The botched hanging of Saddam Hussein and two of his lieutenants in Iraq by its Shi’ite-led government has helped to accelerate Sunni-Shia sectarianism across an already fragile Middle East, according to experts across the region.The chaotic executions and the calm with which Hussein confronted the gallows and mocking Shia guards have bolstered his image among many of his fellow Sunni Muslims. But something else is happening too: a pan-Muslim unity that surged after the summer war between Israel and Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shi’ite militia, is waning.And while political analysts and government officials in the region say the spreading Sunni disillusionment with Shia and their backers in Iran will benefit Sunni-led governments and the US, they and others worry that the tensions could start to balkanise the region as they have in Iraq itself.This changing dynamic in the region, described by many scholars, analysts and officials in recent days, is a result not only of the hangings, the Iraq war and the Lebanese political struggle. It has also been encouraged by Sunni-led governments like those in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and some Sunni religious leaders alarmed by the rising influence of Iran, the region’s biggest Shia power.Far from Cairo, in a sprawling farming village in the Nile Delta region north of the city, Hamada Abdullah, a Sunni Muslim, said that after the war between Hizbollah and Israel, he posted a small picture of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, on the bare wall of his home. It did not matter that Sheik Nasrallah was a Shi’ite Muslim aligned with the Shia state of Iran. To Abdullah, Sheik Nasrallah was first and foremost a bold Arab resistance leader. But since the hanging of Hussein and since Hizbollah has pushed to topple the Sunni-led government in Lebanon, he has begun to reconsider.While some American officials and Sunni leaders say that increased tension leads to reduced Iranian influence, others say that sectarian loyalties are difficult to control. “Sunni states are using this sectarian card to undercut Iran’s influence because they feel that Iran was able to penetrate the Arab world after the fall of Iraq, which was acting as a shield against Iranian influence,” said Marwan Kabalan, a professor at Damascus University.Fuelled by state controlled media in many Sunni Muslim states, a divide, or at least an estrangement, is growing across the Middle East. Egyptians, for example, are inundated nearly daily with headlines, commentaries and TV reports alleging Shia transgressions. “Raising the ugly face of Shi’ites, expanding Iranian influence in the region,” read a recent headline in Rose el-Youssef, a pro-government Egyptian paper.
