Shadid and others on the “widening” Sunni-Shiite rift

I see my younger colleague Anthony Shadid has been in Cairo, and he has a Cairo-datelined piece in today’s WaPo to which his editors gave this scaremongering headline: “Across Arab World, a Widening Rift; Sunni-Shiite Tension Called Region’s ‘Most Dangerous Problem’.”
Called that by what percentage of Egyptians or other Arabs, you may ask?
Turns out, regarding Egyptians, Shadid provides no evidence that it has been called that by any Egyptians at all. None. Zero. Nada. The quote-ette used by his headline writers there is one from Ghassan Charbel, a Maronite Christian who’s most likely from Lebanon, a country that these days is plagued by its own sharp political differences, some of which have a sectarian aspect.
From Egyptians, all that Shadid is able to provide by way of “evidence” for the headline-writer’s claim is two items:
1. This quote about sectarian divisiveness, from writer and analyst Mohammed al-Sayid Said: “To us Egyptians… [it is] entirely artificial. It resonates with nothing in our culture, nothing in our daily life. It’s not part of our social experience, cultural experience or religious experience.” But he added: “I think this can devastate the region.” (Left unclear: whether he included Egypt itself in the portion of the region that might be thus devastated, and what probability he assigned to this happening.)
2. This completely ambiguous description of the behavior of a (presumably Sunni?) sidewalk book vendor called Mahmoud Ahmed: “”The Shiites are rising,’ he said, arching his eyebrows in an expression suggesting both revelation and fear.”
And this is evidence??
I wonder, did Shadid go on and ask Mr. Ahmed the quite logical follow-up question, “And how do you feel about that rise?” If so, what answer did he get? Did he, more to the point, ask Ahmed or anyone else in Egypt whether in fact they consider sectarian divisiveness to be their region’s “most dangerous problem”? Did he, indeed, ask them to rank the danger they perceive from that phenomenon against that from, for example, further US military attacks in the region, or other US or Israeli actions here?
There are a few other significant things about the way Shadid’s piece has been constructed. First of all, I should note that Shadid does offer some intriguing and substantial evidence that Egyptian “men in the street” (no women quoted at all, I note… I wonder, do they not count?) are not actually very worried about the prospect of the relative rise in Shiite power in the region… Read the last one-third of his piece for that. Here’s what he says of a downtown Cairo tea-vendor and his customer:

Both scoffed at the sectarian tensions.
“There’s a proverb that says, ‘Divide and conquer,’ ” Mohammed said. “Sunnis and Shiites — they’re not both Muslims? What divides them? Who wants to divide them? In whose interest is it to divide them?” he asked.
“It’s in the West’s interest,” he answered. “And at the head of it is America and Israel.” He paused. “And Britain.”

Left unclear there was whether the quoted tea purchaser, Muhsin Mohammed, is himself a Sunni or Shiite. Most likely a Sunni, since only around one million of Egypt’s 75 million people are Shiites.
Shadid goes straight on from there to write, “That sense of Western manipulation is often voiced by Shiite clerics and activists, who say the United States incites sectarianism as a way of blunting Iran’s influence.” Then the evidence he provides of that comes from Lebanese Hizbullah head Hassan Nasrallah and some leaders of the Shiite community in eastern Saudi Arabia.
Left unreported by him were the statements forcefully rejecting Sunni-Shiite divisiveness that have been issued by both the Supreme Guide of the (Sunni) Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (e.g. here) and the Shaikh of the influential, government-backed Al-Azhar Mosque here in Cairo… In other words, Shadid leaves the reader able to think that it is only the Shiites among the Islamist religio-political activists who see the threats of sectarianism as a western plot, and that maybe the Sunni activists are all currently consumed by and contributing to the fears of the Shiites’ “rise”.
Ain’t so.
As I have written before, I see the main relevance of this whole issue, and the one-sided nature of the reporting on it in the US big media, as being the degree to which US decisionmakers might expect to win support from the Sunni-Arab states and their publics in the event of a US military attack on Iran. Most people in the policymaking community in Washington DC realize that to launch an attack on Iran in the absence of substantial support from the Arab states would be to leave all those US troops who are currently spread out very thinly in the Middle East, and the very vulnerable supply lines that support them, extremely exposed to the possibility of themselves being attacked. And therefore, to attack Iran in the absence of solid evidence of the probability of such support would be the height of recklessnes– actually, imho, recklessness to a criminal degree.
Administration officials and others who are either preparing the ground for an attack on Iran or actively advocating such an attack have therefore launched a broad campaign to persuade the rest of the (increasingly skeptical) US policy elite that this attack could garner wide Arab support. My judgment, which I have tried to express in various places, is that it would not… And everyone in the US policy elite needs to be very clear about that.
One of the key things I have found from my contacts here in Cairo so far is that anti-Americanism runs far, far deeper than any concerns about Iran or about the Shiites’ “rise”.
This was also found by the Zogby poll of opinion in six Arab countries with pro-US governments whose results Shibley Telhami released (possibly sooner than he was supposed to?) on February 9. (Hat-tip to Abu Aardvark for that link, which I “Delicioused” a couple of days ago.) That PDF file there contains more than 100 easy-to-read “slides” that present the survey’s results. I gathered from elsewhere that the survey was taken last November.
That’s significant, because it was taken before the Saddam-execution video, which no doubt did affect opinions to some degree. Though it’s not clear how lasting those effects were… Public opinion trends move very fast indeed in the Middle East these days. And the Saddam-execution story is nowadays very much “yesterday’s news” here, having been largely overtaken by all the Arab and Muslim concerns about Al-Aqsa mosque, jubilation at the Fateh-Hamas peace deal, etc… In other words, by stories that have tended to unite rather than divide the Muslims of the region.
But anyway, another interesting question: Why did the (US) people who commissioned this opinion poll delay so long before releasing the results??
You can find a brief description of the methodology on the last slide in Shibley’s collection there. The six countries were Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia (KSA), and the United Arab Emirates. Note that the population of Egypt alone among those is greater than the populations of all the other five put together, though there were only 800 Egyptians among the 3,850 individuals questioned by the pollsters.
So what were some of the main findings of the poll?
p.3: “Please tell me which world leader (outside your own country) you admire most:”

