EDWARD WONG e MICHAEL
SLACKMAN
Tesi NYT:
L’attacco
israeliano porta alla ribalta una conseguenza non voluta della guerra americana
in Irak, la possibilità che quella che gli analisti chiamano una mezzaluna sciita
si estenda dall’Iran a Irak e Libano, un fenomeno che potrebbe riscrivere la
mappa politica del MO, con i paesi arabi sunniti riuniti contro la predominanza
sciita.
Il primo ministro iracheno Nuri Kamal al-Maliki sugli
attacchi israeliani al Libano: «Condanno queste aggressioni e invito i ministri
della Lega Araba ad un incontro al Cairo per concordare un sollecito intervento
per porre fine a queste aggressioni. Lanciamo un appello alla comunità
internazionale perché prenda al più presto una decisione per fermare l’aggressione
di Israele».
La posizione di al-Maliki diverge in modo significativo dalla
politica americana verso Israele, e non risponde alle speranze americane di utilizzare
l’Irak come alleato contro i paesi arabi.
Al-Maliki è stato voluto dagli americani al posto di Ibrahim
al-Jaafari, e si appoggia sui 134 000 soldati americani per combattere l’opposizione
degli arabi sunniti. L’ambasciata americana non ha replicato immediatamente.
-
Un
numero crescente di funzionari iracheni hanno in questi giorni condannato Israele;
il parlamento ha emesso una dichiarazione unitaria che definisce gli attacchi
di Israele «aggressione criminale».
Il sacerdote sciita Moktada al-Sadr, il cui raggruppamento ha un peso determinante
nell’esecutivo e che dispone della potente milizia Madhi, ha dichiarato che gli
iracheni non «assisteranno a mani giunte» l’infuriare della violenza in Libano.
Fino ad ora non ha preso posizione il maggior sacerdote
sciita, il Grande Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani; invece l’Ayatollah Ahmad al-Husseini al-Baghdadu, di Najaf,
ha accusato «le arroganti forze internazionali, in particolare l’America» di soffiare
sul conflitto tra arabi sciiti e sunniti in Irak e di spingere Israele ad attaccare
i territori palestinesi e il Libano.
-
Le
dichiarazioni dell’arabo sciita Al-Maliki sono state molto più dure di quelle di
alcuni governi arabi (Giordania, Egitto, Arabia Saudita e altri paesi del Golfo),
che non hanno preso una posizione chiara sul Libano, preoccupati del tentativo dell’Iran
di ergersi a potenza regionale, accusato di fornire armi a Hezbollah.
(L’Iran ha una maggioranza di persiani, una piccola minoranza
di arabi, e gli azeri sono il suo secondo maggior gruppo etnico).
-
Al-Maliki
ha stretti legami con l’Iran: diversi funzionari del suo raggruppamento
politico l’Islamic Dawa Party si sono rifugiati in Iran per sfuggire alle
persecuzioni di Saddam Hussein; lui stesso ha legami con leader Hezbollah, dato
che ha trascorso la maggior parte dei 23 anni di esilio in Siria dove dirigeva
il ramo siriano del Dawa. -
Hezbollah
è ritenuto una pericolosa testa di ponte che apre la strada all’influenza
iraniana nella regione.
L’ambivalenza dei governi arabi unita alla continuazione degli
attacchi e alle immagini di civili uccisi e mutilati dalle bombe israeliane ha suscitato
l’ostilità verso il proprio governo di diversi arabi sunniti nei paesi arabi, nonostante
i secoli di inimicizia tra gli islamici sunniti e sciiti, che appoggiano Hezbollah
perché lotta contro Israele e gli USA.
-
Non
è possibile parlare di una “Via araba”, ma anche coloro che criticano il
sequestro di soldati israeliani da parte di Hezbollah invocano l’unità contro
Israele e gli USA.
Nyt 06-07-20
International Relations – Iraqi Prime Minister
Denounces Israel’s Actions
By EDWARD WONG and MICHAEL SLACKMAN
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 19 —
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq on Wednesday forcefully denounced
the Israeli attacks on Lebanon,
marking a sharp break with President Bush’s position and highlighting the
growing power of a Shiite Muslim identity across the Middle
East.
