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The Funding of Terrorism (Part IV) – A Trust Deficit is Undermining the Investigation of Terrorist Financing across MENA

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by Jack Watling

Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei (Image credit: Ayatollah.ir/Wikimedia)

 

The Kingdom of Bahrain sentenced 139 people to prison in April 2019, alleging they were part of a terrorist cell, which the authorities refer to as ‘Bahraini Hezbollah’. The charges in the mass trial ranged from plotting to conduct attacks and the smuggling of arms, to terrorist financing. Specifics however were not revealed, and point to a damaging trend: the use of ‘terrorism’ as a politically acceptable charge with which to implement repression. The consequences of this policy are not just unjust, but in pushing communities to avoid cooperation with the authorities sustains avenues for actual terrorists to finance and carry out their operations.

There are armed groups active in Bahrain, just as there are non-state armed actors, many of which have carried out terrorist attacks, in Iraq, Syria, the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon. Many of these groups are directly supported by Iran in these activities. While sanctions on Iran can be effective in reducing the country’s available resources for financing clandestine activities, limited progress has been made in restricting the routes by which money reaches armed groups. To understand why, it is necessary to appreciate how the Shia community manages its tithes. Although a minority of Shia Muslims are followers of Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s religious leadership has ties across the Shia community, and the Iranian government is consequently able to leverage these networks.

Each Twelver Shia Muslim selects an Ayatollah – or religious jurist – as their spiritual guide. They are obligated to follow the scholar who they believe to be most theologically knowledgeable. A follower must pay a fifth of their profits each year to their Ayatollah. The khums is supposed to support the Ayatollah in his research, and to provide subsistence for the Howza: the seminary he oversees. Many Shia give more than the required khums and, in discussion with the cleric or their representatives, make additional donations for him to spend in support of an agreed cause.

The Shia financial system was developed in small communities. Between the collapse of distance brought about by international finance, and a rapidly expanding global population, it now sees donations made by a community of around 220 million people. The volume of money is therefore vast, and far exceeds the immediate needs of the Ayatollahs and the Howza. A far higher proportion of the money is therefore used to support charitable ventures, and to help Shia communities.

What constitutes ‘help’ is contextual. It may mean educational scholarships to students in Mali, or aid to flood victims in Pakistan. It could also mean supporting military activity. When Islamic State seized Mosul in 2014 Grand Ayatollah Sistani declared the fight to defend Iraq a ‘sacred defense’ and large amounts of money from the Marjaiy’ah – the Shia clerical authority – went to the Popular Mobilization Forces, and their families, to support the war effort. The use of religious funds to support the war effort was understandable. It also highlighted how the Shia financial system can support a wide range of political causes, and military efforts.

The capacity for Shia clerics to inject political and financial capital into causes was lamented by the British in the early twentieth century.[1] It has been viewed with hostility by Arab governments since, especially in the wake of the Iranian revolution of 1979. Following the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 for instance Grand Ayatollah Sistani decided that Bahraini Shia should use their khums locally.[2] Done for humanitarian reasons, this act gave the protest movement both a large amount of money, and the infrastructure for managing it.

Much of that infrastructure is entirely opaque, with local religious representatives receiving cash, and conveying or dispersing it as a matter of trust. The Shia community has a good reason for keeping their finances away from the banking system. In 1991 for instance Saddam Hussein looted the Shrines of Karbala, and actively attempted to seize khums revenues.  The fear that opening the process to scrutiny will see predatory seizures by hostile governments is both persistent within the Marjai’yah, and understandable.

From the point of view of Arab governments like Bahrain or Saudi Arabia however this architecture provides a highly suspicious and invisible flow of funds that goes to both legitimate charity, and to subversive political activities. It is exploited by Iran. The problem is that because it is opaque, finding the evidence trail of the small amount of terrorist financing in the large flow of legitimate funding is hard, especially when those conducting legitimate charity have no incentive to cooperate with the authorities.

