Sunni Shiite Map – Source: Dr. Michael Izadi Columbia University, Gulf 2000, New York Source: Dr. Michael Izadi Columbia University, Gulf 2000, New York
A map that explains the dangerous Saudi-Iranian conflict is a strange correlation of religious history and because of the anaerobic decomposition of plankton, almost all the fossil fuels in the Persian Gulf are under Shia.
Sunni Shiite Map
Saudi Arabia executed Shia Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday. Hours later, Iranian protesters set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. On Sunday, the Saudi government, which considers itself the guardian of Sunni Islam, severed diplomatic ties with Iran, a Shiite Muslim theocracy.
The Middle East Divide Between Sunni And Shia Explained In One Map
Provides a primer on the differences between Sunni and Shia Islam, reporting that “a schism arose after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632” – that is, 1,383 years ago.
But the current crisis has anything to do with religion, much less with whether Abu Bakr or Ali was Muhammad’s legitimate successor, and much less with who now controls something more solid: oil.
Indeed, much of the conflict can be explained by an interesting map created by M.R. Izadi, cartographer and adjunct professor at the US Air Force Special Operations School/Joint Special Operations University in Florida.
What the map shows is that, due to an odd correlation of religious history and the anaerobic decomposition of plankton, almost all of the fossil fuels in the Persian Gulf lie beneath the Shia. This is also true in Sunni Saudi Arabia, where the main oil fields are in the Eastern Province, which has a majority Shiite population.
The Shia Crescendo
As a result, one of the deepest fears of the Saudi royal family is that one day the Saudi Shia will be alienated from their oil and allied with Shia Iran.
The fear has grown since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq toppled the minority Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein and empowered a pro-Iranian Shiite majority. Nimr himself said in 2009 that Saudi Shiites would call for secession if the Saudi government did not improve its treatment of them.
The map shows religious populations and proven oil and gas reserves in the Middle East. Click to see the full map of the larger area. Dark green areas are predominantly Shia; Light green is predominantly Sunni; And Violet is predominantly Wahhabi/Salafi, a branch of Sunnis. Black and red areas represent oil and gas deposits, respectively.
As Izadi’s map strikingly demonstrates, essentially all of Saudi oil’s wealth is located in a small portion of its territory whose occupants are predominantly Shia. (Nimr, for example, lived in Awamiyya, in the heart of the Saudi oil region, northwest of Bahrain.) If this part of eastern Saudi Arabia were to split, members of the Saudi royal family would be 80 years old. Missing nothing but beard dye and Viagra prescriptions galore.
What Does It Mean To Be Iraqi Anymore?
Nimr’s execution can be interpreted as the Saudis’ desperation to erase any trace of independent thought among the country’s Shiites.
The same tension explains why Saudi Arabia helped Bahrain, an oil-rich, Shiite-majority country ruled by a Sunni monarchy, crush its version of the Arab Spring in 2011.
George H.W. Saddam Hussein’s decision to side with Bush during the suppression of the Iraqi Shia insurgency at the end of the Gulf War. as
As columnist Thomas Friedman explained at the time, Saddam “held Iraq together, much to the satisfaction of U.S. allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia.”
File:sunnistan, Shiastan And Kurdistan.png
Oil discoveries have occurred between the Saudis and the Iranians. Contempt and even hatred of Shiites seems to be part of the DNA of Saudi Arabia’s peculiarly sectarian and belligerent version of Islam. In 1802, 136 years before oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia, the ideological predecessors of the modern Saudi state sacked Karbala, a city in present-day Iraq and holy to Shiites. The attackers killed thousands and looted the tomb of Husayn Ibn Ali, one of the most important figures in Shia Islam.
Without fossil fuels, however, this sectarianism toward Shiites would likely be less intense today. And it will certainly be less well funded. Winston Churchill once described Iran’s oil – which the UK was busy stealing at the time – as “a fairy tale prize beyond our brightest hopes”.
Churchill was right, but he didn’t realize it was a fairy tale that the treasures carried a terrible curse.
An earlier version of this post stated that George H.W. Bush “decided to side with Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War in 1991 when he used chemical weapons to counter the Iraqi Shia insurgency.” While Bush stood by while suppressing the insurgency, and the Iraqi government used chemical weapons to a limited extent, the Bush administration actually threatened to bomb any Iraqi units using chemical weapons against Iraqi insurgents. Shias or Kurds. We apologize for the mistake.
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