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Author : S. Ivanov
Head, Department of Diplomacy and Consular Service, Diplomatic Academy, Ministry of Foreign Af-
fairs of the Russian Federation
For many centuries, the Middle East or, rather what has been going
on there, echoed far and wide in the neighboring regions, Europe in
the first place. Today, however, the threats achieved the dimensions
unheard of before; they range from the inflow of refugees and the
resultant migration crisis in Europe, a potential threat to its cultural
and ethnic identity, to terrorism and radical Islam exported all over
the world to threaten stability and security elsewhere.
The Arab Spring that reverberated in nearly all Middle Eastern coun-
tries widened the gaps between them, destroyed statehoods, fanned
mistrust, and multiplied conflicts.
America and its allies exploited the social and political mess to in-
terfere in the domestic affairs of the region's states to change regimes, rekindle old conflicts and
deepen contradictions.
The short-sighted actions of Washington and its allies added religious hues to the events first in
Iraq and later in Syria that placed the Shia and the Sunni on the opposite sides. The new author-
ities Americans brought to power in post-Hussein Iraq cast aside the consolidating ideas in order
to establish Shia monopoly; they squeezed the Sunni from all spheres of state administration to
push them to the margins as people of no importance.
Today, the Middle East is an area of profound and objective social and political changes, which
means that it is wrong to explain them only in terms of religious contradictions.
Sunni and Shia, two main Islamic trends, were spreading unevenly space-and timewise across
the Middle East and North Africa, and West and Central Asia. Their followers do not live in
strictly outlined territories but side by side: in Iran, the stronghold of Shia, where Sunni live in
compact groups in Khuzestan, or in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia populated mainly by
Shia.
With the Sunni-Shia balance tipped in favor of the former, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar
and some other Muslim Sunni states increased their pressure on Shia to undermine their political
positions in their traditional countries and elsewhere. The Sunni leaders of the UAE invigorated
their claims to three islands in the Gulf (the Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs) so
far under Iranian jurisdiction; the Sunni royal regime of Bahrain aided by Saudi army suppressed
the uprising raised by the Shia for equal rights with the Sunni.
The double standards of the West (that supports the Syrian opposition and refuses to support
the opposition in Yemen) make it partly responsible for the continued conflict in this country:
It has joined anti-Shia front of the Saudis and Qatar that have pushed aside their sharp contra-
dictions for the sake of their joint cause.
The Middle East and Sunni-Shia Contradictions