“The Israeli attacks and airstrikes are completely destroying Lebanon’s
infrastructure,” Mr. Maliki said at an afternoon news
conference inside the fortified Green Zone, which houses the American Embassy
and the seat of the Iraqi government. “I condemn these aggressions and call on the Arab League foreign
ministers’ meeting in Cairo
to take quick action to stop these aggressions. We call on the world to
take quick stands to stop the Israeli aggression.”
The American Embassy did not provide
an immediate response.
–
The comments by Mr. Maliki, a Shiite Arab whose party has
close ties to Iran,
were noticeably stronger than those made by Sunni Arab governments in recent
days. Those governments have refused to take an unequivocal stand on Lebanon, reflecting their concern about the
growing influence of Iran,
which has a Shiite majority and has been accused by Israel of providing weapons to
Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group.
– The ambivalence of those governments has angered many Sunni Arabs in
those countries, despite the centuries of enmity between the Sunni and Shiite
branches of Islam.
Like many other people around the
region, Ahmed Mekky, 40, an Egyptian lawyer and a Sunni Arab, says he supports Hezbollah because
it is doing what he said the Arab leadership has been frightened to do for too
long — standing up to Israel
and the United States.
“We are praying that God would make
Hezbollah victorious,” Mr. Mekky said as he stood beside a newspaper kiosk in
downtown Cairo
on Wednesday. “All the Arab governments are asleep.”
– Perhaps more so than at any time since Iraq’s
occupation of Kuwait in
1990, the bloodletting between
Hezbollah and Israel
has highlighted the huge divide between many Arab countries, and between many
people and their leaders.
– Sunni Arab leaders in Jordan, Egypt,
Saudi Arabia and other
Persian Gulf Countries have complained that since the
rise of a Shiite majority governing Iraq,
and with Iran
pressing ahead with its nuclear program,
– Tehran stands to emerge as the regional
power. Unlike the other countries, Iran has only a tiny minority of Arabs,
with Persians making up a slight majority. (Azeris are the second-largest ethnic group there.)
Some Sunni leaders see in Hezbollah a dangerous beachhead for Iranian
influence in the region. They have criticized Hezbollah
for staging the raid into Israel
and the capture of two soldiers last week that prompted Israel’s attack on Lebanon.
But the longer the conflict drags on,
the more these leaders are finding their credibility called into question. The longer satellite television
shows images of civilians killed and maimed by Israeli bombs, the more these
leaders face hostility from their own people. The longer Hezbollah fires
rockets into Israeli cities and towns, killing and wounding Israelis, the
longer these leaders have to face questions about why they do not take similar
action.
“People know that the Arab governments
are impotent and are always looking for excuses to justify their failure to do
anything,” said Adnan Abu-Odeh, a former adviser to the late King Hussein of Jordan.
“In fact, historically, this episode is another example of how Israel
embarrasses the moderate regimes in the region.”
Prime Minister Maliki’s comments in Baghdad came in response to a reporter’s question about
whether the Iraqi government had plans to evacuate Iraqis from Lebanon.
After lashing out at Israel, Mr. Maliki said he had asked the
Iraqi Embassy in Beirut
to help evacuate Iraqis stranded by the Israeli campaign.
– His stance is noteworthy
because it is a significant split with American policy toward Israel. It has been the
Americans’ hope that Iraq
would become President Bush’s staunchest ally among Arab nations. The
Americans arranged a series of elections that ended up putting Shiite parties
in power, and the White House
helped boost Mr. Maliki by pushing last spring for the ouster of the prime minister
at the time, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Mr. Maliki relies on the presence of 134,000 American
troops in Iraq
to stave off the insurgency led by Sunni Arabs, who ruled over the
majority Shiite Arabs for decades.
The resentment of the Iraqi government toward Israel calls into
question one of the rationales among some conservatives for the American
invasion of Iraq — that an American-backed democratic state here would
inevitably become an ally of Israel and, by doing so, catalyze a change
of attitude across the rest of the Arab world.
– A growing number of Iraqi
officials have stepped forward in recent days to condemn Israel. On Sunday, in a rare show of unity, the 275-member Parliament issued
a statement calling the Israeli strikes an act of “criminal aggression.”
– The militant Shiite
cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose followers play a crucial role in the
government, said last Friday that Iraqis would not “sit by with folded hands” while the violence in Lebanon raged.
Mr. Sadr commands a powerful
militia, the Mahdi Army.
– So far, the most
prominent Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has remained silent.
