CAIRO: It may seem bewildering to Americans who see themselves as helping Iraq.
The rush to blame the United States for the Imam Ali Naqi and Imam Hasan Askari shrines’ bombing is a sign not only of the deteriorating situation in Iraq, but the tense state of West-Mideast relations overall.
From riots over drawings of the holy prophet (peace be upon him) to the Dubai ports dispute to Hamas’ election win, nothing is going right for the United States across the Arab world.
Even a top Iraqi Shia leader, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who US President George W. Bush once praised at the White House — took a poke after Wednesday’s attack on the Askariyan shrines, saying the US ambassador “gave a green light to terrorist groups.”
The outcry, as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on a troubled visit to the region, is a sign of just how much America’s Mideast policy has unraveled in recent months.
Some of that was predictable and even positive in an odd way: the Bush administration has achieved some success at promoting democracy here.
But other, unforeseen problems have cropped up. One is the widespread Mideast belief that the Iraq war is going badly, and that the United States — having invaded against Arab wishes — is now responsible
for the growing sectarian violence.
Or, as then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell once supposedly, famously warned: “You break it, you own it.”
With Iraq veering closer to civil war, many feel like Dr Nabil Salim, a political science professor at Baghdad University who says US-led forces share blame for the shrine bombing “because they are in charge of security in the country ... And they are not doing a good job of improving internal security or controlling borders.”
Beyond Iraq, there have been other controversies — undermining US stature here — that no one could have foreseen.
First was the “culture war”’ fight over the Prophet (peace be upon him) drawings, and the serious misunderstandings it exposed on each side. Countries like Iran and Syria found the perfect chance to kick back at America — the symbol of the West — allowing destructive riots that accused Europe and the United States of seeking to destroy Islam. Those then spread.
Then there was Hamas and its election win, and the escalation that caused in the ever-present tension over American support for Israel. Old friends Egypt and Saudi Arabia told Rice this week they won’t go along with US hopes for a total aid ban to a Hamas-led Palestinian government. Next — almost incredibly to many in the region — there was the dispute over Dubai and whether it can be trusted to keep US ports safe.
It may have stemmed from American fears about security after Sept 11. But many here see Dubai as the model of Arab modernity — the one country actually doing things right. They saw American fears as simple anti-Arab bias.
That dispute won’t be simply or cleanly resolved, either, because the stark fact is America needs places like Dubai: Who else will allow the United States to base spy planes on its territory, or keep freighters to Iran from carrying the building blocks of nuclear weapons?
Even Abu Ghraib still causes a stir here. When new pictures of Iraqi prison abuse emerged earlier this month, Egyptian critics promptly used them to accuse Rice of hypocrisy for citing Egyptian human rights woes.
The problem is that the Middle East is in fact deeply troubled — torn among authoritarian governments, a genuine thirst for democracy and feelings of powerlessness and rage toward the West that lead people toward extremism.
Complicating it all is Shia-Sunni sectarian tensions that are easily exploited by terrorists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the top Al Qaeda man in Iraq who like his boss Osama bin Laden, consider Shias as infidels, and is determined to cause not just civil war in Iraq, but internal Muslim divisions across the region.
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah — no friend of the United States — hinted at just that Thursday when he told huge Shia crowds in Lebanon: “Let’s not blame each other. We shouldn’t give them that opportunity.
We should limit the accusations to the American occupation, its agents and the takfiri (Sunni extremists) murderers . Toward those our rage should be directed.”
All sides —Shia, Sunni, Hezbollah, Iran, friend and foe — blamed the United States. Why?
In the end it may boil down to this: America is the outsider. And if you’re an outsider trying to get your way, sometimes everybody else may pull together just enough to blame you.—AP
