Muqtada al-Sadr, Shia leader, supports Sunni protests against PM al-Maliki in Iraq

The popular Shiite Iraqi leader, Muqtada al-Sadr has thrown his support behind Sunni protesters against Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Al-Sadr said that Maliki must bear full responsibility for the unrest in Iraq. Maliki has made a number of moves to centralise power. His actions have enraged many Sunnis and also officials in the Kurdish autonomous area in northern Iraq. Iraq's vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, a prominent Sunni politician was charged with various offenses including running death squads, convicted of murder in September, and sentenced to death in absentia. Al-Hashimi took refuge in Turkey. Sunnis say that Maliki is constantly sidelining them. During the rule of Saddam Hussein, Sunnis were dominant in the government. More recently Maliki raided the office and home of the Iraqi finance minister, Rafie al-Issawi, another prominent Sunni politician. Issawi claims that 150 of his guards and employees were arrested in the raids. These actions have sparked huge protests by Sunnis in which they have blocked off main routes to Jordan and Syria from Baghdad. No doubt al-Sadr's move has been in part calculated to improve prospects for his party and himself in upcoming elections. Al-Sadr spoke in Najaf, one of the holiest cities of the Shiite sect. In spite of many of his own followers being persecuted by Sunnis during Hussein's reign and his close connections with Iran, Al-Sadr is an Iraqi nationalist who fears the expanding conflict between Sunnis and Shia sects. Maliki's actions fuel this division. While Al-Sadr has always been fiercely anti-American, at the same time, he has always tried to foster unity among Iraqis. Al-Sadr tried to set the Sunni protests in a wider context saying:

“The Iraqi spring is coming. We are with the demonstrators, and Parliament must be with them, not against them,” he said. “The legitimate demands of the demonstrators, by which people know what they want, should be met.”

Al Sadr even expressed his willingness to go to Anbar, the Sunni-dominated province, to join in demonstrations. Maliki warned protesters that he might lose patience with the demonstrations:

"I say to those who follow these agendas: Don't think it's difficult for the government to take measures against you or to re-open the road and put an end to this matter. We have been very patient with you, but don't expect this issue to be open-ended."

Violence has increased in Iraq in 2012 and Al Qaeda appears to be making a come-back. Iraq Body Count put the civilian death toll in 2012 at 4,471 and this does not include the final two weeks of the year. Last year the toll was 4,136.

Patrick Cockburn: Syria in 1st stage of sectarian civil war

   In an article in the Independent Cockburn argues that Syria has already descended into the first stage of a sectarian civil war. Much of the opposition after being bombarded for demonstrating has opted for arming their supporters to fight back. Added to this one has members of the Syrian armed forces who have deserted are also fighting back. This is all happy times for Al Qaeda linked groups who side with the Sunni opposition and add terrorist acts to the mix of violence.
     The Alawi the Shia sect of which Assad and much of the government are members are trying in vain to simply put down the majority Sunni opposition by force. The reaction of the opposition is to militarize the conflict which in Cockburn's eyes has the effect of increasing the bloodshed without defeating Assad. Cockburn points out that the rag tag group of militias and deserters is not up to stopping armored columns of the Syrian armed forces.
     The tactic of the opposition seems to be to promote international intervention on their side as happened in Libya. This Cockburn says could take the form of a safe haven protected by NATO in north west Syria.
    However, this time around Russia and China are not likely to give a pass to a UN resolution. Both countries feel that the no-fly resolution in Libya was used in a manner that went much beyond the UN mandate in Libya.
    Cockburn thinks that much of the international community had an entirely wrong idea about the ability of Assad to stay in power. Last December the U.S. State Dept. claimed that Assad was a dead man walking. As with Libya solving the conflict has become secondary to regime change. Given this international support there is no strong motive for the opposition to seek a compromise with Assad. To be fair Assad has so far never kept any agreements in any event. However, he may be at the stage where the pressure is great enough that he would keep agreements at least in part.
  Cockburn aptly describes the situation as having several aspects. At one level it is an uprising against Assad's corrupt, brutal police state with wide popular support. The brutality with which protests were met simply increased the level of protests.
  The second level of the struggle is between Sunni and Shia within Syria and this in turn links to a battle between Shia Iran and its enemies. Cockburn notes that the sectarian aspect of the conflict is mostly ignored in the media and emphasis is upon the first aspect of the struggle. Power in Syria is distributed around sectarian lines as it was in Iraq under Hussein with the minority Sunni being in power. In Syria the situation is reversed with the Shia being in power and the Sunni the majority. In Bahrain the Sunni rule too as a minority over a majority Shia population but there the Sunnis are the good guys in Western eyes.
   Cockburn notes that television reporting is very much skewed towards painting Assad as a government of almost pure evil fighting a heroic people. Assad is certainly brutal and criminally repressing his own people but as Cockburn notes this does not mean that one should ignore other forces at work. As Cockburn points out there have been brutal terrorist attacks by groups allied with the Sunni opposition that killed many innocent people. Some opposition spokespeople suggest that this is just part of the government operations to discredit the opposition. This strikes me as nonsense. Cockburn concludes that Syria is headed into a conflict that can only divide Sunni and Shia communities even further with little sign of any way of halting this slide into more conflict and bloodshed. For more see this article.
 

