A wider war?
Dire warnings about a wider regional war or a war of civilizations between the West and Islam are overblown. That would be the third World War. No Islamic state has the means to choose such an apocalyptic path.
However, long insurgency and guerrilla warfare are feasible and probable in the region that Israel inhabits and in Iraq. The cause of this bloody and destabilizing prospect is not Israel but the unresolved sectarian and ethnic conflicts among the Islamic countries of the Middle East and West Asia.
Hizbullah’s state within the state in Lebanon has suddenly brought things to a head. Israel has reacted using the only option available and that has opened Pandora’s box.
Lebanon smolders with latent sectarian and ethnic conflict. The Maronites, Sunnis, Shiites and Druze each had armed militias and warlords for decades. Most of those were dismantled when peace arrived in the 1990s but Hizbullah got special dispensation because Israel was occupying a large part of South Lebanon.
The occupation ended but Hizbullah became too strong to dismantle since the militias of other Lebanese warlords were mostly folded into the national army and were just too weak. This sectarian reckoning continues.
Of course, all Lebanese civilians want an end to the warlord culture because they have tasted democracy and prosperity. But so long as Israel can humiliate their country at will by bombing anywhere with impunity, no patriotic Lebanese can take the risk of confronting Hizbullah to dismantle it.
At the same time, none of the other Lebanese sects want to make Hizbullah stronger by helping it against Israel. Thus, Lebanon’s own political fragmentation has become the catalyst of its destruction.
In Iraq, sectarian conflicts are turning into a civil war. The conflicts are Islamic and ethnic. The Kurds are non-Arabs struggling for freedom from centuries of Arab rule. Persian Shiites are helping Arab Shiites in Iraq, reawakening centuries old Sunni-Shiite power politics in the region.
The Saudi Sunnis and the Bedouin Sunnis who rule Jordan had suppressed Shiites and propped up Sunni rule in Iraq until Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. They did that because of their hatred of Shiites, which started nearly 1400 years ago, and their visceral fear of ethnic Persians. These sectarian conflicts continue but this time the US is caught in the middle.
Meanwhile, America’s close friend Saudi Arabia is reported to be covertly helping the bloody Sunni insurgency in Iraq against the Shiites and, thus, indirectly against the US. At the same time, the Saudi’s tired of being criticized in America are diversifying their oil exports to China, India and elsewhere. Gradually and prudently, they are making themselves less vulnerable to political pressures from Washington.
Worse, neither Sunnis nor Shiites are monolithic groups anywhere in the region. In Iraq, Shiite sects are violently jockeying for power to control the country or at least its key areas. Those include the oil rich south near Basra, the Shia holy cities in the center, and sections of Baghdad, which contain the poorest Shiites of the entire region.
In Lebanon, Shiites are divided among the core supporters of Hezbollah (reported to be around 60,000) and the over 1 million other Shiites. Similar rivalries exist among Lebanon’s Sunni and Maronite communities. The Druze have always been loners and operate almost like a tribal kingdom in the mountains.
Israel’s war in Lebanon and US presence in Iraq have brought these sectarian hostilities to a boil. Peace and security for Israel are unlikely to be achieved without resolving some of these tensions, including those between the moderates and extremists of each sect. That may take a lot more bloodletting.
6 Responses to “A wider war?”
Good analysis. There are local conflicts and there are regional confrontations. That’s what started World War One, and the recent African War in the Congo.
Brij, you state “Of course, all Lebanese civilians want an end to the warlord culture because they have tasted democracy and prosperity. But so long as Israel can humiliate their country at will by bombing anywhere with impunity, no patriotic Lebanese can take the risk of confronting Hizbullah to dismantle it.”.
But do they really not realize that Hizbollah is the only reason Israel might have for attacking Lebanon? It’s more likely that while the Lebanese (And most of the nations in that part of the world as well.) might say that they want democracy and freedom it is a weak desire compared to the desire to destroy the Jews. All any despot has to do is blame Israel for the unfortunate necessity of putting off any reform and they fall for it every time.
The “desire to destroy the Jews” is rhetoric used to flame the Arab on the street.None of the Arab countries have an army capable of destroying Israel. The oil rich Arabs would not allow this to happen, it would bankrupt their corrupt regimes. The US economy has even bigger problems coming when India and China ramp up their economies and really compete for the oil reserves.
O really? How would you know that? You don’t. Some of us know that we can’t look inside peoples heads. Therefore, we have to listen to what they say and watch what they do.
Doing those two things, it’s obvious that Ahmadinejad isn’t just using rhetoric.
You know what’s so funny Rudi? People said the same thing about Hitler. Well, that worked out just fine didn’t it
Jim S:
As Israel’s current operations (and minor border violations of their own in the last 26 years) fuel support for Hezb’Allah in fighting Israel.
To borrow from Michael vdG:
Lebanese who might not have supported Hezb’Allah previously are watching Israel’s actions now. That the dropping of warning leaflets before destroying people’s homes and livelihood is being characterized as ‘benevolent’ is just a sign of how twisted the rhetoric is becoming.
And lest we forget, Hezb’Allah and Hamas are also political entities, elected and supported because the alternatives were corrupt, impotent, or both. Israel is only interested in its own security and, since Reagan, the west can’t be bothered with contributing to Lebanon’s stability until the body count starts rolling. In other words, the Lebanese and Palestinians democratically elected representatives who will looking out for their interests, an inconvenient truth often forgotten because we don’t like who they elected.
Short and sweet, there is no right side in this; the only winners are political hawks (for now) and arms merchants.
That and the current situation prove one thing: the ‘pound a nation into the dirt and ignore it for 20 years or until it grows a despot to be pounded again’ foreign policy approach doesn’t work.
Israel, Canada, and Netherlander ecole from U S all right, everyone else all wrong…. !!”they” has clicked da heels of der boots and spoken!!…so all you guys better shuddup…LOL
Fact: None of you guys are ever going to change each others minds on a single issue, just butt heads like little billy goats and fan the flames.