Bahraini officials have repeatedly sought to have US counterterrorism investigators endorse their actions against what they see as Iranian subversion in their country. The problem, as a former senior US Treasury official noted in interview, is that ‘they present us with suspicious unknowns – and the opacity of Shia finance certainly represents a threat vector – but they claim it is evidence of terrorist financing. It is not.’[3]

If Bahrain – and other Gulf monarchies – intend to clamp down on the financing of terrorism they need to avoid mass trials and vague charges. They must conduct diligent investigative work, and present detailed cases. Charging five people with specific, evidenced crimes, would be infinitely more credible. It would require a shift from attempting to rule by law, to supporting the rule of law. But until governments across the region are able to build trust with the Shia community, they can expect Shia finance to remain opaque, and so long as it is opaque, it will remain a vector for the financing of subversion from Iran.

Jack Watling is Research Fellow for Land Warfare in the Department of Military Sciences at RUSI. He holds a PhD in history examining the evolution of UK policy responses to civil war. Jack has worked in Iraq, Mali, Rwanda and further afield and has contributed to the RUSI Journal, RUSI Defence Systems, Reuters, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Jane’s Intelligence Review, Haaretz and others. He was shortlisted for the European Press Prize in 2016, and won the Breakaway Award at the International Media Awards in 2017. This report was supported with funding from the Pulitzer Centre.

[1] TNA, FO 800/70: Cecil Spring Rice to Edward Grey, 18 July 1907.

[2] Author interviews with officials from Iraq’s clerical establishment, held in October 2017 in Najaf.

[3] Author interview, a former senior treasury official, Washington DC, April 2019.

Strife Feature | Sunni-Shia Conflicts: From A Trick To A Reality

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By Guillaume Beaud

Shia and Sunni worshippers join for a common pray in Kuwait, following the deadly terrorist attack at the Shia mosque in 2015 (credit: Fayçal Yasser, AA, Koweït)

Most Western observers analyse a vast majority of Middle-Eastern upheavals as a Sunni-Shia conflict. Increasingly mobilized since the King of Jordan Abdullah II warned about a “Shia Crescent” in 2003 after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. Syria, Yemen and the tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia quickly fell into the Sunni-Shia analytical grid.[1] Since 1979, and more increasingly since the Arab Spring, Middle-Eastern states and non-state actors have abundantly mobilized communitarian differences – through a top-down discourse – to pursue their rational political agenda. Therefore, despite the initial irrelevance of an essentialist Sunni-Shia divide, oppositions have progressively materialized on the ground and in the collective imaginary, morphing from a mean to an end into a “self-fulfilling prophecy”.

Essentialist Sunni-Shia theses are flawed

The death of Muhammad in AD 632 and the issue of his succession marked the theological split between Sunnis and Shias. Nonetheless, the following centuries reflected a low level of conflict between the two communities. There was a substantive mixture between Sunnis and Shias – especially within Iraqi tribes – in the Gulf region, thanks also to movements like the Sufi Brotherhood that built trans-Islamic bridges. Their relations were defined by pragmatism rather than theological ideals, and tensions existed between different schools of Sunnism. These developments made Sunni-Shia confessional differences irrelevant to such an extent that Al-Azhar theologians wondered whether the distinction should be kept and thought about incorporating the

These developments made Sunni-Shia confessional differences irrelevant to such an extent that Al-Azhar theologians wondered whether the distinction should be kept and thought about incorporating the Jafarit school of Shiism as the 5th school of Islam. In the early 1970s, it is important to recall the universalist, left-wing and trans-Islamist vocation of Iranian revolutionary discourses, embodied by the prevailing “Khomeiny-Arafat” rhetoric.

