With Afghanistan and Pakistan back in the news again — two countries that Senator Joe Biden referred to in a press conference as "the forgotten war" and "the abandoned frontier," respectively — and the ongoing occupation of Iraq still destabilizing the region, this seemed like an appropriate time to repost a thought-provoking article by former JKblog editor Violet Bliss Dietz that originally appeared on this site on February 22, 2007.

And now for some history that should probably have been more prevalent in news media coverage and analysis in 2002 and 2003.   JK has repeatedly talked about the importance of understanding the nature of the ongoing conflict into which we have sent American troops. In doing so, he has referred several times to a book by Vali Nasr, titled "The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future".

In the preface to his book, Mr. Nasr recounts an incident that he observed, which I recall as well, observed through the global eye of television. I interpreted it much differently than he did. Unfortunately for our soldiers, our government did not understand the significance of such an event either.

I was on a research trip in Pakistan in April 2003 when two million Shias gathered in the Iraqi city of Karbala to mark the Arbaeen, the commemoration of the fortieth day after the martyrdom of the Shia saint Imam Husayn [Hussein] at Karbala in 680 C.E. ... On that particular "fortieth day," so soon after the one on which U.S. Marines and jubilant Iraqis had pulled down Saddam's hollow image in Baghdad's Firdous Square, I happened to be on the outskirts of Lahore, visiting the headquarters of a Sunni fundamentalist political group known as the Jamaat-e Islami (Islamic Party).

The office television set was tuned to CNN, as everyone was following the news from Iraq. The coverage turned to scenes of young Shia men standing densely packed in the shadow of the golden dome of Imam Husayn's shrine at Karbala. They all wore black shirts and had scarves of green (the universal color of Islam) wrapped around their heads. They chanted a threnody in Arabic for their beloved saint as they raised their empty hands as if in prayer toward heaven and in unison brought them down to thump on their chests in a rhythmic gesture of mourning, solidarity, and mortification. The image was magnetic, at once jubilant and defiant. The Shia were in the streets and they were holding their faith and their identity high for all to see. We stared at the television screen. My Sunni hosts were aghast at what they were seeing. A pall descended on the room.

...The CNN commentator was gleefully boasting that the Iraqis were free at last--they were performing a ritual that the audience in the West did not understand but that had been forbidden to the Shia for decades. What Americans saw as Iraqi freedom, my hosts saw as blatant display of heretical rites that are anathema to orthodox Sunnis. ... "These actions are not right," said one of my hosts. Iraqis — by which he meant the Shia — "do not know the proper practice of Islam." The Shia-Sunni debates over the truth of the Islamic message and how to practice it would continue, he added, not just peacefully and symbolically but with bombs and bullets. He was talking not about Iraq but about Pakistan.

So what are these differences between Shia and Sunni and how have they evolved? That's not something that I can adequately cover here but I can point you toward a few resources that will start you on a journey of understanding that we all should have taken 5 years ago.

Mike Shuster and NPR put together a magnificent series — one of those that NPR does so well with extended focus over a 5 day period on a single topic — which aired earlier this month. The entire series is available by streaming audio and also available for download as a podcast.

It starts with the genesis of the Shia - Sunni divide, covers the incident of martyrdom celebrated in the event Nasr described above, and moves on into more recent history of where the Shias moved to and how they have existed in tension with the Sunni majority up to the present time.

It is expertly narrated by Mike Shuster, with audio clips from live news coverage of events in more recent history sprinkled throughout. Vali Nasr is one of several scholars whose comments are heard throughout the series. The series is called "The Partisans of Ali" — a name which you will better understand after you've listened to the series.

After listening to the NPR series, you may find that this Washington Post article, "Across Arab World, a Widening Rift", adds more perspective to what's happening across the middle east with regard to the Shia emergence and the reactions by various Sunni institutions and governments. Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post Foreign Service gives us an on-the-ground look at how the recent events are regarded in the largest, most populous Sunni country, Egypt, and how the Shia - Sunni co-existence there has differed from the co-existence in other countries.

Another resource is, of course, Vali Nasr's book, "The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future", which is available now in hardcover and will be released shortly in paperback. Vali Nasr writes in the conclusion of his book:

It is clear today that America cannot take comfort in an imagined future for the Middle East, and cannot force the realization of that future. ... The lesson of Iraq is that trying to force a future of its liking will hasten the advent of those outcomes that the United States most wishes to avoid. Through occupation of Iraq, America has actually made the case for radical Islam — that ours is a war on Islam — encouraging anti-Americanism and fueling extremism and terrorism. The reality that will shape the future of the Middle East is not the debates over democracy or globalization that the Iraq war was supposed to have jump-started but the conflicts between Shias and Sunnis that it precipitated. In time we will come to see this as the central legacy of the war.

In other words, we have opened Pandora's box. Let me start you on your learning journey with this thought which Vali Nasr placed prior to the preface of his book:

Heed not the blind eye, the echoing ear, nor yet the tongue,
but bring to this great debate the test of reason.

-- Parmenides