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2017.02.019. URAL SHARIPOV. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST AND THE SUNNI-SHIITE CONFRONTATION // "Obozrevatel = Observer", Moscow, 2017, № 2 (325), P. 58-66.
Keywords: Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Greater Middle East, ISIS, the Aerospace Forces of the Russian Federation (VKS).
Ural Sharipov,
Dr.Sc.(Political),
Institute of Oriental Studies, RAS
The period of the collapse of the world colonial system (20th century) is a period of political formation of the sovereignty of many peoples of the East and the search for development within the framework of independent national states. Therefore, the author writes, it is advisable to consider the current situation in the Middle East in both political and religious aspects simultaneously. Interstate political and confessional (Sunni-Shiite) relations coexisted peacefully under the shadow of new local constitutions and legislations until the 1980s. The emerged cases of confrontation were neutralized by governments relatively quickly. There was a political mistrust of the Muslim community in the Middle East towards the West, and primarily to the U.S. because of their support of the state of Israel that arose in the territory of Palestine. The problem of the Sunni-Shiite contradictions in the Middle East did not seem significant under those conditions. Thus, Tehran sent troops to Oman against the guerrilla movements of Darfur to rescue the Sunni royal authority in Oman, as well as to suppress the Shiite Kurdish rebels in their own country. At the same time, both Iran and Saudi Arabia had a very restrained attitude towards the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict. Even Egypt reduced its hostile attitude toward Tel Aviv after the conclusion of the Camp David agreements (1978). In 1978-1979, an Islamic revolution took place in Iran, which expressed the new social sentiments of the common people of the Middle East - discontent with the growing penetration of the West
into the life of the Arab countries. The ideological and related political situation in the region began to escalate from this moment. Washington, basing on strategic neo-colonialist aspirations to maintain and expand the U.S. political, military and economic positions in the Middle East, also saw the main threat in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The author of the article notes that the opponents of Tehran began to search for optimal options for its neutralization, taking into account the prevailing social and political situation in the Middle East. At first, a plan based on the Iran-Iraq conflict over the Shiite status in Iraq was used. Saddam Hussein sent his army to the Islamic Republic of Iran, encouraged by American diplomats, as well as the leadership of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. American diplomats assured the Iraqi leader that the former army of the Shah was so disintegrated under the new regime that it would not stand any organized influence. However, the "blitzkrieg" undertaken by Baghdad proved to be erroneous - the war was prolonged for many years.
The main factor of public sympathy on the side of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war was pan-Arabism and implicitly - Sunnism. However, the anti-American Arab regimes - Syria and Libya - took the side of Tehran in the political aspect, considering that Iranian anti-Americanism was a political defense of the sovereignty of the Muslim area. Both sides suffered huge losses, both in manpower and in the economy as a whole in the end of the Iran-Iraq war. The West has received sufficient dividends: firstly, the region witnessed a long-term military confrontation between two major States belonging to different ideological branches of Islam; secondly, the armed contingents of the U.S. and the UK were deployed in the Persian Gulf region as the guarantors of security of the Arabian monarchies. This circumstance was used by the West for the further intervention in the internal life of the Middle East. In early 2002, the U.S. government proclaimed a new foreign policy concept, according to which the U.S. gave itself the right to overthrow any foreign government whose policy would threatened the U.S. national security. The terrorist act of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington was used by the U.S. on a much larger scale
than required by objective circumstances and without permission resolutions of the UN Security Council and contrary to the agreement of a number of world powers. The victims were, first of all, Iraq and Afghanistan: Afghanistan was attacked in the autumn of 2001, and Iraq - in the spring of 2003. Both countries were fully occupied, and the so-called "international coalitions" were formed for this purpose. As a result, the power of the Taliban in Afghanistan was overthrown, and Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun representative loyal to Washington, was appointed the head of the Afghan transitional administration. As for Iraq, the government of the coalition government was proclaimed there, formed mainly by the Shiites and Kurds. The Sunnis, the main support of the former regime, were pushed to secondary roles in the state structure.
