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| An-Nahar file photo of Russia's Vladimir Putin and Iran's Ali Khamenei |
This is my paraphrasing
of a commendable think piece by Jihad el-Zein,
which was penned in Arabic
for Lebanon’s independent daily an-Nahar:
Why did Russia get to view fundamentalist Shiism as ideologically
toothless, hence a worthwhile ally against fundamentalist Sunnism that has made
common cause with Washington?
Despite the Western media and American and European
think tanks giving contrasting, if not contradictory, explanations for Russia
and China’s solid backing of the Syrian regime, most Westerners, Arabs and
Syrian opposition groups are adamant the two countries, particularly Russia,
will change their positions “sooner or later.”
They insist the Russian position is “temporary” and
bound to change once a “deal” is struck, allowing the Russians to drop the
Syrian regime as soon as they bag a “good bargain.”
This misperception did not dissipate when the
Russians shockingly vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution sanctioning
military intervention in Syria.
Nor did this “analytical syndrome” evaporate after
the second double veto by Russia and China at the Security Council or the
downing by Syria of a Turkish fighter jet.
Two factors explain the flawed view of Russia.
One factor is underestimation of the Russian
Federation’s political, economic and military clout after the Soviet Union’s
collapse. Many find it hard to accommodate Russia’s challenge of U.S. supremacy
in its own backyard. The Putin Administration has drawn a clear strategic line
delineating this backyard or “vital sphere of influence.” Syria, which is not
too far from the Caucasus region where Russia has a military presence in
Armenia, falls in this backyard.
The second factor is the reluctance to acknowledge
how important and serious fundamentalist Islam is in Russia’s internal
calculations. The fact fundamentalist Sunnism envelopes the overwhelming
majority of Russian Muslims is a cause for concern for Russia. Ditto China
apropos its Chinese Muslims.
While the first factor is understandable and
expected, the second is less tangible.
It is extremely hard to find public studies by
Russian research centers that shed light on the surge of Islam inside Russia.
Most studies address the rise of fundamentalism in other countries.
However, the Russian psyche has been encrusted with
the Chechnya experience for
more than two decades, eventually catapulting Vladimir Putin to the helm. The
experience drove Russia to draw a virtual frontline to stem Turkey and Saudi
Arabia’s roles in Chechnya. In the view of Russian’s elite and intelligentsia,
the two countries supported Chechen rebels in the Russian Caucasus.
We have to take at face value Russian fears of
homegrown Islam being a secessionist force in a country that is still the
world’s largest. On top of that, the Americans and Europeans have been aspiring
for a “spring” in Moscow that would boot out the Putin Administration since
before the onset of the Arab Spring. Their aspiration remains alive and kicking.
China has similar internal reasons for echoing Moscow’s reservations.
The aim of this think piece is not to enumerate all
the reasons behind the Russian position. Some of them are “classic” and well
known, such as the question of strategic security relating to the US deployment
of a new ballistic missile defense system in Europe and Turkey or the subject
of what remains of Russian military presence on the Mediterranean coastline.
The intention is to shed as much light as possible on
how Islamic fundamentalism permeates and perhaps shapes Russia’s political
thought.
We’ve come to face today a real life situation
whereby a Russian alliance with Shiite Islam is fending off an American
partnership with Sunnite Islam.
Obviously, such generalization needs to be qualified.
Looking at modern history, Russian sensitivity to
Muslim fundamentalism originally did not distinguish between Shiism and Sunnism
because the ascendancy of the Iranian Revolution
in the late 1970s and early 1980s gave a shot in the arm to all Sunnite and
Shiite fundamentalist currents. At the time, the Iranian Revolution uplifted
religious movements throughout the Islamic world. Tehran became a shrine for
Arab, Pakistani and other “Muslim Brothers,” particularly that the Khomeini movement
embraced the traditional postulations of the Muslim Brotherhood society
founded in Egypt in 1928…
The Russians, much like the Soviets before them, were
never comfortable with the ascendency of Islam. The Soviet occupation
of Afghanistan marked the pinnacle of their problem with political Islam
led by fundamentalist movements. Khomeini’s Iran challenged the Soviet occupation
of Afghanistan alongside fundamentalist Sunnite mujahideen who led the confrontation
chiefly from Pakistan.
It was thought-provoking to read in the Indian and
Russian print media of the early 1990s articles written by Indian and Russian
experts mutually calling for a bilateral alliance to face up to Islamic
fundamentalism.
But segregation between Sunnite and Shiite, which was
initiated by the Taliban before being violently amplified in post-Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq and the emergence under Iran’s wing of the first “Shiite” seat
of power in Baghdad since the Middle Ages produced a two-ponged reality:
(1) Partial liberation of American policy from its
9/11 obsession and allowed the United States to start dynamic relationships
with moderate Islamist political movements. Turkish “Islamists” from Recep
Tayyip Erdogan’s generation created the template for such movements. This
partial liberation has reached the stage of overlooking al-Qaeda activities
serving U.S. national interests such as happened in Iraq, Libya and now Syria.
(2) A tendency by Putin’s Russia and the security
establishment he represents to differentiate between Sunnite and Shiite
Islamists -- already torn apart by the Saudi-Iranian power struggle -- and to
deem the fundamentalist threat as exclusively Sunnite. This happened after Iran
lost most of its Sunnite tentacles subsequent to the Arab Spring and the
appearance of a solid alliance between Washington and Muslim Brotherhood Arabs
now in authority. In this sense, distinction between Sunnite and Shiite not
only returned Iran to its minority status in a Sunnite sea but also lost it the
ability to be a source of change. Iran, in other words, was stripped of its
Islamic fundamentalism credentials and became a force to maintain the status
quo in which it has the upper hand in Iraq and Hezbollah-ruled Lebanon.
Turning to the landscape of Syria, you have a
defensive “pact” -- comprising Russia (thus China), Iran, Iraq (albeit from
Baghdad to Basra), Syria and Hezbollah’s confessional-military base in Lebanon
– opposing an American offensive fronted by most of the Arab world.
