Sunni Shia relations 120907

Bridging the Shia-Sunni Divide With Free Trade

Meena Janardhan

DUBAI, Sep 11 (IPS) - While Iran and the United States exchange aggressive statements, the Arab countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have been busy building trade relations with Tehran and charting an economic course with a potential of mending ties in a tough neighbourhood.

Following an official proposal by Iran, the GCC -- which groups Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates -- is considering negotiations that may lead to the creation of a free trade area.

‘’As long as there is a desire from the Iranian side, the GCC cannot but be positive in relation to such an issue,’’ GCC secretary-general Abdul-Rahman Al-Attiya said on Sep. 2, after receiving a letter from Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki expressing Iran’s interest in trade talks.

Similar ideas have been floated in the past, including a ten-point plan proposed by Shiite Iran in April for establishing a security and cooperation organisation in the Gulf region, but this is the first time that Iran has presented an official letter.

The call for economic engagement comes in the background of a flurry of reciprocal visits by Iranian and GCC leaders over the last year. The effort to bridge the Sunni-Shiite divide, especially with a view to stabilise Iraq, has led the Arab League to call for high-level dialogue between the Arabs and Iran.

The schism in the religion goes back to succession struggles following the death of Islam’s founder Prophet Mohammed in A.D. 632.

Today approximately 85 percent of all Muslims are Sunnis. But Iran is unique in the Islamic world for being overwhelmingly Shia and, in fact, has a constitution that is theocratically Shiite.

After the U.S. removed Saddam Hussein from power, Iraq became the first Arab country to become Shia-controlled. Historically, Iraq was Shia-dominated until 1533 when the Sunni Ottomans seized Baghdad.

But Sunni-Arab countries now see the need for a rapproachment with Iran and the Shiites. On Mar. 3, 2007 King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a summit to discuss the issue and the two leaders declared that the divide only served the interests of foreign powers.

"Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are aware of the enemies' conspiracies. We decided to take measures to confront such plots. Hopefully, this will strengthen Muslim countries against oppressive pressure by the imperialist front,’’ Ahmadinejad said on his return to Tehran from the summit. An official Saudi note said that ‘’the greatest danger presently threatening the Islamic nation is the attempt to fuel the fire of strife between Sunni and Shia Muslims''.

And now the GCC countries have responded positively to the Iranian proposal by setting up a committee to tap the economic potential and advance political cooperation with their large neighbour.

Though born out security concerns in 1981, following the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, the GCC has over the years evolved into a political and economic bloc.

Says Eckart Woertz an economist with the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai: ‘‘Given the proximity of Iran and the GCC countries, a free trade agreement makes sense, although trade relations are not very diversified so far. Iran is mainly exporting oil-related products, while it receives machinery, spare parts and more sophisticated goods from the re-export hub, Dubai.’’

Mohammad Amerah, an Abu Dhabi-based economist, said that a free trade agreement with Iran would be beneficial to all GCC countries. ‘‘I think they will go about it gradually. Eventually, tariff barriers would be reduced to the minimal and there would be smooth trade transactions between the countries exporting and importing among themselves,’’ he told the UAE’s English language daily ‘Gulf News’ on Sep. 5.

At the political level, Qatar’s minister of state for foreign affairs Ahmed bin Abdullah Al-Mahmoud asserted that relations with Iran are remarkable and that the two countries share many things in common besides bilateral ties.

In a statement to Qatar News Agency on Sep. 5, the minister said bilateral trade relations were good, especially since there is a joint commercial committee that meets regularly to discuss all avenues of cooperation. ‘‘The Iran-GCC geographic proximity is an advantageous factor that helps the setting up of a free trade zone,’’ he added.

Encouraged by high oil prices, developing and diversifying their economies have been high on the agenda of the GCC countries in recent years. The emphasis on economic integration led the bloc to establish a customs union in January 2003, with the transition period ending in December 2005. Further, the GCC countries also joined the Arab Free Trade Zone in January 2005.