#1, Hassan Nasrallah– 14%; #2, Chirac– 8%; #3– Ahmadinejad– 4%; #4 Chavez– 3%. [Note that that wording excluded from consideration the views Lebanese people would have expressed about Nasrallah, roughly half of whom might otherwise have named him; and it also thereby distributed more votes among other ‘contestants’ in this race than they would otherwise have won… On the other hand, population-wise, lebanon doesn’t affect the total outcome very much.]

p.7: “Please tell me which world leader (oustide your own country) you dislike most?”

#1, Bush– 38%; #2, Sharon– 11%; #3, Olmert 7%; #4, Blair– 3%. Sharon + Olmert comes to 18%. The combined totals for these US, British, and Israeli leaders comes to 59%.

p.17: Name the two countries that you think pose the biggest threat to you:”

#1, US– 74%; #2, Israel– 79%; #3, Iran– 6%.

I note that Marc (Abu Aardvark) has published this update to his post:

UPDATE: the Anwar Sadat Center, under whose auspices Shibley Telhami conducts these surveys, has contacted me to let me know that they made an error in their preliminary calculations on the question “which two countries pose the greatest threat”. The correct figure for the United States is 72%, not 74%; and the correct figure for Iran is 11%, not 6%. (Israel is #1 at 85% in the corrected calcuations).

The results on p.22 are very worth reading.
On p.25 we have this: “Generally speaking, is your attitude toward the US very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable?”

Very unfavorable– 57%; Somehwat unfavorable– 21%; Somewhat favorable– 8%; Very favorable– 4%.

P.31: “Would you say that your attitudes toward the US are based more on US values or US policy in the Middle East?”

Based on policy– 70%; Based on values– 11%.

P.35: “When you consider US objectives in the Middle East, how important do you think the following factors are. The following is the % of respondents who answered “extremely important”:

Controlling oil– 83%; Protecting Israel– 75%; Weakening the Muslim World– 69%; Desire to dominate the region– 68%… Those were the hi-fliers; then we have: Preventing the spread of WMD– 39%; Promoting peace and stability in the Middle East– 10%; Spreading Human Rights– 10%; Spreading Democracy– 9%.

I would say those results should be among the most worrying for members of the US policy elite. These Arab respondents have definitely not bought all the propaganda the Bush administration has been churning out in the region over the past five years… This degree of distrustfulness is HUGE. And remember, these are only the numbers of people who thought each of these motivations was “extremely” important to the US…
P.42 is interesting– though it is hard to understand, since the question is about respondents’ “biggest concern about the consequences of the War in Iraq”, but the answers add up to considerably more than 100%.
P.44 has this: “Did the war in Iraq bring more or less peace in the Middle East?

Less peace– 81% (duh!); More peace– 4%.

Following slides ask the same question about whether the war brought more or less terrorism: 80% said more; 8% said less. And more or less democracy: 69% said less; 6% said more.
On p.52 we have this: “What do you believe would happen in Iraq if the US quickly withdrew its forces?” (Remember, this is perceptions/expectations in these Arab countries, not in Iraq. But interesting nonetheless– especially given the many close linkages between Iraqis and the populations of, in particular UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.):

#1, Iraqis will find a way to bridge their differences– 44%; #2, Civil war will expand rapidly– 24%; #3, The situation will not change– 23%.

