Shiites, Sunnis and George Bush

by Abbas Sadeghian

In dealing with the current problems of the Middle East, obviously it is quite important to understand the differences between Shiites and Sunnies.  Furthermore, with the addition of the American presence, this situation has become more complicated. Unfortunately, there is very few in-depth analysis of this topic, leaving the impression that these are just a bunch of primitive people who just like to fight.

The conflicts and problems between Shiites and Sunnies are so deep, and the history is so long, that one can write volumes on the topic and only scratch the surface. This article is an attempt to give a historical overview of the problem itself, as well as, to discuss the additional complication caused from the United States presence in this region and their decisions on how to conduct the war. My hope is that the reader would realize that the Sunni Shiite division is not a problem like Catholic Vs Protestant.

Racial Differences:

Some time about 2000-3000 B.C. a series of tribes of people called Aryans immigrated down the caucuses and poured throughout the world. They divided into three main groups: one group went to northern India and mixed with the local natives of India. The second group went down to Iran (the term Iran means Aryan).The third group went to euroup and mixed up with their local tribes.

The conflict between the Iranian Aryans and the Semitic people of the rest of the Middle East is the root of all these problems. Wars, religions, and invasions have modified the problem throughout the history but the deep divide has never been resolved. From the beginning of the arrival of Aryans up to 500 B.C. the Semitic tribes were mostly dominant and would keep the Aryans out of their territory. The battle fields were mostly in the area which is the border between Iran and Iraq now. The main Semitic empire was the Assyrian empire and their harsh rule made them very successful. The most famous story left from those times is the story of the captivity of Jews in Mesopotamia under the Assyrians.

2500 years ago things changed, as an Iranian ruler, called Cyrus the Great cut through the Assyrian and Babylon defenses and conquer the entire known world from Egypt on his left to India on his right, from Russia at his north to Yemen to his south. He created the world's first super power. He is admired for writing the first bill of rights (currently in the British museum). His grandson Dariush I is credited for creating the first gold coin, first postal system, first intercontinental highway and digging the first route of the Suez Canal.  The next 1000 years is mostly known for the wars between Iranians, Greeks and Romans, until the beginning of Islam in 670A.D.

Rise of Islam and division of Shiite and Sunnies:

The rise of Islam was so fast that it is considered probably the biggest aberration of history. Countries conquering each other are common in history, but Islam expanded from Saudi Arabia to China and North Africa, until they were stopped 150 miles from Paris in about fifty years. They did not just conquer those countries but changed everyone's religion as well. The cause of this rapid expansion is not the subject of this article. In my book "Sword and Seizure: Muhammad's Epilepsy and Creation of Islam", I have explained some of the causes. What we need to know are a few relatively unknown facts of history.

The first division of Shiites and Sunnis began with Muhammad's death. By the time he was 63, he had conquered most of Arabia and was making preparation for the invasion of other countries. A few days before he died, the disagreement over his succession started.

One group was of the opinion that the leadership should stay in the prophet's family, and since he did not have a son then his cousin and son- in- law Ali should be the ruler. Ali had two sons Hasan and Housein, who were very dear to the prophet. Ali was famous for his battles for Islam, but he was only thirty years old, which in tribal life, where elders make the decisions, this did not go well.

The second group wanted the traditional way in which people would shake hands with an elder who was respected, pious and from an important clan. Muhammad knew problems were coming up and was sad over the division. He chose the second group and asked an elder who was his best friend with the name of Abu Baker to lead the prayers which gave the stamp of approval that the second group needed.  Once the prophet was dead the problems arose. The ones who were supporting Ali were called Shiite (Arabic for follower), and the ones who sided with Abu Baker were called Sunni (Arabic for traditionalist)

In the beginning this division was not too serious and Ali made peace with Abu Baker, and his successors Omar and Othman.  Eventually too, later on in life, he was chosen the leader.

Meanwhile, Islam expanded rapidly, the Persian Empire collapsed, and with that came the treasure and man power of the strongest country on the planet. Arabs conquered Egypt, North Africa, Northern India and Spain. At this point the Islamic empire was taken over by a tribe who were Muhammad's most bitter enemy but they had converted to Islam. So a rebellion started in the Islamic world which still exists, and that was the rebellion of Shiites. Muhammad's grand son Housein rebelled against these newcomers and was brutally butchered by Sunnis.

The blood feud was so grave that people still fight over it today. Killing the prophet's grandson in the desert along with his young children was not something to be forgiven. Hussein's sons, for the following ten generations, were considered true religious leaders of the Islamic world by Shiites. Yet they had no power, and every one of the sons was killed by Sunnies one way or another. The twelfth one disappeared mysteriously and it became a popular belief that he was the messiah and that he had gone to the skies to come back some day to take revenge of his fathers and kill all bad people and put the kingdom of god on earth. The idea was far fetched, was not mentioned in the Quran and sounded like blasphemy to Sunnis.