The bilateral trade volume among the GCC members rose from six percent before the initiation of customs union to 21 percent after that -- from 18 billion US dollars in 2002 to over 31 billion dollars in 2005.

Though there are few signs of progress on a plan to adopt a single currency by 2010, especially after Oman said last year that it would not be able to meet the deadline, the GCC is expected to create a common market by the end of this decade.

However, economic expansion has coincided with security concerns over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, the likelihood of a military confrontation Between Iran and the U.S. and growing Shiite influence in Iraq and Lebanon.

Ahmadinejad claimed last week that his country has achieved a milestone and is now running 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium for its nuclear programme.

The GCC countries have publicly stated that they would not allow their territories to be used as a launch pad for any military attack on Iran. But they have very little room for manoeuvre if the U.S. decides in favour of a military adventure because it is the chief security guarantor for the six-member bloc.

The GCC is also considering a peaceful atomic programme of its own in partnership with the International Atomic Energy Agency and progress on these plans would be discussed at a conference in Qatar in November.

Even though the U.S. claims to be a proponent of free trade, it is unlikely to encourage the proposed GCC-Iran trade negotiations because it would boost the Iranian economy while giving GCC traders better access to Iran.

The Jebel Ali Free Zone in Dubai, one of the seven emirates in the UAE, is already the biggest source of commodities and consumer products to Iran.

On Sep. 1, the UAE issued a new law to control the export of military equipment or dual-use items, heeding to a U.S. warning that action would be taken if enough was not done to halt the flow of technology to Iran and Syria, especially which is used in improvised explosive devices.

As a follow-up the UAE also shut down on Sep. 9 about 40 international and local companies in a crackdown on money laundering and illegal dealing in dual-use equipment and materials banned under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

‘‘Serious political contradictions exist in the case of the Iranian nuclear stand-off and the occupation of three UAE islands by Iran. The GCC countries perceive Iran increasingly as a threat and this could jeopardise any trade negotiations,’’ economist Woertz told IPS.

‘’But on the other hand, political differences have not impeded thriving trade relations between the UAE and Iran so far,’’ said Woertz, adding that there was a potential to scale it up to the GCC level.

Source: IPS News

Kurdish revolt makes Iran uneasy

09/12/2007

By Amir Taheri

For the past year at least, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the backbone of the Islamic Republic in Iran, has been engaged in a bloody war against Kurdish rebels in four provinces bordering Iraq.

Initially, the authorities in Tehran tried to keep the war a secret, referring to it only occasionally as " operations against evil-doers".

However, things changed last February when "evil-doers" destroyed an IRGC combat helicopter killing nine officers, including the regional military commander General Saeed Qahhari. The incident took place in a place called Jahannam-Darreh (Hell Valley) close to Khoy, a town in West Azerbaijan province where Kurds, though present in big numbers, form only a minority.

The IRGC retaliated with a series of attacks against alleged Kurdish rebel positions in the mountainous area around the border town of Salmas in which at least 17 "Kurdish evil-doers", including their overall local commander, a naturalised German citizen of Turkish-Kurdish origin, code-named Doctor Meraat, were killed.

Since then, the IRGC has issued cryptic reports about dozens of other "engagements" in which scores of policemen, border patrols and IRGC members have been killed or wounded while killing at least 100 Kurdish insurgents.

There is no doubt that what is known in Tehran as "the Kurdish threat", represents one of the key security concerns of the Islamic Republic leaders as they prepare for a broader regional war. In response to the insurgency, the IRGC has set up a special command centre at the Hamza Base, near the Iraqi border, and committed one full division plus a unit of airborne Special Forces to curb the insurgency.

The IRGC claims that the rebels are based in Iraqi Kurdistan. The fact, however, is that all the fighting reported until earlier this month has taken place well inside Iranian territory, often in areas with a non-Kurdish majority.

In June, the IRGC started shelling Iraqi Kurdish villages. An unknown number of Kurds, both Iraqis and Iranians who had sought refuge in Iraq, were killed. Despite protests by the Iraqi government, including one delivered face-to-face by Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki in his meeting with the Iranian "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei in Tehran earlier this summer, the IRGC has continued its attacks on Iraqi villages.

