and ignored by the state, Lebanese Shiites bottled up their grievances within a sub-national narrative. In this milieu of resignation, the dynamism brought in by the charismatic Shiite leader, Sayyed Musa Al-Sadr, relied primarily on matlabiyya (a politics of demand) to transform the fortunes of Lebanese Shiites. Thus, the present-day hyping up of sectarian polemics by Arab leaders in the Gulf, acts as a significant stumbling block in the way of urgently needed, and long overdue reform of internal political and socio-economic structures. Demands for fair representation and equal rights that ought to be accorded by virtue of citizenship are instead silenced through the use of a sectarian deception.

Second, by reinforcing an image of a whole-scale invasion of the “Shiite” school of thought in traditionally majority-“Sunni” areas (or what was termed the Shii tide; al-madd al-Shii), Arab leaders promote an inherently confrontational and other-excluding relationship between the two major religious sects of Islam. This strategy thus aims to provoke a “religious” reaction hence providing credibility to the statements of highly unpopular and discredited leaders.It has to be noted that this strategy has not only failed so far, but has done so miserably. Contrary to what Arab leaders like Mubarak hoped for, Sunni and Shia religious figures have stood by each other and together lambasted Arab leaders for their criminal silence and treachery towards the Palestinian cause. Notably, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was accused of “apostasy” and “grand treason” by more than two-hundred Sunni religious scholars in the wake of the brutal war on Gaza.

Third, in logical continuity from the previous point, Arab leaders like Mubarak who suffer from serious popularity deficits amongst their peoples, attempt to revitalize and give credibility to their sinking images by marketing themselves as safe keepers of “Sunnism”. The “spread of Shiism” accusation made by the EPP thus makes the case that the highly unpopular Mubarak in fact plays the role of a gatekeeper who faithfully ensures that the “Sunni” identity of Egypt is preserved. At this level the strategy has again been met with ridicule from the Egyptian public. In a radio interview, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mahdi Akef, termed the allegations levelled against Hezbollah as unfounded and utterly baseless. The secretary general of the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Jordan, minced less into his words when he praised the actions of Hezbollah as a “national, legitimate, and pan-Arab duty and an attempt to bolster the Islamic resistance in the Gaza Strip". Instead of taking Mubarak for his word, public focus in Egypt has shifted to the involvement of Israeli intelligence in the operation targeted at Hezbollah. This factor by itself provides sufficient proof to the Egyptian and Arab streets that the actions of Hezbollah were in fact limited to supporting the resistance in Palestine, rather than the whimsically invented charge made by the EPP citing “spread of Shiism” in Egypt amongst others.

Fourth, the “spread of Shiism” pretext at the regional level is not sold merely as a sectarian phenomenon, but one that occurs in the backdrop of a growing Shiite presence in Middle Eastern politics. Shiite so-called “expansionism” is pitched as an extension of a wider political agenda, or what the Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal chooses to call “Iranian obstructionism”. Giving saliency to this aspect interlocks with the interests of the US and Israeli governments as was wittily articulated by an Arab writer who described the Egyptian government’s policy with the words: “Rescue! The Shiites are coming!” By openly declaring an anti-Shiite (read: anti-Iranian, anti resistance) platform, these Arab leaders seek to provide reassurance to the US and Israel that they continue to remain useful and relevant on the Middle Eastern chessboard.

Fifth, one of the more troubling usages of sectarianism in the present Middle East has been the enframent of political and national struggles within the mould of a sectarian identity-politics. The so-called “Moderate” Arab leaders in Cairo, Riyadh and Amman pass off differing stances as sectarian-qua-sectarian agendas. More accurately, political stances that clash with US-inspired “moderate” scripts of how things ought to play out in the Gulf, are pointed to as manifestations of the intrusion of a Shiite tidal wave under direct orders from an aspirant Shiite regional hegemony i.e. Iran.

Fuelling the fires of sectarianism in this way has meant that even pre-eminent struggles and causes in the Arab world have not remained impervious from the burdens of a sectarian-politics discourse. According to leading officials in Egypt, Gaza is seen as a ‘mini Islamic Republic of Iran’, and Hamas an abiding servant of the Iranian agenda. In order to discredit the path of resistance, the likes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia have chosen to mark it off as an Iranian-Shiite conspiracy, which if left unchecked will extend to devour the entire Arab homeland.

