On Thursday, Jan. 25, the International Studies Association at the University of Connecticut hosted a book talk on “Contextualizing Sectarianism in the Middle East and South Asia: Identity, Competition, and Conflict.” The virtual meeting was held via Zoom and joined by the authors and editors. Satgin Hamrah is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Tufts University; Frank Sobchak is the Chair of Irregular Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point; Heidi Lane is a professor of Strategy and Policy and the Director of the Greater Middle East Research Study Group at the U.S. Naval War College and Andrea Rugh is a technical advisor for USAID development projects in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.
The book focuses on examining how sectarianism has become so prominent in modern times, specifically the Sunni-Shia relationship. These conflicts occurred mainly around the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. The book also includes a good amount of research into foreign intervention. The discussion highlighted “how sectarianism is shaping the Islamic world on state and non-state levels,” according to Hamrah.
Sectarianism is the idea that one sect of a specific religion may be superior or inferior to the others. In the case of the Middle East, the sects of Islam are the Sunni and Shia. Hamrah’s research looked at two specific case studies, the Soviet-Afghan War and Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s period until after 2000.
As for the condition of Iraq since 2003, Hamrah expressed her argument that “it is important to look at the modern historical root causes that contributed to the major surge in sectarian conflict and violence in the post-Saddam period.” From intervention by the U.S. and unresolved tensions, Hamrah concluded that the rise in sectarian conflict and violence “emerged from a legacy of exclusion, and an environment in which identity, both religious and ethnic, were utilized by Saddam Hussein and his government during and after the Iran-Iraq War.”
She began by mentioning how much of a stronghold Islam had in Afghanistan. She stated, “I argue that the Soviet-Afghan War was not only significant as it was a proxy war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but it was significant from a sectarian perspective as well. Most fighters were divided along distinct sectarian lines, Sunni fighters and Shia fighters.” It went beyond just a fight between the superpowers; it became very localized and thus very polarizing. “Both Iran and Saudi Arabia instrumentalize not only Islam for strategic purposes within the context of the Soviet-Afghan War but also strategically used their specific sect to advance their interest and level of influence among members of the respective Islamic sect within Afghanistan,” said Hamrah.
Sobchak viewed sectarianism through an internal lens, specifically through the various elections that took place. His chapter in the book focuses on the “role of the United States and its decisions with regard to Iraqi elections.” Originally it was thought that elections could be stabilizing influences according to the U.S. military doctrine, but instead, they may have been destabilizing factors in an already tense situation. “The general premise is that elections restore legitimacy to the government and thereby remove power from the hands of the insurgent,” stated Sobchak.
Yet this wasn’t the case in Iraq, where the elections “failed to really give time for reconciliation after the fall of Saddam. They also provided new avenues for conflict and new areas for competition.” Many other factors played into why these elections didn’t pan out; Sobchak mentioned that former President George W. Bush was also running for reelection at the time. Therefore, success in the Middle East was being overly rushed without a thought for the post-conflict period.
Going off of American interests, Lane described sectarianism as a major component of the U.S. counterterrorism agenda. “Counterterrorism rather than democratization really became the primary way in which the United States expressed and pursued its interests, as well as interests of its allies and partners in the Middle East,” said Lane. Because of the money and military training that the U.S. provided, long-lasting sectarian rifts were exaggerated and became even more strained. Lane explained that “we would see an uptick in the sectarian practices after the onset of the Arab Spring.” Her main argument was that “many of these counterterrorism practices have inadvertently solidified sectarian differences rather than reduce them.”
The last of the panelists was Rugh, who performed an anthropological study based on Egyptian advice columns during the 70s, 80s and 90s. She had collected and studied over 200 columns from newspapers written by a self-described humanist, Abdul Wahab al-Mutawa, and the religious sheikhs who studied at Al-Azhar University. These columns were responses to questions written to them by Muslim men on what would be the appropriate action for each of their situations, usually in trying to stay adherent to Islamic customs.
Some of these questions related to “Islam’s perspective on certain behaviors such as whether it’s correct to display photos of people, listen to music, the scope of male authority in the household, whether women should work and how Muslims should relate to foreigners and people of other religions,” according to Rugh. While the sheikhs would be strict with their answers, al-Mutawa would push his readers to find peaceful solutions to their problems. “The stories often were very complicated… so Abdul Wahab always tailored his answer to each of these problems. It made his solutions amazingly sensitive and practical,” stated Rugh. Yet both columnists would strongly defend the role of family and family ties.
Each speaker’s contribution to the book has further explained and elaborated on why conflicts in Iraq and the Middle East went the way they did, using sectarianism to see the issues that arose. Because of this, it’s easy to see why things are how they are, especially for those unfamiliar with the conflicts during this time.