The shelling has forced thousands of Kurdish villagers, both Iranians and Iraqis, to abandon their homes and join the flow of "displaced persons" heading for towns deeper inside Iraq. The areas most affected by the fighting are within the strongholds of Iraqi Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani. Both have a history of close ties with Iran going back four decades. Nevertheless, because both allied themselves with the US in toppling Saddam Hussain in 2003, Tehran suspects them of trying to foment a Kurdish insurgency in Iran as part of a bigger "American plot" to destabilise Iran. However, the three Kurdish groups involved in the insurgency can hardly be regarded as vassals of either of the two Iraqi Kurdish chiefs.

New outfit

The group most active in the recent fighting is a new outfit named Kurdistan Free Life Party, better known under its Kurdish acronym of PJAK. Judging by its literature, PJAK is an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) a guerrilla movement of Turkish Kurds that has been fighting for a Kurdish state in eastern Anatolia since the 1970s.

Ironically, Tehran has given the PKK shelter and support against Turkey for years, as a means of bleeding Nato's lone regional member. Some analysts claim that Ankara may have decided to repay Tehran in its own currency by creating PJAK. Others, however, regard PJAK as an effort by PKK to expand its constituency beyond the Kurdish minority in Turkey.

What is certain, however, is that most of PJAK's leaders are not Iranian Kurds. Some of the party's key figures are Turkish Kurds who have lived in exile in Germany for at least a quarter of a century. The fact that PJAK has been operating in areas in Iran that are close to PKK strongholds in Turkey and Iraq is another indication that the two parties may well be one with two names.

The areas where PJAK is active in Iran are home to substantial numbers of ethnic Kurds. But in almost all of them the majority of the population consists of ethnic Turkic-speaking Azeris.

In the Kurdish heartland of Iran, the two provinces of Kurdistan and Kermanshahan, where ethnic Kurds are in majority, PJAK appears to have little support.

There, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK), created 62 years ago, enjoys the largest support, followed by Komalah, a formerly Communist outfit that claims to have converted to democracy after the fall of the Soviet empire.

The PDK, a self-styled social-democratic group, has campaigned for greater autonomy for Iranian Kurds since the 1940s. After the mullahs seized power in 1979, PDK helped their regime in the hope of obtaining concessions. The mullahs, however, banned the PDK and organised the assassination of two successive generations of its leaders in exile in Vienna and Berlin in 1989 and 2002.

Since the murders, the PDK has joined Iranian opposition groups that call for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, but has not preached armed uprising as a means of achieving that goal.

Komalah, however, has waged a guerrilla war against the Islamic Republic for the past 25 years, paying a high price in human terms.

The Tehran rumour mill claims that the replacement of the senior IRGC leaders, including its overall commander, is a sign that the " Supreme Guide" is unhappy about the spreading Kurdish insurgency along the border with Iraq.

As always in the Islamic Republic, however, Tehran's claims of a US-hatched plot to incite the Kurds against the mullahs should be taken with a pinch of salt. The Tehran leadership may be using the claim to justify building a string of fortifications along the border with Iraq in anticipation of conflict with the US. The idea is that, if attacked, Iran would retaliate by entering Iraq from the three Kurdish provinces most loyal to Washington and regarded as the only "safe haven" for American forces there, while inciting the Iraqi Shi'ites to rise in revolt in the central and southern provinces.

Talk of a Kurdish insurgency also helps Tehran impose what amounts to a state of emergency in parts of the four provinces with large Kurdish populations. This has enabled the authorities to arrest hundreds of opponents, including trade unionists, student leaders, journalists, lawyers, and Sunni Muslim clerics without bothering about legal formalities.

There is no doubt that the areas where Iran's estimated 4.5 million ethnic Kurds live are in turmoil, posing a challenge to the leadership in Tehran. The challenge, however, comes from political dissidents, especially working class activists, not guerrillas operating from bases in Iraq.

Source: Gulf News