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Yemen: 55 killed in latest clashes with rebels in north Yemen

After two days of sectarian clashes between Houthi Shias and Sunni groups in north Yemen have left at least 55 dead and many wounded. There were clashes between Salafist Sunni groups and the Houthis last month as well.
   The fighting came immediately after a Shia festival which drew many more Shia to the area. The Houthis have had off and on conflict with the central government for years. Saudi Arabia which is just north of the area supports the Sunni groups in the area.
  The Houthis have announced that they will boycott the coming election. A leader of the Houthi rebels said:"We demand the Yemenis also commissioned experts to formulate a new constitution, and the formation of a national body to restructure the army based on national rules." The leader also claimed that foreign forces were trying to ignite sectarian strife and destroy the revolution.
  Certainly many of the protesters against Saleh and the new government would agree at least in part. There is only one single candidate for president, the vice president General Hadi who served under Saleh. Of course Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and the Gulf Cooperation Council think all this is just fine and an orderly transition to democracy. It is an orderly transition to the old order. For more see this article.   

Iraq: Tension rises between Prime Minister Maliki and Sunni politicians

The prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has accused his own Sunni vice-president Tareq al-Hashemi of plotting to assassinate him. He claims that al-Hashemi paid his own bodyguards to commit terrorist attacks and that they have confessed to these acts. An order has been made for al-Hashemi's arrest.

 Al-Hashemi has taken refuge in Kurdistan in northern Iraq. He says that he will only stand trial there not in Baghdad. Al-Maliki has been harassing other Sunni politicians as well. Al-Hashemi claims the charges against him are politically motivated. Massoud Barzani the president of the Kurdistan regional government has called on Iraqi politicians to hold a summit meeting to discuss al-Maliki''s recent moves against Sunni politicians.

The arrest warrant is viewed with great suspicion by many politicians including Barzani who has for years often disagreed with al-Maliki. Even the Iraqi president Talabani was critical of the warrant together with the speaker of parliament. Violence is increasing as the sectarian tensions rise as well.

The U.S. is watching events with concern as all U.S. troops are now out of the country. Some Republicans have been critical of Obama for withdrawing all U.S. troops. However, the agreement for keeping forces in Iraq expires the end of this year and the Iraqi government refused to allow any troops to stay at least without being subject to Iraqi law. Apparently, the Republicans must think that the U.S. could just stay anyway! For more see this article and also here.

Seymour Hersh: US backing Sunni jihadists?

The whole article is at antiwar.com

The headline seems a bit misleading. As noted in the part of the article here the whole policy is contradictory. The "democratisation" of Iraq put the Shia (plus Kurds) in power and for the most part the Shia have been allies and certainly keen for deBaathification and they want to curb the Sunni insurgents. The new policy is to contain Shia and particularly Iran's influence. However there are Sunni groups such as Hamas that do not fit into that equation well and also it is going to be very difficult to restrain Iranian influence when the Shia in Iraq are the largest group and also have close ties to Iran. Increasing Iran's hostility and refusing to negotiate with them is hardly a clever strategy. Pandora's box is just beginning to open.


Why Is the US Backing
Sunni Jihadists?
An interview with Seymour Hersh
by Charles Goyette
Interview recorded Feb. 27, 2007. Listen to the interview.

Although we've talked about this issue, your article in The New Yorker, "The Redirection," a couple of times, Mr. Hersh, would you give us a thumbnail sketch of your story?

Hersh: Yeah, basically, it's a story saying that we've changed our policy in a very dramatic way in the last few months.

It's awfully hard to know when and where. We are involved in a war now in Iraq, and it is not going well. So the president has decided we are going to expand this. What we want to do is – our target now is Iran. We want to isolate Iran. We want to run operations against Iran. We've been doing that for a year, and we also want to escalate against Iran's buddies in Syria and Lebanon.