From the 16th century onwards, Sunni-Shia differences started to become instruments mobilized by increasingly centralistic political entities. [2] The Safavid Empire converted Iran to Shiism to oppose the Sunni Ottoman Empire – a political decision without religious roots. Similarly, seeking legitimacy in faith, Saudis made their fundamental pact with Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, father of Wahhabism in 1744. However, Iranian defeats against Russia in the early 19th century induced the idea amongst Iranian intellectuals that Islam engendered Iran’s backwardness. Shiism therefore ceased to be a strong marker of identity until 1979 and was substituted by the Persian/Arab dichotomy. Additionally, the fall of the Ottoman Empire induced ever-growing nationalistic differences across the Near-East, marginalizing Sunni-Shia differences. Moreover, the post-1945 decolonisation era showed the influence of emerging transnational ideologies: an Arab nationalism rooted in anti-imperialism and Marxism. While Baathist regimes embodied this left-wing and secular dimension, Iran under the Shah also demonstrated a strong secularism.

1979 – increasing politicisation of the Sunni-Shia divide

The Ayatollah Khomeini speaks to followers at Behesht Zahra Cemetery after his arrival in Tehran, Iran, ending 14 years of exile, Feb. 1 , 1979. Khomeini prayed for the victims of the Islamic struggle against the Shah of Iran. (AP Photo/FY)

However, the Iranian Revolution in 1979 marked a turning point through two parallel and correlated dynamics. The first was a discourse vacuum that was created following the weakening of Marxism and anti-imperialism, as Arab authoritarianism drew closer relations with the West. Also, pan-Arab mobilisation around the Palestinian question was diluted, as Egypt, Algeria, and Syria – facing internal political problems – were no longer active. The second consisted in a shifting rhetoric enacted by Ayatollah Khomeini, who established Iran’s theological-political system that embodied an expansionist ideal, and supported groups having Shia agendas in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Bahrain. Here, the Sunni-Shia divide was politically mobilized as an Iranian nationalist tool, filling the contextual discourse vacuum described above. In response, Sunni states filled the same vacuum, using Sunnism as an instrument of propaganda and mobilization against Iran.

The 1980-1988 Iran/Iraq war was the first conflict intensively mobilizing the Sunni-Shia divide as a state-led rhetorical tool, with Iran exploiting symbols such as Hussein’s martyrdom.[3] Yet, the Iran/Iraq war was predominantly a war of nationalism and not of religion. Indeed, (1) Saddam’s Baathist regime was a secular movement; (2) Iraqi Shias and Iranian Sunnis did not turn against their respective countries; and (3) during the war and the embargo, most Iranian networks went through Dubai to the Sunni-dominated United Arab Emirates. Rational and realpolitik assumptions dictated Iranian foreign policy and led Iran to build relations with Ghadafi’s Libya and the PLO against Israel. The Sunni-Shia rhetoric was an instrument mobilized by nation-states to legitimize their foreign policies. In fact, if Islam is pivotal since 1979, it is not through a Shia/Sunni conflict, but through two conflicting visions of Islam: political Islam –  then embodied by Iran – against the secular Islam of Baathist regimes.[4]

However, not only societies started to integrate this polarisation into their actions and identity affiliations, but also external actors did the same, either when (1) falling in the trap and analysing oppositions through a biased Sunni-Shia grid; or (2) consciously using this artificial dichotomy for specific political agendas. These dynamics ultimately induced Sunni and Shia doctrinal hardenings. it is the beginning of the self-fulfilling prophecy. The Sunni-Shia divide is not the starting point, it is the mean that tends to become the end.

