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<div class="">June 1, 2013</div>
<h1>As Syrians Fight, Sectarian Strife Infects Mideast</h1>
<h6 class="">By
<span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/tim_arango/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by TIM ARANGO"><span>TIM ARANGO</span></a></span>, <span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/anne_barnard/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by ANNE BARNARD"><span>ANNE BARNARD</span></a></span> and <span><span>DURAID ADNAN</span></span></h6>
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<p>
BAGHDAD — Renewed sectarian killing has brought the highest death toll
in Iraq in five years. Young Iraqi scholars at a Shiite Muslim seminary
volunteer to fight Sunnis in Syria. Far to the west, in Lebanon, clashes
have worsened between opposing sects in the northern city of Tripoli.
</p>
<p>
In Syria itself, “Shiites have become a main target,” said Malek, an
opposition activist who did not want his last name published because of
safety concerns. He was visiting Lebanon from a rebel-held Syrian town,
Qusayr, where his brother died Tuesday battling Shiite guerrillas from
the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. “People lost brothers, sons, and they’re
angry,” he said. </p>
<p>
The Syrian civil war is setting off a contagious sectarian conflict
beyond the country’s borders, reigniting long-simmering tensions between
Sunnis and Shiites, and, experts fear, shaking the foundations of
countries cobbled together after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
</p>
<p>
For months, the fighting in Syria has spilled across its borders as
rockets landed in neighboring countries or skirmishes crossed into their
territories. But now, the Syrian war, with more than 80,000 dead, is
inciting Sunnis and Shiites in other countries to attack one another.
</p>
<p>
“Nothing has helped make the Sunni-Shia narrative stick on a popular
level more than the images of Assad — with Iranian help — butchering
Sunnis in Syria,” said <a title="About Mr. Parsi" href="http://www.niacouncil.org/site/PageServer?pagename=About_parsi">Trita Parsi</a>,
a regional analyst and president of the National Iranian American
Council, referring to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. “Iran and
Assad may win the military battle, but only at the expense of cementing
decades of ethnic discord.” </p>
<p>
The Syrian uprising began as peaceful protests against Mr. Assad and
transformed over two years into a bloody battle of attrition. But the
killing is no longer just about supporting or opposing the government,
or even about Syria. Some Shiites are pouring into Syria out of a sense
of religious duty. In Iraq, random attacks on Sunni mosques and
neighborhoods that had subsided in recent years have resumed — <a title="Times brief" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/world/middleeast/iraq-bombing-kills-members-of-wedding-party.html">a wedding was recently hit</a> — as Sunni militias fight the army. </p>
<p>
With Sunni-led Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey backing the uprising
against Mr. Assad, who is supported by Shiite Iran and Hezbollah,
sectarian divisions simmering since the American invasion of Iraq are
spreading through a region already upended by the Arab uprisings.
</p>
<p>
The Syrian war fuels, and is fueled by, broader antagonisms that are
primarily rooted not in sect but in clashing geopolitical and strategic
interests: the regional power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran;
Iran’s confrontation with the West over its nuclear program; and <a title="Times article" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/world/middleeast/syrian-army-and-hezbollah-step-up-raids-on-rebels.html">the alliance between Hezbollah and the secular Syrian government</a> of Mr. Assad against American-backed Israel. </p>
<p>
But sectarian feeling has seeped in. Iraq has been especially
vulnerable. With the Sunni majority in Syria battling to overthrow a
government dominated by Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiism,
some in Iraq’s Sunni minority grew emboldened by the prospect of
overthrowing their own Shiite government. </p>
<p>
Today, many Iraqis feel they are on the road back to the dark days of
2006 and ’07, the peak of sectarian militia massacres by Shiites
ascendant after years of oppression under Saddam Hussein, and by
minority Sunnis disempowered by his fall. </p>
<p>
While the 2007 American troop surge helped to limit the bloodshed,
random attacks against Shiites never stopped. What was different was
that the Shiites, who finally felt firmly in control of the security
forces, stopped retaliating. But that seems to be changing. </p>
<p>
Sunni militias have risen up to fight the army, and for the first time
in years Sunni mosques and neighborhoods are being regularly targeted.
The first notable attack was in April, at a cafe in the Sunni
neighborhood of Amariya; it started late at night as young men played
pool, and it left dozens of people dead. While it is unclear who is
responsible for the new violence, many Sunnis blame the government, or
Iranian-backed Shiite militias. </p>
<p>
In Lebanon, perennial clashes between Alawite and Sunni militias in
Tripoli have reached their worst level in years as each side blames the
other for carnage in Syria. </p>
<p>
In Syria, both the government and its opponents insist that their civil
war is not a fight between religious sects. Rebel leaders say their only
aim is to depose a dictator. Mr. Assad says he is fending off extremist
terrorists, and he is careful not to frame the conflict as a fight
against the country’s Sunni majority, which he praises for its
moderation. </p>
<p>
Mr. Assad’s affinity with Hezbollah and Iran is primarily strategic.