So we are now… The United States has joined forces with the Brits, Israelis, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan – the moderate Sunni Arab countries – in a coalition designed to beat back the Shia. They are a minority, but a very powerful minority. As you know, Iran is Shia. Right now in Lebanon, the Sunni government, controlled by a man named Prime Minister Siniora, is under much pressure from a coalition headed by Hezbollah – which is Shia. It's got Christians on it too, but the coalition wants a bigger share of the pie in Lebanon – more power.

So, there is a standoff there.

The U.S. is throwing in – all the way – with those who want to stop the Shia anywhere in the Middle East. That is a huge escalation because, among other things, the growing contradiction of the policy is that we have made the Shia in Iraq our allies. It is not quite clear how strong that relationship is anymore, but that's… So you've got… It's sort of like the yellow submarine, you know? They disappear.

The policy is so complicated, so contradictory and so ad hoc, you just wonder what these guys are thinking of.

Goyette: I've described it on my show – Bush and these people – as the sorcerer's apprentice. They've unleashed these forces that they cannot contain – they cannot foresee. But isn't anyone in the administration overcome with shame in not foreseeing the obvious: that the de-Ba'athification and the invasion of Iraq would have contributed substantially to the a Shia power block? I mean, that seems like it would have been foreseeable back in 2002.

Hersh: You know, you've got to understand how obdurate these neocons are. When the war began, by June of 2003… You know, I'm tuned in. I've been writing critically about this. I've written no other story since 9-11, only this one insane crummy subject – it's driving me nuts.

But within two or three months [of the beginning of the war in 2003], my buddies on the inside were saying, "We are beginning to hear the insurgency ditty bopping." We could hear them communicating with each other. We couldn't break the code, but we picked up messages. It was Iranian signals gear. It was pretty sensitive stuff. The Iranians were passing along communications gear [to Iraqis]. By the way – why shouldn't they? I mean, that's not a sin. Why shouldn't they [Iran] help their ally and weaken us? That's the way the world is.

In any case, the neocons refused to listen to the idea that the Shi'ites in the south – whom they were pushing, because they wanted to de-Ba'athify: get rid of the army and anything in connection with Saddam, which is really stupid. They [neocons] would say to the military and the intelligence service, "Don't worry about it. Don't forget that there was an eight year war in the eighties between Iraq and Iran – very bloody by the way – where twenty thousand people would die on any given day. There were horrible battles. The Shia in Iran and the Shia in Iraq hate each other."

That was the theory: there is no way the Iraqi Shia are going to support Iran after that war. This is what the neocons said. It didn't matter how many times the [intelligence] community would report and say, "we've got real problems here. We notice five thousand Iranian intelligence officers."

Bahrain: A powderkeg?

The fact that Hamas is Sunni and is supported by Iran (Shia) shows that to a considerable extent this is a conflict between the haves (in terms of power, influence and income)and the have nots as much as between Shia and Sunni, the sectarian conflict is just a vehicle for the quasi-class conflict and Iran just makes use of it to extend its own regional power.


Posted AT 4:20 AM EST ON 12/02/07

Tiny Bahrain firmly in Tehran's orbit
Iran possesses enormous influence among Bahrain's Shia majority

MARK MACKINNON
From Monday's Globe and Mail

AL-DAIH, BAHRAIN — They're unarmed, but march like an army though the
streets of this tiny country -- tens of thousands of black-clad men
beating their chests in unison to a slow, mournful rhythm. With each
violent thump of their fists, they recall the first in a long line of
grievances Shia Muslims hold against their Sunni brethren.

Oblivious to the drizzling rain, an estimated 250,000 marchers, a
third of all the people who live on this Persian Gulf island, hit
themselves and cry the name of Imam Hussein, the Shia leader who fell
under Sunni swords in the year 680.

In Bahrain, the annual Ashura festival of mourning is part religious
ceremony, part demonstration of political power. With sectarian
tensions high across the region, it's a reminder to Bahrain's elites
that, although the Shiites are poor and disenfranchised, they dwarf
the ruling Sunnis in number, and hold an angry grudge.

Situated across the Persian Gulf from Iran, Bahrain's Sunni rulers are
as sensitive as anyone in the region to the apparent extraterritorial
aspirations of Iran's ayatollahs and their influence on the kingdom's
Shia majority. The precursors of today's royal family invaded from
neighbouring Qatar in 1780 and drove out the Persians. But Iran didn't
extinguish its claim to the island until 1970, and today, the Bahraini
government still perceives an existential threat emanating from
Tehran.

