khalil ali haydar
How could the political Shia movement and the Hezbollah and “Islamic revolution” streams so easily kidnap the views and emotions of the Shias in the Gulf
Arab region?
Why don’t we hear an opposing voice or come across a decisive stance against some of Iran’s foreign policy, especially those that pan Shias outside Iran pay for, so that everyone knows that such policies do not represent the views of all the Shias in the Arab world?
Many Shias of Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia are convinced that not all Iranian policies represent the Shia view, and that, since 1979, the policies of this “Islamic State” exposed the interests of Shias in their Arab countries and the whole world, to political risk, social isolation and possibly threats and reprisals.
This was demonstrated by the Husseinia (Shia gathering place) accident in Saudi Arabia, blasting Shia mosques in Pakistan, and what we read and follow on TV channels, the Internet, the press and libraries about the Beirut bombings.
However, you hardly find these sceptics raise their voices, protest, oppose, criticise, or even warn the general public, who are Shia-driven into a dangerous sectarian intolerance, about Iran’s deviant foreign policies. Among these doubters, as is obvious, are religious, political, financial, social and cultural elite, including thousands of doctors, engineers, technicians, academics, businessmen, political and cultural figures, writers and journalists.
They rarely object to or criticise Iranian political practices, even if these affect their interests, political image or their relations with other citizens and doctrines, as it is clear in the Gulf region, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Bahrain for more than twenty years.
Who can defend Iran’s major mistake of creating an armed Shia party in Lebanon in spite of the will of the Lebanese government and people? Today, it controls the stability and fate of Lebanon after being involved in a war with Israel, affecting the interests of all Lebanese.
There are people who find justification in the Jaafari Jurisprudence to support the authoritarian Baathist regime for decades against the Syrian people by killing them, destroying their cities without mercy, and dispersing women, children and elderly in camps around Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
If Iran has founded Hezbollah in Lebanon to confront Israel, why was it forced to work as a military Iranian instrument in Syria against the interests of the Syrian and Lebanese people, in a way that put the rest of the Shias in the Arab world in an embarrassing situation, confronting dozens of questions without answers, and finally becoming the centre of sectarian hatred and enmity, paying the price through long years of strained feelings.
Who among Iranians or its Shia supporters agrees that the Sunni Kurds, Baloch or residents of southern Iran build an armed political party with heavy ammunition, armoured vehicles, tanks and missiles in Iran, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, taking orders and funding from Turkey or the Gulf States and the Arab world, for example?
Shias have paid a heavy price for their reputation, safety, security and the future of their children in exchange for such a long silence. Their opponents are directing all kind of charges against them and regard them as a mysterious group that does not think about the interests of their countries. Are they aware of the dangers of these charges?
Shias have presented themselves through the generations as a minority under siege with stolen rights, representatives of the oppressed and supporters of each just cause, and the combatants of all forms of illegality, tyranny and authoritarianism.
However, a number of Iranian misguided policies and adventures, which had broad Shia sympathy because of misinformation and exploitation of all kinds of feelings and concerns, isolated Shias in Lebanon, the Gulf States, Iraq, Yemen and perhaps everywhere.
People who are neutral believe that Iran at home acts contrary to what it does abroad. It interferes in Arab and Gulf affairs and raises all kinds of slogans in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, and Yemen without taking into account the interests of the Shia minority, the balance of political and sectarian risks, and even the benefit of the Iranian people.
Why don’t Iran and its supporters in Kuwait, Lebanon, Yemen and Bahrain, for example, explain to us what the interest of Shias in these states is in supporting Hamas in Gaza, cheering with or without on occasion “death to America”, or demanding the downfall of some Gulf regimes?
Why does Iran not become moderate in its foreign policy and leave these interventions and slogans that first destroy its higher interests, its economy, its international reputation, its people and their culture? The Iranian people have continued suffering deprivation for nearly 35 years.
Why doesn’t Iran pay attention to the wellbeing of its people by increasing their standard of living and solving problems of development instead of the costly military adventures that Iranians and Shias are paying for everywhere?
Shias in Kuwait and the Gulf States have suffered since 1979 from the export of the Iranian revolution and its demonstrations policy during pilgrimage season, the formation of party cells, the exploitation of the naivete and good intentions of some minority youth. They have not benefited from sectarian freedoms provided by the Gulf’s political openness.
Then Iran began a second phase to mobilise Shias with the adventures of Hezbollah and taking advantage of the Iraqi situation after the fall of the regime in 2003.
The supporters of Hezbollah and Iran organised a funeral for “Imad Mughniyah,” whose past is well known, in one of Kuwait’s Husseinia! Then a blatant public stage arrived through intervention in Syria and supporting the hardliners of the Bahraini opposition — the group that split the National Shia-Sunni opposition — by raising slogans with disastrous implications even feared by Kuwaiti Shias.
No one knows into what type of maze the Houthis in Yemen are headed, and how will the reconciliation between the Gulf States and Iran be after all these mistakes and serious interventions?
The Shias of Kuwait, especially clergymen, businessmen, and well-known academics and personalities, men and women, must raise the voice of reason and criticism, and find in their midst an independent national stance in the face of this sectarian slippage with severe risks.
The writer is a columnist and researcher. The Peninsula