In other words, just under one quarter entertain a lively fear that the Iraqi civil war would “expand rapidly” in the event of a speedy US withdrawal.
Then the poll turns to Iran. On p.57 there is this: “There is international pressure on Iran to curtail its nuclear program. What is your opinion?” Answers: #1, Iran has the right to its nuclear program– 61%; #2, Iran should be pressured to stop its nuclear program– 24%. The highest support expressed within any one of the six countries for pressuring Iran to stop the program is (p.58) in Lebanon (43%), where most likely views on this subject are tightly bound up with views on internal Lebanese contests over the degree of Shiite power in their own affairs. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which are the two surveyed countries that are closest to Ira, show degrees of support for pressure on Iran of 34% and 32%, respectively.
And moving along to Lebanon… p.62 has, “When you consider the outcome of the ebanon-Israel War, who do you think emerged as the biggest winner?” Answers: Hizbullah– 62%; Israel–16%; “The Lebanese people”– 9%; “The Lebanese government”– 4%; Arab governments– 2%; Syria– 1%.
One interesting tidbit there… If you go to the next page, you see that for Lebanese respondents only, the first four of these figures were 34%, 17%, 24%, 3%, and 2%, respecytively. (Syria wasn’t mentioned.) Actually, attributions of victory to Hizbullah were far higher in all the other countries, except Saudi Arabia, where it was also 34%. Saudi Arabia was also the only country in which attribution of victory to Israel (49%) was higher than it was to Hizbullah.
In Lebanon, I would note that Hizbullah and its sympathizers have a degree of politically inspire “modesty” when it comes to claiming victory for the party itself, and often prefer to describe it as a victory for “the Lebanese people”. Along that line, you find on that page that attribution of victory to “the Lebanese people” was significantly higher in Lebanon (24%) than it was in any of the other countries surveyed. In the other countries, last summer’s war looked much more clearly like a two-sided battle between Israel and Hizbullah.
On p.66, we have this: “After the Lebanon War, describe your attitudes toward Hizbullah:” Answers: More positive– 68%; Unchanged– 17%; More negative– 8%.
Again, the country-by-country breakdown on the following page is also interesting, and shows that Hizbullah “gained” the least in Lebanon, of any of the countries surveyed. It’s worth remembering that because of the particular demogarphic and sectarian breakdown of its population and its very strong permeation by western influence and capital, Lebanon’s opinion is nearly always different in regionwide surveys from that of other Arab countries. (Starting from the fact that many Lebanese still continue to aver that they are not even “Arabs”, at all!)
On to Palestine… On p.69 we have this: “How important is the issue of Palestine in your priorities?” Answers: Most important issue– 43%; Top 3 issues– 34%; Top 5 issues– 11%; Not top 5 issues– 5%.
This is an interesting question on p.71, with answers very significant for Israeli strategic planners as they look at the “credibility” of their military “deterrent”: “Looking at the recent violence in Lebanon and Gaza, describe your attitudes toward Israel’s power:”

Answers: “Used its power to consolidate its position even more”– 13%; “Weaker than it looks/matter of time before it is defeated”– 46%; “No one can tell if it will get stronger or weaker”– 36%.

I wonder if Israeli strategic planners, looking at that, will conclude that they need to re-establish Israel’s “deterrent power” by fairly rapidly launching another “knockout blow” someplace that would– they hope– be significantly more successful at “teaching the opponents a lesson” than the one they tried to deliver against Lebanon last summer? Or will they conclude that maybe they had better enter into serious negotiations with their neighbors as soon as possible, before their deterrent power erodes any further??
I fear the former, but continue to hope (and work for) the latter…
From p.73 we learn, crucially that only 29% of respondents said they supported the following statement: “Even if the Israelis return all the territories occupied in 1967 peacefully the Arabs should continue to fight Israel no matter what the outcome.”
A total of 61% said they supported this statement: “I am prepared for a just and comprehensive peace with Israel if Israel is willing to return all the territories occupied in the 1967 War including East Jerusalem”. Those 61% were split between these two corollaries to that statement: “…and I believe Arab governments should exert more efforts on this issue” (23%), and “… but I do not believe the Israelis will give up these territories peacefully” (38%). Of course, those two corollaries are not necessarily mutually exclusive; indeed, they have little relationship to each other logically or otherwise. Except, I suppose, if one doesn’t believe the Israelis will withdraw peacefully, what is the point of the Arab governments doing more on the issue?
P.96 is interesting. “Which of the following is closest to your view on Palestinian politics:” Answers: Support Hamas– 31%; Support Fateh and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas– 10%; Support a Palestinain Unity Government– 43%. P. 97 shows that support for Hamas is particularly strong in the UAE (38%), Saudi Arabia (34%), Egypt (32%), and Morocco (29%). Jordan and Lebanon are the two countries surveyed with the largest populations in them of Palestinian refugees. There, the support for a Palestinian unity government was striking: 55% in both places.
P.103 tells us this: “When you watch international news which of the following network’s news broadcasts do you watch most often?” Al-Jazeera wins with 54%. “An Egyptian network” comes in #2 with 12%. MBC has 11%, and Saudi Arabia’s generally pro-western Al-Arabiyaa gets 5%. (Hizbullah’s Al-Manar gets 3% and the US-created Al-Hurra gets 1%.)
Phew! Totally more time than I intended to spend on this “tiny” blog post… But I think this quick analysis of the poll results has definitely been worth doing… And now, back to Egypt…