Iran is playing in many Middle East backyards, most notably in Iraq
(through the various Shia political parties and militias that take
their orders from Tehran), Lebanon (through the Iranian-funded
Hezbollah movement) and the Palestinian territories (through Hamas, a
Sunni group that turned to Iran for help when faced by a crippling
Western boycott). But it's tiny Bahrain where Iran arguably wields the
most influence, and where Tehran might first try to demonstrate its
new clout if a showdown with the United States and its Arab allies
becomes inevitable.

Bahrain's predominantly Shia opposition, which tried to stage an
Iranian-style revolution in 1981, has been taking to the streets
frequently in recent months, emboldened by events in Iraq, where a
Shia majority has finally thrown off oppressive Sunni rule. But King
Hamad Bin Isa al-Khalifa and his coterie believe the Persians still
stand behind Bahrain's opposition and its calls for more democracy.

There's plenty of evidence here to support those fears. Photographs of
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his predecessor,
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomaini, adorn the walls of nearly every Shia home
on the island. Portraits of Lebanon's Hassan Nasrallah and the yellow
flags of Hezbollah are also popular. Both sides are well aware that
with the fall of Saddam Hussein, Bahrain is the only remaining country
where a Sunni minority governs a Shia majority.

"Wake up Sunnis!" reads one message that was sent to thousands of
Bahraini cellphones ahead of recent elections fought along sectarian
lines. "Don't be naive or your fate will be like the Iraqi Sunnis who
lost their rights and their lives."

The execution of Mr. Hussein at the end of last year, viewed by Sunnis
across the region as revenge-taking by a Shia lynch mob, provoked a
second round of such messages, many of which accused Bahrain's Shiites
of working for Iran.

The government regularly trots out the Iranian bogeyman to scare its
allies in Washington into easing calls for democratic reforms. A more
tangible Iran-headquartered group, calling itself the Islamic Front
for the Liberation of Bahrain, bombed a hotel in Manama, the capital,
in 1996.

Unnerved by Tehran's new swagger after the collapse of the U.S. plan
for Iraq and the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bahrain
recently joined five other Arab states in the Persian Gulf to announce
that, like Tehran, they would explore the idea of a peaceful nuclear
program. Egypt and Jordan, which are also predominantly Sunni and
uncomfortable with Iran's growing assertiveness, have also announced
they will look into their nuclear options.

Long-dormant tension between Sunnis and Shiites, unlocked by the
violence in Iraq, is exploding throughout the Middle East, from the
daily carnage in Baghdad to the dangerous sectarian standoff on the
streets of Beirut. Animosity is also high in the Sunni-ruled kingdoms
of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which have significant Shia minorities and
the terrifying example of Iraq just across the border, and in Yemen,
where clashes between government forces and Shia rebels have killed
dozens of people in recent weeks. Even in countries such as Jordan and
Egypt, which are overwhelmingly Sunni, governments have issued dire
warnings about the dangers of a "Shia crescent" stretching from
Bahrain and Iran, through Iraq and Shia-ruled Syria to Lebanon.

"Every state that is neighbouring Iraq is concerned about the growing
role of Iran. Every gain for Iran in Iraq lessens the influence of
[Sunni Arab] states in the region and in the world," said Mohammed
al-Masri, a researcher at the Centre for Strategic Studies at the
University of Jordan.

The real rift that governments are blurring, he said, isn't between
Sunnis and Shiites so much as it is between "moderate" states such as
Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as the secular Palestinian
Fatah movement, which favour accommodation with Israel and the United
States, and a Tehran-led rejectionist axis that also includes Syria,
Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

"The Arab states are confusing the Iranian threat with a Shiite
threat, even though they are very different issues," Dr. al-Masri
said. The biggest worry for these governments, he said, is that the
hard-line anti-Israel, anti-U.S. stand being taken by Iran will
resonate on the streets of Cairo, Amman and elsewhere.

As the panic about Tehran's rising influence spreads, it has been
accompanied by a dangerous spike in the volume of anti-Shia rhetoric
being spread by Sunni governments and their official clergy. Trapped
between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two theocratic states that are the
political and spiritual centres of their respective sects, and with
the example of Iraq just a few hundred kilometres to the north,
Bahrain increasingly looks like it could be the next trouble spot.