Iraq since 2003: from American “debaathification” to ISIS

In Iraq, the self-fulfilling prophecy was tragically induced by the United States, falling into the trap of the Sunni-Shia divide. Indeed, American “debaathification” initiated in 2003 structured the Iraqi political system with communitarian affiliations. Shias were encouraged to take control of State institutions, progressively excluding Sunnis, seen as responsible for decades of authoritarian ostracism. Shia President Nouri al-Maliki used this confessional rhetoric to assert power.[5] Sunni frustrations led numerous former Baath officers to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and its strong anti-Shia agenda. Manipulated by propaganda, local and foreign actors, which now define themselves by their religious community, are victims of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Syria: how Alawis suddenly became Shias

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency on 29 May 2014 showing supporters of President Bashar al-Assad in Latakia (AFP/SANA)

In Syria, the Alawi minority in power is defined as Shia by four actors: (1) Iran and the Hezbollah, to justify their long-lasting involvement in Syria; (2) the Syrian regime; (3) Sunni terrorist movements to boost their recruitment effort amongst Sunni communities; and (4) the international community. In the case of the latter, Western media naively fell into the trap of the Sunni-Shia analysis, while Western states, guilty for having formerly destabilized the region, blamed the so-called Sunni-Shia confrontation. In fact, the Alawis’ affiliation with Shiism – and even with Islam – has always been contested by both Shias and Sunnis, who see Alawism as sectarian and heterodox, adopting flexible religious practices including drinking alcohol, not fasting during Ramadan nor making the pilgrimage. However, Iran nowadays artificially defines Alawis as Shias to legitimize its military presence in Syria and hide its genuine motivations: keeping Assad in power to maintain its strategic depth in the Near-East and its effective supply to the Hezbollah. What originally was an Arab Spring emancipation-fight progressively transformed into a genuine Sunni-Shia religious conflict. In fact, Osama Bin Laden expected religious uprisings to emerge across the Arab World earlier; while the nature of the Arab Spring made him wrong, the self-fulfilling prophecy and the “return of the Sacred” tend to make his observations a posteriori right.

Yemen: a proxy war without religious root

The Saudi-led operation “Decisive Storm”attempts to hide Saudi Arabia’s hegemonic pretentions, through building a proxy war in Yemen through a Sunni-Shia rhetoric (credit: Fayed Nureldin, AFP)

The same process applies in Yemen. The Sunni-Shia divide is mobilized by both internal actors – Houthi rebels religiously affiliated as Zaydi, and terrorist groups, Al-Qaeda (AQAP), and ISIS – and external actors – Saudi Arabia and Iran. To the same extent as Alawism, Zaydism is distant from duodecimal Shiism, in fact being particularly close to Sunnism; Zaydis even pray in the same mosques as the Sunnis. Moreover, Zaydis’ first revolts date from 2004 to 2010, when Yemen was ruled by Ali Abdullah Saleh, Zaydi himself, who later joined Houthis in their fight to conquer Sanaa. Moreover, Zaydis’ first revolts date from 2004 to 2010, when Yemen was ruled by Ali Abdullah Saleh, Zaydi himself, who later joined Houthis in their fight to conquer SanaaThis political about-face demonstrates the irrelevance of the confessional grid. Indeed, initial upheavals reflected a minority who saw its geographical isolation in North Yemen’s mountains transforming into political and economic isolation. Nonetheless, actors developed an interest in mobilising the Sunni-Shia divide, through associating Zaydis to Shias. First, Saudi Arabia’s initiative to build a Sunni military coalition to fight Houthi rebels and exacerbate the Sunni-Shia rhetoric should be understood through two factors. The first is realpolitik: the will to assert its regional hegemony in deciding who rules its main neighbour, to access vital Red Sea shipping routes, in the context of collapsing oil prices and declining American support. The second factor is domestic policy: counter domestic contestation movements through criminalizing its Shia minority, denounced as Iran’s “5th column”, to gather the Sunni majority around the monarchy. Secondly, Iran uses the Sunni-Shia polarisation to increase its regional counterweight against Saudi Arabia, especially in countries with Shia minorities. Thirdly, Houthis benefit from Iran’s so-called “Shia solidarity” to gain military support and political legitimacy. Finally, as in Syria, terrorists benefit from the situation for recruitment purposes. Therefore, Saudi Arabia and Iran transformed the Yemeni civil war into a proxy war, through exploiting the Sunni-Shia divide. While Iran uses Yemen as a Trojan Horse, Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic links with Iran after executing the anti-government Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr in 2016. Once again, the self-prophecy materializes