The factor of the so-called Arab Spring - waves of demonstrations and coups, covering Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen - was promptly "used" by external and local ruling structures captured by the preservation of their interests. The antiimperialist attitude of the Arabs has not been developed, and the "spring" has actually been brought to nothing in both social and political plans. Moreover, at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, Great Britain and France carried out open armed actions against the Libyan Jamahiriya, and as a result the Middle Eastern regimes, which were the political opponents of Washington, Israel and their allies, were liquidated. The growing influence of Shiism in the Middle East was taken into account that embraced Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the Persian Gulf countries, with the assistance of Tehran. Thus, the conditions for the organization of a frontal collision of armed formations were created, acting under the banner of Sunnism and Shiism.
This circumstance has expanded the possibilities for intervention of world powers in the region even more. Syria, Iraq and Yemen were the largest arenas of political and armed conflicts, which are often called inter-confessional in the world media.
In the first stage of the civil war (until the summer of 2015), ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and Al-Qaeda seized more than 70% of the
territory of Syria and actually threatened Damascus. As for Iraq, more than 30% of its territories came under the control of supporters of terrorist organizations as well, including the western cities of Falluja and Ramadi and large industrial Mosul in the north. The ruling circles of the U.S. and the Western coalition countries have gone through the adoption of their own military countermeasures. B. Obama said in September 2014 that although he did not introduce American troops, he would selectively bomb the territory of Syria and Iraq. As for Great Britain and France having mandated territories in the Middle East, they joined the bombing of the rebellious (by their definition) ISIS forces: France engaged in this in Syria and Iraq and the United Kingdom - in the territories of Iraq, captured by the terrorists.
The beginning of the second stage of the civil war in Syria is connected with the entry of the Russian Aerospace Forces into military operations at the request of the legitimate Syrian government on September 30, 2015. The effectiveness of the Syrian-Russian cooperation has caused some concern among NATO countries. They began to fear that the preservation of the unity of Syria under the conditions of the existing legal leadership of the country could inspire other states of the Middle East to oppose the West and neutralize its interference in the internal affairs of the region. There has been a strengthening of the military intervention of the Western powers (the U.S., Britain, Germany and France), as well as Turkey and Saudi Arabia into the conflict in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The negotiations between the conflicting parties eventually led to the signing of an armistice on February 27, 2016 between the Syrian government and the moderate opposition within the ceasefire in Syria. It should be noted that the ceasefire did not apply to the ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and other entities recognized by the UN Security Council as terrorist and banned in Russia and in a number of other countries. However, while the government armed forces have achieved considerable success in the western part of Syria, the armed clashes with terrorist groups continued.
In Iraq, the opposing sides have not reached the ceasefire regime yet and the military situation has not become simpler, although terrorist organizations are losing the initiative more and more. In Yemen, there is a long process of negotiations between the opposing Yemeni Sunnis and Shiites with the participation of an international coalition led by Saudi Arabia. However, the parties have not reached reconciliation yet.
The author concludes that the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites in the Middle East are more political than religious in total. The political interests of various social elites, defending their power priorities, act as agents of conflict and interstate contradictions. The provocative activity of the external forces (primarily the Western special services) which, at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, facilitated the acquisition of force by Muslim sectarianism to conduct an armed struggle for power in the region against regimes unsuitable for the West, have played a large role in the emergence of the conflict situation in the Greater Middle East.
Author of the abstract - B. Mahmudov.
2017.02.020. DILYARA BRILYOVA. THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASPECT OF INSIDER AND OUTSIDER IN ISLAMIC STUDIES //
"Islamovedenie", Makhachkala, 2016, Vol. 7, № 4, P. 46-57.
Keywords: the anthropology of Islam, the methodology of Islamic studies, the insider, the outsider, the principle of objectivity.
Dilyara Brilyova,
PhD (History), Assistant of the Department of Religious Studies, ISFN MK and CFU, Kazan
The author asserts that the problem of insider and outsider approaches in religious studies is an important methodological issue, previously based on the criteria of objectivity and