While Shiites are a minority within global Islam, making up an
estimated 15 per cent of the 1.4 billion Muslims, Bahrain is 70 per
cent Shiite -- but run by a Sunni royal family notorious for doling
out jobs and favours to other Sunnis while actively marginalizing the
Shia majority. Adding to the stakes, the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based in
Bahrain, and would almost certainly be used in any American strike
against Iran's nuclear program.

"There's Iraq, emerging as a Shia power centre to the north, and Iran,
positioning itself as a regional hegemon, and the American efforts to
counter that. Bahrain is caught in the middle of all that,
exacerbating the very local Sunni-Shia dynamic," said Toby Jones, a
Persian Gulf expert who wrote a recent report on Bahrain's sectarian
divide for the International Crisis Group, a global think tank devoted
to conflict resolution. "The Bahraini government feels cornered. This
is a very hostile neighbourhood."

As tense as matters are inside Bahrain, Mr. Jones said, the country's
stability may be determined by what happens at the regional level. "If
Saudi Arabia continues to speak not only against Iran, but against its
own Shia population, then all bets are off. You could provoke your own
radicals, and you could see jihadism against the Shia community."
That, he predicted, would instigate a counteroffensive by Shia
radicals both inside and outside Iraq.

Bahrain's conflict is a peaceful one, other than the occasional
demonstration that a police force dominated by Sunnis and foreigners
puts down with rubber bullets and tear gas, but what it has in common
with Lebanon and Iraq is the sense that the long-downtrodden Shia
masses are rising up and demanding a greater share of power in their
country.

"Every year, we are stronger," said Ali Abdulemam, a prominent Shia
dissident, as he watched the Ashura procession wind through the
streets of his hometown from behind dark sunglasses. "We have to be.
We know that if we show we are weak, we will have a problem with the
government."

While Manama's nighttime skyline is lit up by skyscraper developments
and neon signs advertising Western chain restaurants, the muddy
alleyways of al-Daih are just a few short kilometres away. Ronald
McDonald and the glowing guitar of the Hard Rock Cafe give way here to
spray-painted portraits of Shia religious leaders and the dozens of
"martyrs" who died during what locals call the intifada, an uprising
against the Sunni regime that often resulted in violence in the 1990s.

While Bahrain's Shiites say their allegiance to Iran is religious,
rather than political, there's little question that Iran would gain a
friend, and the United States and Saudi Arabia would lose one, if the
Shia opposition were ever to come to power here.

The extent to which the government is apparently willing to go in
order to prevent that from happening was exposed last year when an
adviser to the royal family broke ranks and accused the government of
a plot against the Shiites.

Known as "Bandargate," the scandal was named after Salah al-Bandar,
the whistleblower who released hundreds of pages of documents that
appear to outline a massive government effort to keep the Shiites
politically marginalized, while tampering with the island's
demographics to increase the Sunni share of the population.

The government denied the accusations and expelled Mr. al-Bandar, a
Sudanese Sunni. But a paper trail, including signed cheques apparently
paid out to anti-Shia figures, suggests that there was at least some
official effort to spy on Shiites, to guarantee a Sunni majority in
the recent parliamentary elections and to pay Shiites willing to
convert to Sunni Islam.

The election gerrymandering seemed to work. Despite their wide popular
majority, Shia parties won just 17 of 40 seats in the lower house of
parliament. Sunnis also hold a comfortable majority in the upper
house, which is appointed by King Hamad.

"Each and every Shiite here worries about their future. Now they know
there is a plan, directed by the highest person in the country, the
King, to marginalize the Shiites," said Nabeel Rajab, vice-president
of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, shaking his head at the
government's willingness to deal with Sunni radicals before Shia
moderates.

And it was all done in the name of combatting Iran. "The regional
situation has really served the royal family here. They're always
threatening the West and telling the Americans that the Shiites are
their enemies and the allies of Iran," Mr. Rajab said. "There is an
anti-Shiite movement in the whole region, because of what's happening
in Iraq."

The Ashura march passed without incident, but later that night, the
unrest swelled again, as 200 Shia youths clashed with police following
the sentencing of two opposition activists to six months and one year
in prison, respectively, for distributing leaflets calling on
Bahrainis to boycott the recent elections.

"We didn't even hear what he said. [The trial and sentencing] only
took eight seconds," said a bewildered Mohammed Saeed al-Sahlawi, the
35-year-old dentist who got the longer sentence. As he stood in the
prisoner's box being comforted by his father and supporters, the Shia
crowd outside the courtroom broke into a chant of, "You say this is
freedom, but if we speak our minds, you open your jails."

