In a turbulent Middle East, Arab conspiracy scenarios continue to abound. History proves they are not always flights of fancy, writes Ayman El-Amir* Westerners have often scoffed at Arabs as conspiracy theory addicts. Throughout the 20th century, everything Arab nationalists suspected as a scheme by colonial powers against their interests and aspirations was dismissed as a figment of Arab imagination -- another tale from The Thousand and One Nights. Yet after decades of secrecy, declassified documents of confidential meetings, agreements, diplomatic correspondence and reports, from the early years of the last century to the mid-1990s, reveal that the stretch of Arab imagination is much narrower than the scope of the conspiracy. Indeed, it may be safe to assume that conspiracy is at work in the internecine mini-wars raging in Iraq, in intermittent Palestinian Fatah-Hamas clashes, in the precipitous confrontation between the Lebanese opposition parties and the Siniora government, along with threats against Syria and militant non-Arab Iran. This conspiracy is designed by the perpetrator-beneficiary, Israel. Iraq is the scene of the bloodiest civil war the region has known in one hundred years. True, there are a few players with different agendas. But it is by no means the Sunni- Shia sectarian war that is being played to Arab and Western audiences. The Arab-Muslim world has sometimes been the battlefield of political rivalries and conflicts, but not religious wars. Arab history bears no witness to anything remotely close to the 150-year religious wars in Europe, between the 16th and the 18th century. Catholics and Protestants then shed each other's blood profusely as a result of the division among Christian churches and following the relatively peaceful period of the Reformation. Muslims did fight a fratricidal war in the 7th century as part of the political rivalry between Beni Umaiya, led by the ruler of Syria Muawiya Ibn Abi Sofian, and Beni Hashem, represented by the selected Khalif of the Muslims, Ali Ibn Abi Taleb. For all its ferocity, the one-week war ended with arbitration. The spectre of that war and its aftermath haunted Muslims for the following 14 centuries during which they shunned religious conflict. Even though the revered Khalif Ali was assassinated in Kufa in January 661, it is the martyrdom of his son Husain, the grandson of the Prophet, in an unequal battle at Karbala in 680 that is remembered as a heinous crime that troubled Muslims for centuries. The Shias commemorate it with different forms of remorse on the holy day of Ashura every year, while the Sunnis mark Ashura by fasting. Whatever reasons could be cited for the violence in Iraq today, nothing could explain the death of an estimated 1,000 Iraqis during one week of bombings from 28 January to 4 February. A sinister design is at play. In the spirit of grand conspiracy, Israeli-leaning US strategists plotted the Bush administration's invasion and destruction of Iraq, which is now divided up in the interest of Israel. As part of the plan, Israeli agents infiltrated Iraqi Kurds in the north, agitating their ambitions for an independent Kurdistan -- a gathering of the Kurds of northern Iraq, Turkey and Iran. They helped train and arm an estimated 70,000 Kurdish peshmerga, a paramilitary force, as a way of consecrating the division of Iraq and destabilising neighbouring Iran. Elsewhere, in Lebanon, Israeli failure to destroy Hizbullah forces in the month-long war of July-August 2006 left it with only one alternative -- to try to divide Lebanon and incite civil war to wipe out Hizbullah, which is perceived as an extension of Iranian influence in Lebanon. Working hand-in-glove with the Bush administration, Israel is promoting the idea that Shia Iran is a mortal danger to Sunni-oriented Gulf and other Arab states. Iran is being set up as a Shia scarecrow for its Sunni- dominated neighbours because its nuclear programme threatens to undercut the regional supremacy of a belligerent Israel. History, however, tells us a different story about Sunni-Shia relations. When Islam was introduced in Persia after the Arab-Islamic conquest of the Sasanian dynasty in 636, Persians became Sunni Muslims and remained so for almost nine centuries. Shiism came to Iran only when the Safavid dynasty established Shia Islam as the mainstream state religion in the 16th century. On the other hand, Shia Fatimids ruled now Sunni Egypt for nearly two centuries, from 969 to 1171. The Shia-Sunni theory of historical animosity simply does not hold water. It would seem that an agent provocateur is involved. The US and Israel are obsessed with the prospect of a rising, militant Iran with its fast-growing alliances in the region. Iranian interests in Iraq, the Gulf States, Palestine and Lebanon undermine US-Israeli hegemony over the region. Before long, the US conquest of Iraq will become a Vietnam-type bitter experience. US failure to stabilise a divided Iraq, the increasing sophistication of the resistance, the unsustainable level of US and Iraqi casualties and hardening opposition in the US Congress to the war is pushing the Bush administration's strategy towards the inevitable endgame of troop withdrawal. Warrior President Bush has said the US cannot afford defeat in Iraq and its implications for American interests in the region. So he is likely to activate Plan B, which provides for the gradual replacement of US forces by an army of hired mercenaries posing as private security services. Undercover Israeli agents would set off sabotage plans to disrupt Iran's nuclear activities and rupture its connections with Iraqi Shias. A little-noticed paragraph in President George W Bush's State of the Union address to Congress last month was revealing. After asking Congress to authorise the increase of US army and navy corps by 92,000 in the next five years he added: "A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer civilian reserve corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to use civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them." This is widely regarded as a plan of mercenary warfare in Iraq and elsewhere given a mantle of respectability. Such forces are already at work in Iraq, providing "security services" for US diplomats, visiting important persons, and diplomatic convoys. Evidence of this came to light one week before President Bush's address. A US helicopter came down in a hostile Baghdad Sunni neighbourhood as it attempted to rescue an ambushed US convoy. In the exchange of gunfire that followed, the helicopter's four "private security service" staff were captured and shot in the back of the head, execution style. Some US analysts are talking about the Bush administration's plan to outsource the war to mercenary armies, of which there are at least a dozen in Iraq. Mention is repeatedly made of Blackwater Inc, a North Carolina-based corporation that trains and retains an estimated 20,000 special security men. It reportedly has a $300 million contract with the Pentagon to provide diplomatic security in Iraq. Author Jeremy Scahill, who is soon to publish a book on Blackwater, told a US Pacifica Radio network programme recently that as many as 48,000 of the US fighting force in Iraq are private security contractors paid by the Pentagon. In the realm of conspiracy theory, it is not far-fetched that after US withdrawal, the war in Iraq would turn into a low- intensity conflict between insurgents and US-hired soldiers of fortune, with Israeli operatives providing logistical and technical support, and US military hardware. If Iraq is a scorched-earth war zone, the Hamas- Fatah mini-war does not make sense. Not only are both the victim of Israeli occupation and atrocities, but they are also supposed to each fight the occupation, not each other. It is a rare but not unusual phenomenon that national liberation movements have internal dissension over tactics, but not strategy, as they evolve. But to have more than 100 Palestinian freedom fighters killed and 300 wounded in intra-Palestinian conflict since Hamas was elected to power a year ago smacks of yet another conspiracy theory. The election and assumption of government by Hamas faced outright rejection by Israel, the US and the European Union. So, for the Bush administration to request a total allocation of $86.4 million to train and equip the 8,500 National Security Force as a private army of President Mahmoud Abbas, in addition to the Fatah-loyal Badr Brigade stationed in Jordan, could only mean that Abbas is aligning himself with the US and Israel against the consensus of the Palestinian people, represented by democratically elected Hamas. And in his bid to put down militant Hamas, President Abbas is egged on, not only by the US and Israel, but also by some Arab countries that perceive Hamas as dangerously contagious to their conservative regimes. * The writer is a former correspondent for Al-Ahram in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
