Hezbollah-Israeli fight stirs Shiite-Sunni issues

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Hundreds of radical Shiite Muslims, some wielding assault rifles and rocket launchers, marched Friday in support of the Hezbollah movement of Lebanon and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, in the capital's Sadr City district, home to loyalists of the anti-U.S. Shiite fundamentalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

"Here we are, ready for your orders, oh Muqtada and Nasrallah," they chanted before weekly prayer services, while holding up posters of both Shiite militia leaders as well as flags of Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Hezbollah militants. "Woe to you, Israel! We will strike you!"

From Egypt to Kashmir, thousands across the Muslim world used Friday's Islamic day of prayer to protest Israel's attacks on Hezbollah, urging Sunni-Shiite unity to defeat the Jewish state and condemning Arab leaders' reluctance to show support for Hezbollah.

Leaders in some predominantly Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have criticized Hezbollah's actions. But many people from both sects in Muslim countries support Hezbollah because of its willingness to fight Israel.

Shiites account for some 160 million of the Islamic world's population of 1.3 billion people. Shiites account for about 90 percent of Iran's population, more than 60 percent of Iraq's, and some 50 percent of the people living in the arc of territory from Lebanon to India.

Sitting in the shade as he sold figs in downtown Cairo, Hasan Salem Hasan, a 25-year-old Sunni, summed up a prevailing attitude of the so-called "Arab street":

"Although Hezbollah is a Shiite party, we are all Muslims, and all Arabs will defiantly support them and fight the Jews."

Adding to the tensions, key Arab allies of the United States, predominantly Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, fear the rising power of Shiites in the region: Hezbollah militants who virtually control southern Lebanon, and who are backed by the Shiite theocracy that has run Iran for decades, which in turn has ties to Iraq's majority Shiite government.

In Iraq on Friday, al-Sadr urged Sunnis and Shiites to unite so Muslims could defeat Israel.

"We promise you all that we will not forget our people in Lebanon despite our suffering from the American occupation. I will continue defending my Shiite and Sunni brothers and I tell them that if we unite, we will defeat Israel without the use of weapons," he said.

Al-Sadr has modeled himself on Hezbollah leader Nasrallah since emerging as a religious and political force in the wake of the 2003 U.S.-led toppling of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime, which persecuted his famous clerical family.

Al-Sadr's al-Mahdi army fought U.S. forces to several bloody standstills in the capital and Iraq's south in 2004. At the same time, al-Sadr's followers have won seats in the nation's democratically elected parliament, just as Nasrallah's followers have in Lebanon.

Although currently locked in a sectarian civil war, Iraqis across the political and religious spectrum have voiced support for Lebanon and condemned Israel.

This week, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, chief executive of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government as well as a leader of another Islamic fundamentalist Shiite political party, criticized "Israeli aggression" against Lebanon just days before his scheduled visit to the U.S., beginning Monday.

The White House on Thursday brushed aside al-Maliki's comment as evidence Iraq was no U.S. puppet. "That's further proof that he's got his own independent democracy," spokesman Tony Snow told reporters in Washington.

President Bush's uncompromising support for Israel in its battle with Hezbollah is also putting the U.S. at odds with Iraq and Lebanon, fragile democratic governments in the Middle East that it is trying to prop up, and sowing increasing anger across the Arab world.

On Tuesday, thousands of Shiites demonstrated in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain in support of Hezbollah, two days after some 300 prominent Saudi Shiites wrote to the Bahraini government urging support to the Lebanese Shiite group.

Both moves were seen as an assertion of increasing Shiite solidarity across the Arab world.

On the one hand, predominantly Sunni Arab states are tacitly encouraging the destruction of Hezbollah, concerned it could stage attacks and create militant cells outside of Lebanon. There is also fear that militant Sunnis could join with Hezbollah — as the Palestinian group Hamas has done — to build a super terrorist network.

"Whenever there is a paramount cause which can bring them together, such as a jihad against the Zionists, they will be united," Gamal Sultan, editor of the Cairo-based Islamic monthly Al Mannar Al Jadid, said of the Sunni and Shiite militants.

Yet on the other hand, Arab governments also fear their own populations will turn on them if they look weak and unable to challenge Israeli aggression against a fellow Arab state.

Saudi Arabia — the bulwark of the Sunni Arab world — has tried to balance both concerns, criticizing Iran and Hezbollah for provoking Israel but also condemning the Jewish state.

The Saudi foreign minister, Saudi Al Faisal, on Tuesday blasted what he called "non-Arab intervention in the Arab world" — a clear reference to Iran, Hezbollah's main backer along with Syria.

Hezbollah gets significant support from Iran and from Lebanese people living abroad.

One senior U.S. intelligence official said the group has access to several hundred million dollars a year, much of it going to the social-service network in southern Lebanon rather than arms and terrorism. But that money could be diverted to terror or military operations.

The organization also has been linked to almost every type of organized crime, including drug trafficking, drug counterfeiting and selling stolen baby formula.

Former Jordanian information minister Saleh al-Qalab has described Hezbollah as an Iranian "land mine" in the Arab world. And Jordan's King Abdullah II warned of a Shiite crescent forming in the region.

Some blame the U.S.'s Middle East policies for upsetting the region's sectarian balance.

"The whole problem started with the American invasion of Iraq with the cooperation of Shiites," said Mamdouh Ismail, an Islamic activist and lawyer who defends Muslim militants in Egyptian courts. "This will certainly resonate throughout the whole region, in the Gulf ... in Saudi Arabia," he added.

Compiled from reports by Los Angeles Times correspondent Borzou Daragahi and The Associated Press writers Maggie Michael, Katherine Shrader and Tom Raum.