But another Shiite cleric,
Ayatollah Ahmad al-Husseini al-Baghdadi, of Najaf, in an Internet posting on
Wednesday accused the “international arrogant forces, especially America” of
igniting conflict between Shiite and Sunni Arabs in Iraq and provoking Israel
to attack the Palestinian territories and Lebanon. The ayatollah has relatives
in Lebanon.
An Iraq-born cleric now living in the
Iranian holy city of Qum, Ayatollah Kazem al-Hussein al-Haeri called in an
Internet posting for Muslim warriors to support the “mujahedeen of Lebanon,”
saying that “the battle is all of Islam against all of the nonbelievers,”
according to a translation by the SITE Institute, which tracks Internet
postings by Islamic militants. The ayatollah is Mr. Sadr’s godfather.
In recent days, residents of some cities
in the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq,
including Kut and Basra, have taken to the
streets to protest Israel’s
strikes.
– The Israeli assault
is bringing to the fore one of the unintended consequences of the American war
here — the potential for what many analysts call a Shiite crescent stretching
from Iran to Iraq to Lebanon. It is a phenomenon that
could rewrite the political map of the Middle East,
with Sunni Arab countries drawing together to oppose Shiite dominance.
The lukewarm responses from Sunni countries during the Lebanon
conflict, in contrast to the statements from Mr. Maliki and other Shiite
leaders, are the latest manifestation of the divide.
Top Shiite politicians in Iraq have myriad connections to Iran. Many officials in Mr. Maliki’s
political group, the Islamic Dawa Party, fled into exile there to escape the
brutal persecution of Saddam Hussein. Mr. Maliki also has other ties to pro-Hezbollah leaders in
the region. He spent most of his 23 years in exile in Syria, where he ran the Damascus branch of the Dawa party. Syria
supports Hezbollah and Hamas, the militant group that now leads the Palestinian
government.
Outside of Iraq, popular criticism of those
Arab leaders who have not stood with Hezbollah has been biting. Al Dustoor, an
Egyptian opposition weekly newspaper, mocked President Hosni Mubarak in a
headline comparing him to the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. Mr.
Nasrallah’s son died in 1997 during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Mr.
Mubarak has been accused of positioning his son, Gamal, to take over as
president in six years.
The headline: “The difference between a
leader who offers his son as a martyr and a leader who offers his son as a
successor!”
Also in Egypt, 75 prominent academics,
political leaders and former government officials issued a statement declaring
solidarity with Hezbollah, commending Mr. Nasrallah and criticizing Arab
governments as “silent and impotent.”
It is impossible, of course, to talk about one “Arab Street” because opinions are as
varied as they would be in any multicultural, multinational, multireligious
region. But it has gotten to the point where even some of those who are critical of
Hezbollah for seizing the Israeli soldiers are calling for unity in standing up
to Israel and the United States.
“What is certain is that Hezbollah’s
step and that taken by Hamas before it, lacks political wisdom,” wrote the
Saudi journalist Dawood al-Shiryan in the pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat. “But to
insist on calling the resistance to account for this mistake now that Israel’s
violent response has been launched has created a political reality that is
difficult to describe.” Last month Hamas captured an Israeli soldier during a
raid.
Should Hezbollah and Hamas emerge
victorious, Mr. Shiryan argued, leaders of countries like Egypt and Jordan will be isolated from the
leaders of those groups. And if they lose, Egypt
and Jordan
will bear part of the blame.
Even in Syria, which has offered strong
verbal support for Hezbollah during this crisis and is accused of having helped
arm and train it in the past, there is growing frustration that tough words are
not followed by tough deeds. The Syrian authorities have cracked down recently
on critics of the government, so people who were asked about their views were
afraid to be identified. But in recent conversations at a cafe in the center of
town, many people expressed just that frustration.
“The Syrian leaders don’t want war with Israel,
but what’s the use of supporting Hezbollah under the table?” a retired lawyer
said. “For a long time our government has talked about its support for pan-Arab
issues, but the Syrian people are tired of talk.”
Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, a cashier at a
grocery store in the Cairo
residential area of Zamalek, was watching the Egyptian satellite news when he
expressed his own frustrations with Arab leaders.
“If I could go fight with them, I
would,” he said. “Where the hell are we?”
Edward Wong reported from Baghdad for this article, and Michael Slackman from Cairo. Mona el-Naggar
contributed reporting from Cairo, and Katherine
Zoepf from Damascus.
New York Times