Two days later, the youths were on the streets again, following
another round of arrests, this time targeting two Shia political
leaders and the head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights. The
protesters burned tires and threw stones until the police broke up the
demonstration with rubber bullets and tear gas.

To those trying to bridge the sectarian divide, the country seems
caught in a worrying downward spiral.

Mahmoud al-Yousif, a Shia information-technology specialist and
popular blogger who recently launched a campaign called Just Bahraini
in hopes of getting Bahrainis to leave their sectarian camps and find
the middle ground, sports a button on his blazer that reads "No Shia,
no Sunni. Just Bahraini!" It's a message of peace that he hoped the
government would embrace and the fractious country would rally around.

Instead, he found himself hauled before a public prosecutor last week
on charges of insulting a member of the cabinet. After he was released
on bail, he posted a warning on his website that other bloggers should
remain anonymous if they intend to criticize the government.

Over cappuccino at one of Manama's myriad U.S.-style coffee shops, he
sighed that his government seems to be more interested in feeding the
Sunni-Shiite divide than in bridging it. "Their tactic is divide and
rule. They tell the Sunnis that all the privileges they've had for the
past century will disappear because the Shiites are going to rise and
take them. That way, the Sunnis and the Shiites won't rise up and
demand reforms."

Mr. al-Yousif's broad face is quick to smile, and he is a hopeful
person by nature. But his optimism about his country's future drains
with his coffee the longer the conversation goes. "When you see
something in front of you that's about to explode, it's terrifying,"
he says, as he gets up to leave. "Especially when it's something you
love."
--

Saudi Shiites funding Iraq Shia militias?

As Juan Cole notes this should be taken with a grain of salt, but it is certainly possible. I should imagine that wealthy Saudi Sunnis are also funding the Sunni insurgency in Iraq is even more probable. In any event the post represents the growing conflict between Shia and Sunni throughout the middle east.

From: Cole, Juan

Wealthy Gulf Shiites Allegedly Funding Iraqi Shiite Militias

The USG Open Source Center reports on and translates a message at a
Sunni jihadi discussion board that alleges that Saudi Shiites are
bankrolling Shiite parties and militias in Iraq. These allegations
should obviously be taken with a grain of salt. But at a time when the
US is trying to blame everything on Iran, it is interesting to see
this evidence that the situation is substantially more complex.

Saudi Shiites predominate in al-Hasa or the Eastern Province of Saudi
Arabia, where most of the kingdom's petroleum reserves are. They
account for 10 percent of the Saudi population (i.e. 1.5 to 2 million
persons). Traditionally repressed by the hyper-Sunni Wahhabi majority,
the Saudi Shiites have recently been more emancipated.

Here is the report:
' Forum Participant Claims Saudi Shiites Co-Financing Badr Corps,
Al-Mahdi Army
Jihadist Websites -- OSC Report
Monday, February 12, 2007 T16:57:27Z

Terrorism: Forum Participant Claims Saudi Shiites Co-Financing Badr
Corps, Al-Mahdi Army On 5 February, a Sunni participant posted a
message to a jihadist website claiming that Saudi Shiites are
co-financing Iraqi Shiites, Badr Corps, Al-Mahdi Army, and the "death
squads" to the tune of "863 million riyals ($228 million) annually."
The unconfirmed number was attributed to contributions by merchants
from Saudi Arabia and other places to the Shiite's war efforts and
groups in Iraq. The participant named a few Shiite companies and
called for a "boycott of Shiite businesses" so that Sunni money will
not support the Shiite causes and the killing of Sunnis in Iraq.

A summary of the message follows:

In his message, the participant claimed that "one-fifth of the income
of every Shiite collected by the Shiite leaders is being routed to the
efforts of spreading Shiism in the Middle East. That amount is 863
million riyals ($228 million) annually and a big part of it is coming
from Sunnis in Saudi Arabia since these Sunnis buy goods from Shiite
owned businesses."

The participant called for "the boycott of Shiite businesses and goods
throughout the kingdom and the Arabian Gulf," naming a few of them
such as fish producers in the eastern province, Al-Wataniyah Bakeries,
Al-Ajami Suppliers, and some others. The participant suggested
starting a list of all Shiite companies to be boycotted.

A few participants responded and named other Shiite owned businesses
including Al-Matrud Foods, Nijran Water, Al-Salih Clothing, Al-Nimr
Jewelers, Al-Ali Contractors, and other companies. '
--
Posted By Juan to Informed Comment at 2/13/2007 06:06:00 AM

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