SHIITE RADICALS: RISING WRATH JARS THE MIDEAST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403410001-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 22, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403410001-2
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dates to the religion's earliest days, ac-
cording to scholars and diplomats.
"This is a seventh-century battle, a
primitive, atavistic struggle being re-
fought with the arguments - and the
weapons - of the 20th century," said a
Lebanese-born scholar who lives in
Washington, Fouad Ajami.
Middle East.
By one estimate, Shiites make up 95
percent of the population of Iran but
only 45 percent of the population of
Lebanon and 40 percent of the popula-
tion of the United Arab Emirates. In
Egypt, Jordan and North Africa, their
numbers are negligible.
Still, in many places, the growing Shi-
ite fundamentalist challenge threatens
the established Arab order, which is
largely Sunni Moslem. The struggle re-
flects a bitter schism between the
Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam that
the population is Shiite, do they wield
full political power. But even in Leba-
non they range from the radical poor to
a comfortable, if relatively powerless,
middle class, many of whose members
acquired substantial wealth as traders
in West Africa. Moreover, Shiite anger
is but one of the roots of violence in the
mats in Beirut in 1983.
Ruling Establishments Shaken
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the
rulers of Kuwait were shaken when 16
Shiite citizens were arrested and
charged recently with bombing oil in-
stallations.
And in the snowy mountains of north-
ern Iraq, Iran's devout would-be "mar-
tyrs" have seized more ground in the
seemingly endless gulf war.
The Shiites themselves are hardly
monolithic. Only in Iran, where most of
Shiite Radicals: Rising Wrath Jars the Mideast
-7' By JOHN KIFNER
Spec sl to no New York Times
CAIRO, March 21 - From the bleak,
stony hills of southern Lebanon to the
oilfields of the Persian Gulf, Shiite
Moslems inspired by Ayatollah Ruhol-
lah Khomeini's Iranian Revolution
have emerged as a formidable, if un-
stable, political force.
Outside Iran, the most conspicuous
focal point of this new force has been
the shell-pocked southern suburbs of
Beirut, where militant followers of the
Party of God have resisted the Syrian
Army's effort to impose order. The
loosely knit movement is believed to
have been behind the kidnapping of for-
eigners in Lebanon and three suicide
truck bombings that killed more than
250 American servicemen and diplo-,
NEW YORK TIMES
22 March 1987
An Underclass Emerges
The violent emergence of a disen-
franchised Shiite underclass has been
most dramatic in Lebanon. There, the
middle class leadership of the reform-
ist Shiite movement Amal has been
overtaken by the militant slum-dwell-
ers of the angry Iranian-oriented Party
of God. Shiites are also challenging es
tablished power in other areas of the
Middle East, where religion still de-
fines social and political life. These
areas include Kuwait, Bahrain, the oil-
rich eastern province of Saudi Arabia
and Iraq.
Iran's fundamentalist revolution and
its subsequent successes in six years of
war with Iraq have catalyzed Shiites in
a number of Arab lands, experts say.
They say the very rituals and rhetoric
of Shiism are inherently revolutionary.
"The Shiites have a long tradition of
opposition, of not identifying with the
state, which is Sunni," a European dip-
lomat said. "In most societies of the
Middle East they are the social and
economic underdogs."
"The new element," the European
diplomat added, "is that they have got-
ten through Khomeini the Idea of the Is-
lamic republic, of a state of their own."
Dr. Ajami, himself a Shiite from
southern Lebanon, says he sees in the
recent developments a defeat for mod-
eration and reform and a reversion to
the tribe, the clan and the sect that
has always dominated Arab social or-
ganization."
"For Islamic modernists, reformers,
the middle ground has caved in," Dr.
Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins
University, said in a telephone inter-
view. "There isn't any middle ground.
It's economic privilege on one side and
wrath on the other. We're in for a long
season of carnage."
The roots of the conflict are in the
death of Mohammed in 632 and the
split of the religion that he founded into
two main branches, Sunni and Shute.
Islam was both a religion and a state,
embarking on its first conquests of the
Arrbian Peninsula, and it needed a new
lewder to survive.
,1NRohammed's companions chose Abu
Bskr to become the Caliph, or ty.
Bt: some felt the choice shoulr have
been All ibn All Talib, who was married
and son, Hussein, in the desert at Kar-
bala, in what is now Iraq, crystallized
the schism and gave the Shiites their
emphasis on suffering and martyrdom.
" as their own perception, the Shia
w1e the oppositkm in Islam, the de.
hers of the oppressed, the critics
is of privilege and power,"
H and Lewis, an authority on Islam,
hhaas~ written. "Tine Sunni Moslems,
brc%dly speakft stood for the status
quo, the maintenance of the existing
political, social, and above all religious
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09
The'Hidden Imam':
A Powerful Symbol
In Islam's rich legacy of internal
conflict, a succession of subsequent
Shiite leaders, or Imams, were slain.
The Twelfth Imam, still a child, was
concealed from his enemies in 872.
Shiites believe that this "Hidden
Imam" will one day return as the
Mahdi, or Redeemer, to establish the
perfect society, and that until then, all
temporal authority is illegitimate. This
belief has lent Shiism a messianic cast
and presaged its political radicalism.
"It's a terribly fertile religion in
terms of its mobilization symbols,"
said an Arabist who teaches at West
Point, Lieut. Col. Richard Augustus
Norton.
The fine points of Shiite doctrine are
important in understanding the adher-
ents' political behavior, one diplomat
noted. He said attempts by outsiders to
mediate the gulf war or the plight of
hostages run into difficulty "because
mediation is something with strong
negative religious connotations."