The new feud of Arabs and Iranians:

Iranians had become Moslem by force. They lived under Arab rule for two hundred years. During the first year of the invasion, more than 100,000 people were taken slaves, but they did not totally lose their identity, unlike countries of North Africa, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. They were able to hold on to their own language and local governments and eventually throw the Arabs out of their territory; however they remained Moslem, with about one third of the population being Shiite.

About 700 years ago problems flared up again. The brutal invasion of the Mongols destroyed all existing governments and it took another 200 years until the Ottoman Empire took over Turkey and Arabic countries and the Safavid dynasty took over Iran.


The Ottoman Empire was Sunni and wanted to expand to the east and to the west, which meant rolling over the Iranian government. Iran was being hit from the east by Sunni Uzbeks and Afghans while being hammered from the west by the Ottoman Empire. At this time only about one third of Iran was Shiite. So Shah Ismail Safavi who was a devoted Shiite came up with the solution "Let's turn the entire country to Shiite." It was an effective idea and was achieved by the sword. One would become Shiite or he was dead.

This change brought a new identity for the country; a mixture of old Persian ideas mixed with Islam, creating such a difference that it would make it impossible to get along ever. One hundred years of battles ensued and the borders of the two countries were sealed. The rivalry between two countries was pretty serious. They killed each other brutally, and in large numbers. The Sunnies massacred the Shiites in Turkey and branded them on their foreheads while the Shiites invaded Iraq and burned the Sunni shrines. A small group of Shiites migrated to Lebanon and took refuge in the mountains .They had much better relationship with Christians than the Sunnies.

Mean while renascence was taking place in euroup. Secular governments took away a lot of the power of the church, advances in Science, discovery of America and many more changes in euroup, woke euroup up from the sleep of middle ages .While in Islamic countries a gradual deep sleep took over with religious leaders taking over every thing. Both Othman Empire and Iran rot from the core. Both countries weakened and eventually, the fighting subsided and old battles turned to local skirmishes. The old savagery was mostly gone until the First World War.

First World War:

If we assume that the cold war was the continuation of WWII, and WWII was a continuation of WWI. Then we can conclude that World War I in Europe did not really finish until 1984 when Russians pulled their troops out of Europe.

Unfortunately the First World War in the Middle East is not over yet. Arab-Israeli conflict started in 1917, and division of the Ottoman Empire happened about the same time. General Edmund Allenby randomly divided the Othman empire into heterogeneous pieces among Arabs, Jews, Kurds and Persians. The goal was to divide the place so bad that it would never become a problem for Europeans. These events coincided with discovery of oil in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In 1914 the British Empire decided to change the fuel of the British navy to oil rather than coal. With this change the most hated European companies showed up in the Middle East. Probably the most famous one is BP, British Petroleum (new name for the old Anglo Persian Oil Company) which plundered Iran and Iraq for decades. According to the contracts that the British had made with their puppet governments of Iran and Iraq .The British would dig the oil out, sell it at 97 cents a barrel and would give16% of the profits in the form of credit to Iran to buy armaments from England. Post war chaos, local corruption, and colonialism were story of the day. For a few years the British ruled the world and they had one main obsession , keep the socialist movement contained in the USSR so they could hold on to their colonies in India, Middle East and Africa.

Second World War:

WWII changed all equations .The soviet union and the United States ,divided the world to two camps and the British empire turned to an international nuisance hated in the Middle East, Asia and Africa .Americans ruled the Middle East  with their puppet governments in Saudi Arabia, Iran ,Bahrain, and Kuwait. The pre world war conflicts intensified leading to pan Arabism and clashes of Shiite and Sunnies in Iraq and Lebanon and Arab Israeli wars.

Iraq was never an independent country, it was a part of the Ottoman Empire and the conflicts between Shiites and Sunnies had been going on for more than a thousand years. The Shiites lived on the east side of the river Tigress. The same ghetto recently renamed Sadder City. The Shiia majority was brutally run by Sunni minority.

With the rise of Saddam Hussein to power and the Iranian revolution things got worse. Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shiites to stay in power. It is famous that he used to say:

                  "God in his creation made three errors Jews, Iranians, and the fly"

Then there were the gulf wars one and two. Although gulf war one was conducted with success, the Shiites were left alone again and were massacred by Saddam. Naturally during the second war they sided with Americans but developed their own militia in case they were abandoned one more time.

