A Short History of Sunni-Shia Sectarian Conflict

Iranian propaganda

A January 2016 article in Vox gives an excellent brief history of tribal sectarian violence in the Middle East. The tribalism is not based mostly or even largely on the ancient Sunni-Shia split over succession that dates back to the 7th century. Although that split and the ensuing civil war were real, it had ceased to be a source of conflict in modern times up until 1979. The modern sectarian split does fall along the Sunni-Shia religious divide, but it is grounded in politics, not religion. Vox writes:

“Noticeably absent from Lynch's list of factors [underpinning the Iran-Saudi conflict]: that Saudi Arabia hates the Shia due to theological disagreements or seventh-century succession disputes. That's not a mistake. No one who seriously studies the Middle East considers Sunni-Shia sectarianism to be a primarily religious issue. Rather, it's a primarily political issue, which has manifested along lines that just so happen to line up with religious demographics that were historically much calmer and more peaceful. 

Now here come the caveats: This is not to say that there was never any communal Sunni-Shia violence before 1979. Nor is this to say that Iran and Saudi Arabia were the first or only countries to cynically exploit Sunni-Shia lines for political gain: Saddam Hussein did it too, and so have some Islamist groups. I want to be careful not to overstate this and give the impression that Sunni-Shia lines were completely and always peaceful before 1979, nor to overstate the role Saudi Arabia and Iran played in turning Sunni and Shia against one another. 

And it is very much the case that the Sunni-Shia divide has widened for mostly political reasons, due to the deliberate and cynical manipulations of Middle Eastern leaders, and not because Middle Easterners suddenly woke up one day and remembered that they hated one another over a seventh-century succession dispute.”

Expert Middle East historians see the modern problem as grounded a three way rivalry between Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq. The primary rivalry was between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but with the rise of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, there was an uneasy three-way balance of power. When the US overthrew Hussein in 2003 and disbanded the Iraqi army, it created a massive power vacuum that Iran and Saudi Arabia rushed in to fill.

The Vox article goes on to point out that the same Iran vs Saudi Arabia conflict is tribal and playing out mostly along the Sunni vs Shia line in other countries in the Middle East. In essence, those two countries and their proxies have significantly tribalized and poisoned the entire region. The modern conflicts had their roots in the 1979 the Iranian revolution that turned secular Iran into a hard-line Shia theocracy. The Iranian theocracy initiated an aggressive foreign policy to export the Iranian revolution in attempts to foment Iran-style theocratic uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East.

Vox comments on more recent events:

“In 2011, when the Arab Spring began upending governments across the Middle East, both Saudi Arabia and Iran again tried to fill the vacuums, and that often meant supporting violence. It also meant deliberately amping up Sunni-Shia sectarianism to serve their interests. 

In weak states, Iran and Saudi Arabia have tried to position themselves as the patrons of their respective religious clans to assert influence, and they have ginned up sectarianism to promote fear of the other side. Sectarianism is just a tool. But that sectarianism has become a reality as Middle Eastern militias and political parties line up along sectarian lines and commit violence along those lines. 

You can see the same thing unfolding in Syria. The violence at first had little to do with religion: It was about the Syrian people versus a tyrannical government. But the Syrian government is allied with Iran, which means it is hostile to Saudi Arabia, so the Saudis see it as their enemy. The Saudis and other Sunni Gulf states armed Syrian rebels who are Sunni hard-liners, knowing the rebels' anti-Shia views made them more hostile to Iran and more loyal to Saudi interests.”

The article points out that tribalism, a tendency to side strongly or sometimes blindly with your own group, especially in times of conflict, is a potent social force. It has an internal logic and momentum that may have little or nothing to do with the demographics of affected societies. Once a society has tribalized along religious, racial or ethnic lines, the tribe is experienced as real, regardless of how artificial or cynically political or blatantly false the unifying propaganda may be.

This is a lesson in how powerful and destructive dark free speech[1] can be in the hands of a sufficiently talented demagogue or tyrant. If one looks at the current US president, it is clear that a demagogue does not even need to be particularly subtle about what they are doing in dividing their countries and people. The human mind is often susceptible to irrational emotional manipulation that plays on and amplifies unfounded fear, hate, intolerance, distrust and all kinds of bigotry. The demagogue’s and tyrant’s strategy is usually one of divide and conquer. Social division, fear, hate and distrust pave the way to power and usually wealth.

Footnote:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)

Saudi Arabia propaganda