April 10, 2012

A Conspiracy Against The Shia Crescent?

How the Iraqi vice president travel plays into the current conspiracy that tries to destroy the Syrian state is yet unknown, but the coalition involved seems to be the same and that lets me believe that this issue is part of a larger plan against several countries in the Middle East.

The Sunni Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashemi's bodyguards allegedly ran death squads in Baghdad killing Shia pilgrims. An arrest warrant was put up for him but he fled to the mostly independent Kurdish north of Iraq where the Shia led government of Iraq can not assert its rule.

First he seemed to be set to stay there but a few days ago he suddenly started to travel. First on a Qatari government jet to Qatar where he met with the Qatari dictator and was interviewed on the Qatari government station Al Jazeerah. Then to Saudi Arabia where he met the foreign minister. Today he arrived in Turkey to meet the Turkish prime minister Erdogan who himself is just traveling from China to Saudi Arabia after cutting short his economically important visit to Beijing.

Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are obviously cooperating against the Syrian Allawit led government. (Of interest today on that issue is this Kofi Annan letter to the UNSC.) The same countries now also seem to work on a plan with al-Hashemi against the Shia led Iraqi government. At the same time fresh negotiations about Iran's civil nuclear program are coming up with conditions set by the U.S. that make these talks likely to fail.

There is for some time talk of a Shia crescent. The connection of Shia or associated beliefs rule from Iran to Iraq to Syria to Hizbullah in Lebanon. We now see plots against three of these entities coming together at the same point in time. There recently also was an unconfirmed, and likely faked, sniper attack against the right wing and anti-Shia Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea which I see as an attempt to create an anti-Hizbullah crisis in Lebanon.

I do not regard these various crises coming up as a simple coincident. But I have yet to see a sensible coordinated strategy behind creating them. Is there one?

Posted by b on April 10, 2012 at 18:47 UTC | Permalink

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