George Bush and the War:

I think we all can accept that we are a by-product of our past and unfortunately, this rule applies to the president as well. During the Vietnam War the president was able to get himself into the pilot school with the help of his father. He scored at 25th percentile which is the lowest grade acceptable to this program. One would assume that if a person is able to become a pilot, or a lawyer or a doctor that he would be eager to practice what he has been trained for. However, Bush chose to go and work on other people's political campaigns, leaving us with the assumption that becoming a pilot was just a way of competing with the father who was a real war hero. After 911 he had the opportunity to compete with the father again. The problem was that Bush Junior did not have the abilities that the father had; he was poorly educated with very limited knowledge of international affairs. His style of running the war was like a MBA running a corporation, very different to the father who knew every player personally. The difference in character make up of the father and son is so pronounced that it will take years and many books to analyze the differences. Probably Bush’s mother put it the best. When she was told, that his son is going to run for president, she said:

                         "No, not him, he is like me he is the family clown"

It is a rule in psychology that most of the time in relationships between two people; the more intelligent figure becomes the dominant one. We can observe this phenomenon when the president simply gave up the rule of the country to Dick Chaney, and other people around him, as long as they are totally loyal to him. Consequently when real problems like 911 and Katrina came around there was not an intelligent, knowledgeable president to make the decisions. The only thing he was superior in was taking vacations.


Political and military errors

I must confess that when Bush began to talk about invading Iraq, I shared his illusion. Being an Iranian American, I thought U.S will roll over Iraq and that will give us the platform to go after the Ayatollahs in Iran. But, I was mistaken; within a few months it was obvious that Americans have miscalculated the whole thing. The differences between first gulf war and second one are too many to mention.

(1) The commander of fist war Norman Schwarzkopf,  was born and raised in Iran, His father was the American military attaché to Iran and knew the Middle East upside down Schwarzkopf ,s IQ was estimated as170. The commander of second war was AbuZaid who was a paper tiger, never asked for more troops until Rumsfeld Resigned.

(2) The first war included Arab countries like Syria .The second war had a token number of soldiers from different countries.

(3)The total number of American soldiers of first war was 500,000.the total for second war was about 150,000.

(4)The total number of American Tanks for liberating Kuwait was more than 2000.while the total number of thanks for occupation of the country (which logically should be higher) was only 200.

The only thing which was the same was presence of the British, which meant to Iraqis that these guys are here to stay and steal the oil. With people like Chalabi leading the way and Halliburton getting the contracts, it was natural that every Iraqi would be suspicious of Americans.
At this moment there was a need for Bush to raise to the occasion and travel from capital to capital make piece with Iran and Syria. While he deepened the divide, causing the coalition of American friends to shrink, and the rest of the world to unify against Americans. The moderate government of Ayatollah Khatami in Iran was replaced by the government of Ahmadinegad. Sunni governments giving support to insurgents who shoot at Americans, and Iranian government electing a puppet government in Iraq. 

Bush’s flip flops:

 When Ahmadi Negad got into office a Joke began to circulate around Tehran: “Now, the world has two Bushes, The one in Iran is the crap, the one inWashington is the stench” Ironically they managed to live up to their reputation. Ahmadi Negad’s rhetoric is famous and there is no need to repeat it, However G W Bush’s flip flopping is simply too crazy to ignore. Right from the beginning of his administration most people familiar with Iranian politics were advising him to try to mend the fences and start the process of normalizing relationships with Iran. The Swiss ambassador to Iran drafted a letter outlining the process of normalizing the relation ship. The letter included Iran’s offer to recognize Israel. The letter was authorized by Iran and was sent to U.S state department, with out a signature, to leave room for denial. Any body familiar with Middle Eastern Politics would have jumped on the opportunity, but Bush and Chaney team did not respond, and although after 911 Iran helped the U.S in toppling the Taliban, they called Iran a part of Axes of evil and talked about regime change. The response from Tehran was the shift of power to hard liners, revolutionary guards and acceleration of the plan for the bomb. These days Bush’s posture towards Iran changes like baby’s dipper. Bush has lost his credibility and popularity. He is totally confused in dealing with Iraq .The new congress does not want a war with Iran, so he ends up sending every ship in the navy to the Persian Gulf, and then offers direct negotiation. The Shiites of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are more powerful than before, The Sunnies of Saudi Arabia ,Jordan And UAE are scared of their own unpopular government  and even Toni Blair looses his office for being Bush’s friend.
Let's finish the article with these two little stories showing the difference between those who win in wars and those who loose.

1)When Alexander had conquered Persia and India and was returning to Persepolice in a desert called Mokran two thirds of his army died of thirst, a few soldiers managed to climb a mountain and got some snow and brought it back. They gave the ice cold water to Alexander to drink; he poured the water on the ground and said he would not drink until there is enough water for everybody to drink.

(2)George Bush has been to Baghdad twice, the first time was the thanksgiving before 2004 election-- a photo-op in the middle of the night for two hours. The next year, after he had won the election and he did not go to Baghdad, reporters asked him how come he was not going there. He said;

"They are doing well. They do not need me"