The Islamic Revolution of Ayatollah
Khomeini that in 1979 toppled the Shah
of Iran, who was seen as America's
most powerful ally in the region,
proved a historical watershed-
Iraq, with a Shifte majority con-
trolled by President Saddam Hussein's
secular Baathist regime, has been a
prime target for the export of Ayatol-
lah Khomeini's revolution. As an unal-
terable condition for ending its war
with Iraq, Iran has demanded the
ouster of Mr. Hussein.
"If Iran defeats Iraq and an Iraqi
state emerges reflecting the power of
the Shia, it will be a sea change in Arab
politics," Dr. Ajami said.
Violence in Kuwait:
Byproduct of War
Kuwait, roughly one-third of whose
native population is made up of Shiites
who are largely of Iranian origin, has
been just one one of the neighbors
jarred by the war. On Dec. 12,1983, sui-
cide truck bombers from the Iraqi un-
derground organization Al Daawa, or
The Call, crashed into the American
and French Embassies.
Seventeen Shiites were convicted in
the bombings, and subsequent de-
mands for their release prompted the
kidnapping of American and French
hostages in Beirut. Kuwait's ruler,
Sheik Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, nar-
rowly escaped death when a suicide
car bomber crashed Into his limousine, ,
killing his bodyguard.
According to Western intelligence
sources, two of the 17 convicted terror-
ists are Lebanese who are related to
families that are at the heart of Shiite
fundamentalist cells.
In January, a Shiite underground cell
bombed Kuwaiti oil installations as Ku-
wait prepared, over Iranian objections,
to- host for a conference of leaden of
Islamic countries.
Cenfinnod
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403410001-2
In neighboring Bahrain, a financial
center with a Sunni ruling family and a
heavily Shiite population, the authori-
ties in 1981 uncovered a plot traced to
Teheran to overthrow the Government.
The center of Saudi Arabia's oil
wealth, its eastern province of Hasa,
also has a majority Shiite population,
`For Islamic
reformers, the
middle ground
has caved in.'
according to Western diplomats, and
the area experienced riots in 1979.
To the strict Sunni Wahhabi sect that
reigns over Saudi Arabia, a diplomat
said, "Shiites are seen as heretics"
who "have no place in the Saudi theoc-
racy." The human rights group Am-
nesty International reported recently
that Shiites in the eastern province
have been forbidden to practice their
religion.
Heart of the Drama:
A Struggle for Lebanon
But it is in Lebanon, from the remote
Bekaa region in the east to the teeming
slums and refugee districts of war-torn
Beirut and the villages of the south,
that the Shiite drama is most vivid.
Lebanon is a patchwork of warring
sects that have been allocated power
and privilege according to their reli-
gions. In the current order, Maronite
Catholics have gotten the most and Shi-
ite Moslems the least.
What Dr. Ajami calls the "Shia jour-
ney out of self-contempt and political
quiescence" began in 1959 when the
Iranian-born cleric Musa Sadr arrived
as the religious mufti, or judge, in the
southern Lebanese city of Tyre.
Before he disappeared during a visit
to Libya in 1978, Musa Sadr forged the
economic, political, and eventually
military, movement known as Amal.
"Arms are the adornment of the man,"
he declared.
Amal, now under Nabih Berri, has
been primarily a reformist movement
seeking a fairer share of power in a
Lebanese government. But in the last
few years it has been increasingly chal-
lenged by the pro-Iranian Party of God,
which before the Syrian troops arrived
plastered the once-gaudy streets of
West Beirut with portraits of Ayatollah
Khomeini calling for the creation of an
Islamic Republic.
"The Shia 'street' is very different
than 1982, when Amal represented
moderate reformism," said Colonel
Norton. "They were middle of the road,
but the-road has moved way over to the
flank."
In West Beirut, the rise of the Shiites
has not been universally welcomed.
Last month, while the Amal militia be-
sieged Palestinian guerrillas in the
refugee districts, Druse militiamen,
with Sunni backing, attacked the Amal
fighters in some of the harshest street
combat the battered city could recall.
A New Challenge:
Confronting Syria
Syria stepped in with more than 7,000
troops to stop the fighting, and sent the
fundamentalists a message by killing
some 23 Party of God militiamen. The
Syrian move was thought to have
raised tension with Iran, Syria's un-
easy ally. -
Abbas MusawL who Western intelW-
g terrorist
ce1L declared at a recent rally in the
southern city of Tyre that the interven-
tion
scheme" and warned them to stay out
of Beirut's u .
"Our weapons will remain in our
hands and we will not allow anyone to
disarm us in the Bekaa, the south or
'Beirut," Mr. Musawi declared. "We
are restraining ourselves, but if the
situation explodes, we will blow up the
whole world and its people."
Iran has increasingly become an
arbiter in Lebanon, beginning in the
summer of 1982. During the Israeli in-
vasion, it sent about 1,000 Revolution-
ary Guards to the Baalbek area of the
Bekaa. This was the headquarters of
Hussein Musawi, who had split from
Mr. Berri's leadership to form a group
known as Islamic AmaL
The Revolutionary Guards are one
part of an Iranian apparatus report-
edly directed through Iran's embassy
in Damascus and ultimately responsi-
ble to an organization in Teheran that
is headed by Ayatollah Khomeini's
designated successor, Ayatollah Hus-
sein Montazeri, and dedicated to ex-
porting the Islamic Revolution.
By pouring money into the impover-
ished villages of the Bekaa and south-
ern Lebanon and providing training by
the Revolutionary Guards, the Iranians
have built an increasingly effective
Party of God force that has mounted
attacks on the Israeli-controlled en-
clave that is patrolled by Israel's proxy
militia, the South Lebanon Army.
;pk
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403410001-2