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Page added on January 10, 2016
The REAL Reason Sunni Governments Like Saudi Arabia Are At War Against the Shias
The Shias Are Sitting On All of the Oil and Gas
While the Sunnis and Shias have been competing for more than a thousand years, they have largely co-existed peacefully until recently.
Why are they involved in an open war across multiple countries now?
Much of modern geopolitics is driven by hydrocarbons … i.e. oil and gas.
Is this true of the Sunnis-Shia war?
Yes, the U.S. and its allies are backing the Sunnis against the Shias … in order to wage war for oil.
And it turns out that the lion’s share of oil in the Middle East happens to be located in Shia countries … and in the Shia-minority sections of Sunni-majority countries.
Specifically, as Jon Schwartz reports this week at the Intercept:
Much of the conflict can be explained by a fascinating map created by M.R. Izady, a cartographer and adjunct master professor at the U.S. Air Force Special Operations School/Joint Special Operations University in Florida.
What the map shows is that, due to a peculiar correlation of religious history and anaerobic decomposition of plankton, almost all the Persian Gulf’s fossil fuels are located underneath Shiites. This is true even in Sunni Saudi Arabia, where the major oil fields are in the Eastern Province, which has a majority Shiite population.
As a result, one of the Saudi royal family’s deepest fears is that one day Saudi Shiites will secede, with their oil, and ally with Shiite Iran.
This fear has only grown since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq overturned Saddam Hussein’s minority Sunni regime, and empowered the pro-Iranian Shiite majority. Nimr himself said in 2009 that Saudi Shiites would call for secession if the Saudi government didn’t improve its treatment of them.
The map shows religious populations in the Middle East and proven developed oil and gas reserves. Click to view the full map of the wider region. The dark green areas are predominantly Shiite; light green predominantly Sunni; and purple predominantly Wahhabi/Salafi, a branch of Sunnis. The black and red areas represent oil and gas deposits, respectively.
Source: Dr. Michael Izady at Columbia University, Gulf2000, New York
As Izady’s map so strikingly demonstrates, essentially all of the Saudi oil wealth is located in a small sliver of its territory whose occupants are predominantly Shiite. (Nimr, for instance, lived in Awamiyya, in the heart of the Saudi oil region just northwest of Bahrain.) If this section of eastern Saudi Arabia were to break away, the Saudi royals would just be some broke 80-year-olds with nothing left but a lot of beard dye and Viagra prescriptions.
Nimr’s execution can be partly explained by the Saudis’ desperation to stamp out any sign of independent thinking among the country’s Shiites.
The same tension explains why Saudi Arabia helped Bahrain, an oil-rich, majority-Shiite country ruled by a Sunni monarchy, crush its version of the Arab Spring in 2011.
Similar calculations were behind George H.W. Bush’s decision to stand by while Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons in 1991 to put down an insurrection by Iraqi Shiites at the end of the Gulf War. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained at the time, Saddam had “held Iraq together, much to the satisfaction of the American allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia.”
So the Sunni Gulf monarchies in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait are single-mindedly going after Iran and the Shia world – because the Shias are sitting on the oil and gas resources – and doing everything they can to start a Sunni-Shia war across the entire MENA area (Middle East and North Africa) in order to “justify” a resource grab.
18 Comments on "The REAL Reason Sunni Governments Like Saudi Arabia Are At War Against the Shias"
onlooker on Sun, 10th Jan 2016 7:48 pm
Which is to say by right that Oil belongs so the Shia, but the Sunnis wishing a share of the power that comes with the oil are thus backed by the US who of course wants more of it being the Oil. Thus you have the anomaly of Sunni governments in predominantly Shia countries. An anomaly that the Western powers helped create. This in the same way that in countries like in South America you have ruling whites who have control in predominantly darker skin peoples countries. That thanks to Spain. And so on and on. the control of the many by the few.
onlooker on Sun, 10th Jan 2016 8:31 pm
And the exploitation of the many by the few.
makati1 on Sun, 10th Jan 2016 9:30 pm
Well said, Onlooker. Well said.
Bloomer on Sun, 10th Jan 2016 10:26 pm
Great article, puts a whole new perspective on the ongoing conflicts in the Middle east.
