"Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite?"

Read the full Op-Ed piece by JEFF STEIN in The New York Times October 17, 2006.

FOR the past several months, Stein has been ending interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with the question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?”

(S)o far, most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies.......

It’s not all so grimly humorous. Some agency officials and members of Congress have easily handled my “gotcha” question. But as I keep asking it around Capitol Hill and the agencies, I get more and more blank stares. Too many officials in charge of the war on terrorism just don’t care to learn much, if anything, about the enemy we’re fighting. And that’s enough to keep anybody up at night.

I just looked up the answer, although I had a better understanding than the folk cited in Stein's piece. Check it out.

I must admit that although I have been following Ireland for decades, I don't fully understand the doctrinal differences between Catholics and Protestants, much less those between "Church and Chapel". Still I don't see how one can deal with Middle East policy without understanding the Shia-Sunni divide. It is important to understand why Shiit minorities in Lebanon and Iraq seek support for Shiit Iran. It is important to understand that the Sunni ruling minority in Iraq under Saddam had fundamental differences with the Shiit ruling majority in Iran that fueled the long running war between those countries. It is probably important for the FBI to recognize the risks from Shiit activists are different from the risks from Sunni activitists.

I suspect that, as in Ireland, many of the differences that count in Iraq are based on the use of power by one faction to obtain economic benefits for itself at the expense of other factions, and not on theological points of difference. I also noted a while back that four Shiit factions were competing for power in Basra, so there are not only differences in religion, but jockying for power among co-religionists. I remember a comment made during the invasion by a modern Iraqi who was worried about being governed by "crazy mullahs". I have read that Saddam Hussein (al-Tikriti) drew his close associates and key supporters from his own family and from Tikrit, suggesting that the tribalism we have read about still exists and is a powerful force in Iraq.

I don't know, but I suspect that politics in Iraq are very complicated, and very difficult for an outsider to understand. I suggest that if the United States government is going to keep intervening in Iraqi politics, it better get some people on board who really understand what they are dealing with (and not just the difference between Sunni and Shiit). Of course, we could try to do what the military originally wanted to do, and leave Iraqi politics to the Iraqis.