Russian expert: Confrontation between Sunnites and Shiites is imposed from outside
Moscow, October 17, Interfax - Russian businessman Andrei Okhotkin, deputy chairman of the National Conservative Party of Russia, who worked for a long time in Iraq, believes that confrontation between shiites and sunnites in the country is imposed from outside for political ends.
‘We all know about the almost daily explosions in Iraq. Yet, the shiites do not take revenge on the sunnites. I have met the shiite and sunnite leaders many times. The shiites say: ‘We know that this is not the sunnites’ doing’, and the sunnites say: ‘They know that this is not the sunnites’ doing’. Therefore it would be erroneous to assume that civil war between these two groups is being waged in the country’, Okhotkin said to Interfax.
He added that ‘when terrible and premeditated explosions are set off at the mosques and market places, which damage civilians rather than foreign troops, a question is asked: Quid prodest?
The main flash point of tension is certainly linked with the religious ingredient of social and political life of the country. However, I assume that confrontation between thew sunnites and shiites is injected also from outside’, the interviewee noted.
According to him, an unstable development is imposed on Iraq for the following: ‘in case a regime unwelcome to the West or neighbouring Israel comes to power, it will always be a leverage for managing the situation’.
‘The main thing is that the shiites do not succumb to hysteria and do not yield to provocations engineered for their confrontation with the sunnites. They realize that there will be no winners in this war. As much as is said about them as people who have close links with Teheran, this is an exaggeration’, Okhotkin said.
He also expressed his conviction that the Iraqis as a much-suffered nation have managed to preserve unity and dialogue between confessions and political authorities and, ‘having survived this ‘slaughter’ they have chances not to be torn apart and gradually form a state system’. |