A self-fulfilling prophecy

In the Middle East, most uprisings lie in economic and political contestation, and conflicts are based on national interests. Yet, the Iranian Revolution revived a tool hitherto set aside by common ideologies and secularism. To hide and pursue their political agenda, actors use the so-called Sunni-Shia divide as an instrument. This analytical grid is progressively accepted by (1) Middle-Eastern communities interiorizing pre-supposed “historical” religious identities; and (2) an international opinion victim of its own interests and of its tendency to analyse oppositions through simplistic confessional differences. The Arab Spring has amplified the states’ confessional rhetoric to counter the one of emancipation. Eventually, this Sunni-Shia polarisation has become a reality. Yet, mechanisms are purely political, in fact, closer to Cold War mechanisms than to those of an irreconcilable theological opposition.

Guillaume Beaud is a final-year French student reading for a BA in European Studies. His research areas include geopolitics of the Middle-East, Iran, radical Islam and European foreign policy.

Notes

[1] King Abdullah II, Interview at the Washington Post, 8th December 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43980-2004Dec7.html

[2] – Cvach, D. & Curmi, B. (2015) Sunnites et chiites: la fabrique d’un conflit, Esprit n°10.

[3] Third imam recognized by the Shias, Hussein’s death during the Karbala battle (680 AD) while fighting the Sunni Omayyad empire has a predominant Shia symbolic significance.

[4] This analytical grid will be largely addressed in the following article

[5] O’Driscoll, D. (2017) Authonomy impaired : Centralisation, Authoritarianism and the Failing Iraqi State, Ethnopolitics.

– The Sunni/Shia Divide, Council on Foreign Relations. Available on: http://www.cfr.org/peace-conflict-and-human-rights/sunni-shia-divide/p33176#!/?cid=otr-marketing_url-sunni_shia_infoguide

– Cvach, D. & Curmi, B. (2015) Sunnites et chiites: la fabrique d’un conflit, Esprit n°10.

– Minority Rights Group, Still Invisible, the stigmatisation of Shi’a and other religious minorities in Saudi Arabia, 3rd December 2015.

– O’Driscoll, D. (2017) Authonomy impaired : Centralisation, Authoritarianism and the Failing Iraqi State, Ethnopolitics.

Image sources

Image 2: Associated Press

Image 3: http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/syrias-alawites-not-deserting-assad-yet-despite-crackdown-526622504

 

Strife Series | Complicated relationships #2 – The Safavid Empire and the historical backdrop of Sunni-Shia relations

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By Faruk Rahmanovic

Portrait of Shah Abbas I, the 5th Safavid Kings of Iran and one of Iran’s most influential rulers (reigned AD 1587-1629). Source: British Museum Archives.

The role of the Safavid Empire in understanding Sunni-Shia relations cannot be overstated. Lasting from 1501 to 1722, the Safavid Empire was born in modern-day Iran,[1] just as the political situation in the Middle East began to stabilize after nearly 400 years of various foreign invasions.[2] The remnants of political chaos left much of the Central Asian region semi-autonomous, providing some maneuvering room for political aspirations.[3] On the other hand, Central Asia was sandwiched between the Ottomans in the West, Russians in the North, Uzbeks in the North-East, and Mughals in the East and South-East. Thus, those with political aspirations faced a problem: on what grounds could they declare themselves independent of the empires that were already established and expanding, and how to justify the intra-religious violence necessary for establishing and expanding their empire?[4]