Largely due to this self-destructing polarization, admiration for Iran on the Arab street has skyrocketed. In the world of Arab satellite channels, live phone-ins on political talk shows are flooded by voices of solidarity with Iran and total contempt for “sell-out” Arab leaders. Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, Bashar Al-Assad and Ismail Haniyeh are viewed as the symbols of remaining Arab dignity, and their indisputable popularity, heads and shoulders above the rest, is evidenced in every poll.

Finally, there remains the relation between imperialism and the rise of sectarian rhetoric in the Middle East i.e. the elephant in the room. It is said that sectarianism can be narrated “only by continually acknowledging and referring to both indigenous and imperial” histories and imperatives.

Iraq has been the theatre on, and from, which the image of an ongoing sectarian struggle for the heart of the Middle East has been propagated. In the wake of the collapse of Baghdad in 2003, leading Arab intellectual Dr. Azmi Bishara took to the podium at UC Berkeley and said:

“Of course we don’t buy what they say about their sensitivity to democracy […]; what they call ‘building a democratic Iraq’, because I hear the accent. This is not […] the language of democrats. You don’t go to a country to build a democracy by splitting the country into three major religions (sects) […]; this is not pluralism, this is a recipe for civil war.”

The ‘Balkanization’ of the Middle East has for long been an unswerving desire of imperialist powers. The oft-quoted words of Oded Yinon about the "far-reaching opportunities" presented by the "very stormy situation [that] surrounds Israel," published in 1982 by the World Zionist Organization, are instructive in this regard: "The dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front. Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run, it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel.”

Today, the political tensions of the Middle East are driven minimally by indigenous inter-sectarian factors. The systematic and organized attempt - by imperialists and their regional clients - to amplify the myth of an ongoing, all-out sectarian war is precisely in order to cover for the evident absence of actual rifts between the peoples of the Middle East. Why the likes of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Morocco are not waiting around for second invitations to jump on to this sectarian bandwagon should in itself provoke a lot of questioning. Not in the least surprising, and another reason to look into this subject more critically, has been the failure of Western media from putting forth these simple and straight-forward questions.

Sectarianism constitutes an important chapter in the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy. Whilst it could be said that the US viewed the Middle East through a more ethnic prism in the past, it is clear that the sectarian divide has provided the way forward. The declaration of the “New Middle East” agenda during the Bush administration, and its failure in infancy during the 2006 war on Lebanon, essentially served to overload the sectarian aspect in a bid to foster the right conditions for the implementation of this agenda.

So-called “moderate” Arab leaders shamefully find themselves not only aligned with the most rightist, racist coalition in Israel (which continues to steal more Palestinian land by the day), but they in fact work hand in hand with the Zionist entity to conspire against resistance movements. Netanyahu and Liebermann have taken it upon themselves to scare the world into insanity, under the pretext of an imminent Iranian nuclear weapon capability. Mubarak, Abdullah and cohorts on the other hand, are pioneering the project of spreading fear against a sinister Iranian-led “Shiite” agenda aimed at taking over the Arab heartland which, needless to state, is implemented by resistance movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

Sadly, for the imperialists and discredited Arab leaders, the masses no longer buy such crackpot machinations. In the Middle East, we are now witness to a post-sectarian phase; the unity and solidarity that exists between its' peoples - in identifying the key challenges that face this region - is palpable in whichever direction you turn. Western discourse on the Middle East however, remains fixated on talk of civil wars, sectarian strife and religious tension.

The failure of the US (and other Western powers) to move away from a sectarian discourse in accounting for the dynamics of the Middle East, and the failure to impress this reality upon regional Arab clients, will predictably have significant repercussions. There are several very real issues that need to be resolved in this region, and they have precious little to do with the myth of sectarianism. Political agendas can not forever be implemented in the shadow of sectarianism. The sooner the White House realizes this, the better.

- Ali Jawad is a political activist and a member of the AhlulBayt Islamic Mission (AIM); http://www.aimislam.com/. He contributed this article to Palestine Chronicle.com.