Anonymous on Sun, 10th Jan 2016 10:33 pm
The entire ‘sunni-shia’ thing is largely the creation of western media, and implemented on the ground, by US\allied military\intelligence agencies. Its the old divide-and-conquer play. This myth of some existential ‘Sunni-Shia’ war is so deeply embedded in western thought, that its not hard to hear claims this ‘war’ has been going on for 1000 years and represents some kind of knife fight to the death among people of middle east. Total nonsense of course, but this trope is often used by western media, and ‘thinkers’ to help direct blame on ME instability back onto Arabs themselves, and totally ignore the role of the US military\CIA, zionist Israel, and Arab traitors, like the ‘house of saud’ that serve washington, tel Aviv, and london’s interests.
Davy on Mon, 11th Jan 2016 5:42 am
It is so fun to mix the empire meme with the Shia/Sunni divide. You know let’s talk how wholesome the Muslim world would be without the US and the Sunnis. Let’s talk about how wonderful Iran’s government is. A theocratic dictatorship is a wonderful example of government. Let’s don’t forget how wonderfully the Iraqi Shia’s are treating the Iraqi Sunni now that they run things. The offshoot of the Shia in Syria, the Alawites, have beyond a doubt taken the ability of a minority to dominate a people to new levels with all the consequences.
I am here to say the whole place stinks. These cats on this board preaching how the Shia are saints that stinks. Please don’t insult my intelligence with things will be better with Iran and Russia. You are going to replace one mafia with another. The same is true with Russia and her role in bombing and killing in the name of what is right and true this is nothing new. The US has been at it for years. You can’t put lipstick on a pig or perfume on poop. Ugly and stink is what it is.
If the extremist would just come out and say honestly I don’t like the US and I like these folks. If they would admit all sides have blood on their hands they would have my support. This talk is a good starting point for diplomacy. I can relate to this talk because that is honesty. No, they come out and try to play the elaborate good verse evil thAg. That insults my intelligence.
Simon on Mon, 11th Jan 2016 6:58 am
The few have always eploited the many.
the only issue is do you like the way the few are selected
onlooker on Mon, 11th Jan 2016 7:24 am
Yes that is true might makes right has been and will always probably be part of the equation. The question is how can everyone be encouraged to do right by everyone. Only way it seems is if everybody buys into the idea that the good for the whole is also the same as the good for the one. In in other words we all have a stake in this. It perhaps can be done as we have always been group creatures. The trick is to expand the group to include everyone, the human species.
Dredd on Mon, 11th Jan 2016 8:59 am
There must be a lot of Shia in the U.S. then (Fighting Terrorism For 200 Years – 2).
JuanP on Mon, 11th Jan 2016 10:16 am
Western hegemony vs. Russian sanity is the real reason why, http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/western-hegemony-vs-russian-sanity/ri12162
JuanP on Mon, 11th Jan 2016 10:22 am
I love the USA, but I profoundly dislike delusional American exceptionalist bullies, I think they are the lowest of life forms.
Mike LaBonte on Mon, 11th Jan 2016 11:18 am
I’m having a hard time seeing a huge difference between Sunni and Shiite held oil. Has anyone put out any numbers by sect? Is the oil in the Saudi region of the Gulf considered Shiite just because they live on that coast, even though it’s the Sunni government that benefits from that oil? Why did they not lump Wahabis into the Sunni category?
Trevor Coleman on Mon, 11th Jan 2016 12:12 pm
Oman is not Sunni and “single-mindedly going after Iran”. It is Ibadi and has a good relationship with Iran.
rdberg1957 on Mon, 11th Jan 2016 1:06 pm
This map really helped me recognize a gap in my education. I realized that I have been relying on news articles and PBS programming to understand the Middle East. I don’t know the history and the geography and I don’t think most US leaders know much either. It’s one of the reasons we continually screw things up. I doubt many of us know of our own history in the Middle East, much less the history of its peoples without reference to the United States.
makati1 on Mon, 11th Jan 2016 8:36 pm
rdberg1957, you hit the bulls eye and ‘the powers that be’ want to keep the American sheeple ignorant and afraid.
GregT on Mon, 11th Jan 2016 11:50 pm
“I don’t know the history and the geography and I don’t think most US leaders know much either.”
The Secret of the Seven Sisters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtYOjMmEMeg
GregT on Mon, 11th Jan 2016 11:54 pm
“I am here to say the whole place stinks.”
The whole place stinks from all the rotting corpses that the US MIC has brutally murdered in support of Big Oil.
frankthetank on Tue, 12th Jan 2016 3:59 pm
We need to bring freedom and democracy to that remaining oil.