The founder of the Safavid Empire Ismail I (1501-1524) understood the need to differentiate his political establishment from the existing competition. He proclaimed descent from Muhammad and Ali and the 7th Shia Imam, the Aq Quyunlu Turks (a major Turkoman tribe), and Byzantine Emperors.[5] This helped cover the political and divine right to rule on all fronts. However, his stroke of brutal brilliance was the imposition of Shiism on the population. ‘Wherever his edict reached, the choice was fixed: conversion to Shiism or death.’[6] The conversion made the local population theologically different from their neighbors in a political way. More importantly, he managed to merge his political position with the Shia religious hierarchy – becoming the head of church and state and making the obedience to the crown a religious requirement.[7] By the time of his death in 1524, Iran had become fully a Shia state.[8]

The conquests of the Safavid Empire spread Shiism to nearly all the regions where Shiism is found today, explaining the anomalous location of the Shia exclaves in places like Turkey, Bahrain, Afghanistan, and not to mention the anomalous position of the Shia center of Iran entirely enveloped by Sunnis. Over the 200-year Safavid rule, the primary Shia identity became inextricably entangled with the political realities of the oft-embattled empire, turning political contests into theological ones. Drawing on Persian, Islamic, and Shia elements, [9] the identity forged by the Safavids continues to underpin much of the modern Shia and Iranian identity. While individual relations between Sunni and Shia have generally been peaceful, the Shia connection of religious identity with the political makes difficult the Sunni-Shia political relations. The issue arises partly because the Shia population of a Sunni state does not merely signify religious differences, but is likely to identify with a different political entity and ideology altogether.[10] A somewhat similar position is present for Sunnis in a Shia state (e.g. Syria).

Grasping these historical developments provides a holistic and contextualized understanding of the nature of the Sunni-Shia relations, explains the bursts of sectarian violence and the periods of peaceful, cooperative coexistence, and helps clarify the diverse modern political alliances throughout the region today.

Faruk Rahmanovic (@FRahmanovic) holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of South Florida, and teaches at the USF Honors College. His research focuses on the intersection of political and comparative philosophy, applied ethics, and war. He also works on issues of cybersecurity and warfare.

This article is part of a series curated by MA student Ashley Pratt on the intricate historical relationships between nations and people that shape current events. Each piece of this four-part series contextualizes and provides a primer to better analyze developments around these relationships. You can read the first piece here.

Notes

[1] The historical borders of the Safavid Empire were generally centered on what is today’s Iran. Thus, the use of “Iran” is intended here as both a historical regional designation and modern state.

[2] Most notably including the Crusades (1098), Mongol Invasion (1258), and Timurid conquest (1370).

[3] Ochsenwald, William and Sydney N. Fisher. The Middle East: A History. (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004), Pp. 215-16.

[4] The Ottomans faced the same problem in conquering other Muslim-ruled principalities; which they solved with the creation of the Janissary Corps. loyal to the Sultan alone.

[5] The Shiism of the Safavids seems to have started sometime after 1392, while the claim to the Shia Imamate initially seems to have been started by Ismail’s predecessors in the late 15th century (though that claim was related to being the Hidden Imam of the Twelver Shia position).
Ochsenwald. The Middle East: A History. Pp. 215-16.His HHis

[6] Ibid. Pg. 216.

[7] Unlike the Shia rule of Egypt under the Fatimids (909-1171), the Safavid rule made Shiism mandatory the population. Consequently, the Shia conversion and retention rates were much higher and more persistent than in Egypt, where the difference of faith played no effective part in daily life. Consequently, although the Fatimids lasted longer than the Safavids, modern Egypt has no real Shia population to speak of, while Iran overwhelmingly retained its Shia heritage.

[8] Ochsenwald, William. The Middle East: A History. Pg. 216.

[9] This is not to say that Shia is not part of Islam; it was the rather unique features of Shiism that forged the identity of the people under the Safavid rule.

[10] There is a parallel with the American suspicion of Catholics, viz. their allegiance to the Pope – a foreign political power.

Feature Image credit: Shah Ismail I declares himself Shah by entering Tabriz in the early 1500s. Source: Wikimedia Commons