WHO DID IT?

DRAFT--THIRD


WHO DID IT?

The question-du-jour:

Who is the main suspect in the recent explosion of the Shia Askariyya shrine? In other words, what party benefitted/benefits the most–-or exclusively–-from violent strife between the Shia and Arab Sunni at this particular time?

A civil war in a region such as the Middle East, where foreign powers have terrific economic interests (oil, natural gas, and cash to recycle and create jobs in their economies), is rarely one war. It’s a series of wars where alliances are forever shifting, and where more than one war is taking place at any one time.

One of the wars that has been in evidence is that between two alliances:

1. The NO alliance:

Those saying no to total U.S. domination:

Iran
Syria
Hizbullah in Lebanon
Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestine section of Israel-Palestine.

2. The YES camp:

The United States, those on the U.S. payroll, and those who benefit from marshalling Empire’s resources into projects that are advantageous to them, but which they cannot achieve alone:

Britain
Israel
Kuwait
Jordan
Egypt
Saudi Arabia (the pro-American and the pro-British wings)
The Hariri-led part of the Lebanese body-politic
The current Iraqi government.

Most active within the YES camp should be Jordan, for four reasons:

(1) It’s an Arab country which shares borders with Iraq;
(2) It has a solid relationship with the U.S. (Empire);
(3) It had established relations with many among the Sunni and Shia members of the Iraqi Baath, those who once controlled important aspects of Iraqi politics;
(4) It could not afford not to play an active role because:

a. it now needs to “clean up” (so to speak) after the mess the Bush Administration created next door; and

b. Empire is paying it handsomely to assist.

The war between the NO and YES camps has been in evidence for a good while. The bombing of he Jordanian embassy, of the U.N. Headquarters, the assassination and kidnaping of diplomats from Arab and Muslim countries that are dependencies of empire, the kidnaping of Western journalists, the car bombs in Shia neighborhoods that are not directed at the new state police or national guard, the explosions in Iran’s Ahwaz, the hotel suicide bombings in Jordan...

Many of these acts were/are part and parcel of the war between the NO alliance and the YES camp.


EVENTS PRECIPITATING THE SHRINE’S BOMBING

One or more of three events (you guess) very possibly precipitated the shrine bombing, to intensify Sunni (Arab)-Shia civil strife to the hottest level yet:

Event 1:

Dr. Rice’s visit to the Middle East.

This visit, part of the still-alive Greater Middle East project meant to secure once-and-for-all the vast reserves of petroleum and natural gas, seeks to achieve three goals:

a. Jump-start the regional confrontation/war with Iran (Absurd, really.)
b. Reverse Hamas’s electoral victory in the Palestine section of Israel/Palestine. (Mayyybe.)
c. Curtail, even eliminate, Iran and Syria’s influence in Lebanon, which mostly revolves around the idea of subduing Hizbullah. (Stalemate, if lucky; total destruction, devastation, and misery, if not.)


Event 2:

Iranian-Syrian intensified cooperation

The ongoing conference/meeting in Damascus of the Syro-Iranian Joint High Committee, co-chaired by the Syrian Prime Minister and the First Deputy to the Iranian President. This Committee is compelling evidence of a solid alliance between the two countries.


Event 3:

The initiation of a new Islamic front in Iraq

The visit to Syria and Lebanon of Muqtadha as-Sadr, coinciding with the convening of the above described Syro-Iranian conference.


IT’S IN THE DETAILS.

Amman snatched Sadr away from his Damascus visit, seemingly interrupting his trip to Beirut. The Jordanians must’ve had an important message from Empire. We don’t know what the message was; we do know that Sadr went on to Beirut (anyway?). We also know that the young Muqtadha didn’t seem to have reacted well to the message, making public statements in Amman that were assurances to Iran and Syria.

(My guess: America promised large sums of money and/or more American-financed projects for Sadr city. These promises would be meant to return Muqtadha to a neutral camp, at the very least, and to abort his visit to Beirut, Hizbullah’s redoubt. In addition, it’s unthinkable that the message did not contain a stick, a threat.)

Muqtadha must’ve turned down the offer and ignored the threat:

ooo Daringly, from Amman, the Middle Eastern capital that is the most reliable and useful for the United States, after his talks with the Jordanian Prime Minister, Sadr called on the United States to withdraw its troops from Iraq.

ooo After meeting with the Jordanian King, he declared his rejection of the U.S.-mediated Iraqi Constitution and the idea of federalism, so dear to the United-States and its Iraqi proxies.

ooo In addition, he declared his opposition to Arab troops in Iraq, another of the (desperate) ideas of the Bush administration to salvage something from its costly invasion and the shooting-of-self-in-the-foot by dismantling a “working” Arab country.

Why would the U.S. care about returning Muqtadha to a neutral camp? The answer:

Iran and Syria seem to be engaged in taking their alliance inside Iraq to new horizons: To develop an active Islamic front against the United States, made up of much of the old Baath, now mostly Islamic, the younger Islamic Baath, and the Sadrists of the Mahdi Army. (To accommodate Sadr, the alliance will have to starve the al-Qaeda types, financially and militarily.)

It’s an ambitious plan.

It’s more threatening to the American (exhausted) presence in Iraq and to President Bush’s promise of “victory” than any before it.