Though his Alawite sect, about 12 percent of the population, provides
bedrock support, most Alawites are secular. Syria’s fewer than 200,000
mainstream Shiites are a much smaller minority, less than 1 percent.
</p>
<p>
Like Iraqis — who long insisted they were Iraqis first, and blamed
outsiders for the rise of sectarian identity, yet descended into
bloodletting — Syrians on both sides fear and disavow the slide into
sectarianism. </p>
<p>
But in real terms, Shiite Hezbollah and the Sunni-dominated <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/world/middleeast/us-designates-syrian-al-nusra-front-as-terrorist-group.html">Al Nusra Front</a>, a radical group allied with Al Qaeda, have emerged as two of the strongest militias in the Syrian civil war. </p>
<p>
Both sides have also been willing to tap into sectarian alliances and
emotions. With the West hesitant to fully support the opposition, rebels
accepted help from Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni militant group, and the
reliable pipeline of weapons and cash flowing from extremist Sunni
donors to jihadists, whose calls for an Islamic state found support
among some Syrians influenced by hard-line clerics in Saudi Arabia.
</p>
<p>
On Friday, an influential Sunni Islamist cleric in Qatar, Sheik Yusef
al-Qaradawi, called on Sunnis around the world to go to Syria to fight
Hezbollah and Iran, calling them enemies of Islam. </p>
<p>
Alawite militias in Syria have been accused of slaughtering Sunni
families. Sunni rebels and gangs have been accused of kidnapping
Shiites. Sunni fighters call Shiites “filth” and “dogs.” Rebel
commanders have begun to refer to Hezbollah, whose name means party of
God, as the “party of the devil.” </p>
<p>
Government supporters call rebels “rats” and paint them with a broad
brush as Bedouins and Wahhabis — a puritanical strain of Sunni Islam
from Saudi Arabia. Fadil Mutar, an Iraqi Shiite, said at the funeral of
his son, who was killed in Syria, that he died fighting Wahhabis, “those
vile people.” </p>
<p>
Rafiq Lotof, a Syrian-American Shiite who left his pizza business in New
Jersey to help Syrian officials organize militias known as the National
Defense Forces, said recently in Damascus that Shiite religious
passions would help the government survive. </p>
<p>
“If we start to lose control, you will see thousands of Iranians come to
Syria, thousands of Lebanese, from Iraq also,” Mr. Lotof said. “They
are going to fight, they are not going to watch. That’s part of their
religion.” </p>
<p>
In Beirut, Lebanon, Kamel Wazne, the founder of the Center for American
Strategic Studies, said that fighters are inspired by religious passions
rooted in the seventh-century battle in what is now Iraq over who would
succeed the Prophet Muhammad. </p>
<p>
After the bitter defeat of the faction that gave rise to the Shiites,
the victors captured the prophet’s granddaughter Zeinab and took her to
Damascus, where Shiites believe she is buried beneath the gold-domed
shrine of Sayida Zeinab. </p>
<p>
Today, Shiite fighters help the Syrian government to hold the area
around Sayida Zeinab — a foothold that helps prevent rebels from fully
encircling Mr. Assad’s seat of power in Damascus. </p>
<p>
“Damascus did not fall because Sayida Zeinab is there,” Mr. Wazne said.
“They will not allow Zeinab to be captured twice.” </p>
<p>
Many devout Shiites have also come to view the Syrian civil war as the
fulfillment of a Shiite prophecy that presages the end of time: a
devil-like figure, Sufyani, raises an army in Syria and marches on Iraq
to kill Shiites. Abu Ali, a student in Najaf, Iraq, said that his
colleagues believe the leader of Qatar, a chief backer of Syria’s Sunni
rebels, is Sufyani. They are flocking to Syria “to protect Islam,” he
said. </p>
<p>
Days after pro-government militias killed scores of civilians last month
in the Sunni village of Bayda near the Syrian coast, one Sunni resident
declared in an interview: “Starting today, I am sectarian. I am
sectarian! I don’t want ‘peaceful’ anymore.” Composing himself, he
added, “Sister, forgive me for talking this way.” </p>
<div class="">
<p>Tim Arango and Duraid Adnan reported from Baghdad, and Anne Barnard
from Damascus, Syria, and Beirut, Lebanon. Reporting was contributed by
employees of The New York Times from Hilla, Iraq, and Najaf, Iraq, and
by Hania Mourtada and Hwaida Saad from Beirut.</p> </div>
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