Rising Afghan sectarianism part of wider Sunni-Shia struggle
Afghanistan is experiencing a potentially ominous increase in sectarianism. Despite the country’s manifold problems, until now sectarianism has not been high on the list. The trend is likely to continue as it is part of the regionwide struggle between Shia and Sunnis.
Afghanistan has a population of roughly 30m, although nearly 3m of this total are living as refugees in Iran and Pakistan. The most significant divisions are ethnic. The best estimate is that Pashtuns make up 42% of the population, followed by Tajiks (27%), Hazaras (9%), Uzbeks (9%), Aimaks (4%), Turkmen (3%), Baloch (2%), and others (4%). On the religious side, the country is almost entirely Muslim, with a split of around 80% reckoned to be Sunni and 19% said to be Shia.
It is this latter division that appears to be becoming more serious, largely because of Iran’s interference in Afghan affairs and the backlash that this has prompted.
The recent upsurge in sectarian violence was once again highlighted with the 24 November Sunni-Shia clashes at Kabul University which led to the closure of four universities in the capital. Almost a year earlier, on 6 December 2011, more than 80 people were killed in three suicide attacks against Shias celebrating Ashura. The attacks were the work of a Pakistani extremist group, but the tendency towards sectarian violence has also infected Afghan groups.
The excellent BBC Monitoring service, which tracks media activity worldwide, has noted a rise in anti-Shia media. It notes that the (Sunni) Salafi-linked group, Jamiat-e Eslah (or Reform Society), has recently launched a TV channel (Eslah TV) in the western city of Herat. It already has two radio stations in Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad, and the group is now planning to launch a nation-wide television station, which will also transmit to the Afghan Diaspora in Europe and North America via satellite. Two radio stations in western provinces of Badghis and Nimroz are also suspected of being linked to the group.
Jamiat-e Eslah has a very active website and publishes a weekly newspaper from Kabul. It also runs a private university in the capital.
According to BBC Monitoring, Eslah TV, which now only broadcasts to the western part of the city and surrounding areas, regularly broadcasts fiery speeches by a well-known anti-Shia preacher from the city's influential Gazargah Mosque.
The Herat-based Saqi TV, which also broadcasts the speeches of the hard-line cleric Mojib Rahman, is owned by a Saudi-educated proprietor, Tareq Nabi. In September 2011, the government shut down Saqi TV for a month ‘for inciting’ people over the burning of a Koran by a hard-line American pastor in Florida.
The rise in extremist media outlets is in part an unintended consequence of the Western pullback. With advertising revenue shrinking, other sources of funding are being sought. It is a gap which is being filled in part by Saudi-funded Salafi groups.
As one example of the trend, the Kabul-based Emroz TV, previously seen as liberal (and anti-Iran), announced last month that it would no longer be broadcasting music or liberal views and would concentrate on religious education.
Jamiat-e Eslah is an offshoot of the Islamic Party of Golboddin Hekmatyar and is thought to be funded from Kuwait. It is said to have been involved in the sectarian clashes at Kabul University in November, and sources say that it is the most active student organization in a number of the most-important universities.
Intelligence sources confirm that Afghanistan is increasingly becoming a battleground in the wider Sunni-Shia struggle for power, the most active theatre of which is currently Syria.
The suspicion is that Iran, fearing the loss of Syria, along with the migration of the Palestinian Hamas movement away from Iranian-Syrian patrongage towards Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood, is making compensating moves elsewhere.
For Tehran, maintaining its hegemony in Iraq is critical, and we have seen Iranian-orchestrated attempts there to break the solidarity between the Sunni Arabs and the Iraqi Kurds by stirring Arab-Kurdish tensions. Elsewhere, this week, Yemen’s head of National Security, Major-General Ali al-Ahmadi, complaining about increased Iranian funding of the Shia Houthi rebellion in north-west Yemen. Other areas for Iranian attentions are Bahrain, the Shia areas of Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon.
For the Sunni Arabs, the absolute key is to ensure that Syria is removed from the Iranian camp, which is now certain to happen with Western help. But while this may help to bolster Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, it is a far less comfortable development for Israel, for whom a pro-Hamas Sunni ascendacy linking Egypt with Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and the Gulf States is no less threatening that the putative Shia crescent linking Iran to Lebanon through Iraq and Syria. Were a powerful Sunni Arab strongman to regain control of Iraq, then the encirclement would be complete, which poses an interesting conundrum for Israel in its thinking about exactly how much it wants to see Iran weakened. Of course, what it really wants is a return to the days of a pro-Western Iran and Ben-Gurion’s ‘alliance of the periphery’. JdeC.
NOTE: The latest opinion polls in Israel, with elections due on 22 January, suggest that the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties will win 63 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Centre, left, and Arab parties will divide the remaining 57 seats between them.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Beiteinu list seems to be on target for 38 seats, with Shas on 11. The Jewish Home-New National Religious Party looks set to gain nine seats with United Torah Judaism on five. On the left, Labor is expected to win 17 seats, with Hatnuah and Yesh Atid both on 11. Kadima is likely to win just four seats, with Meretz on three. The Arab parties will take the remaining 11 seats.