One of Foreign Policy's Best Five Books of 2013, chosen by Marc Lynch
of The Middle East Channel
Beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq and concluding with the
aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings, Frederic M. Wehrey investigates
the roots of the Shi'a-Sunni divide now dominating the Persian Gulf's
political landscape. Focusing on three Gulf states affected most by
sectarian tensions--Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait--Wehrey identifies
the factors that have exacerbated or tempered sectarianism, including
domestic political institutions, the media, clerical establishments, and
the contagion effect of external regional events, such as the Iraq war,
the 2006 Lebanon conflict, the Arab uprisings, and Syria's civil war.
In addition to his analysis, Wehrey builds a historical narrative of
Shi'a activism in the Arab Gulf since 2003, linking regional events to
the development of local Shi'a strategies and attitudes toward
citizenship, political reform, and transnational identity. He finds
that, while the Gulf Shi'a were inspired by their coreligionists in
Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon, they ultimately pursued greater rights through
a nonsectarian, nationalist approach. He also discovers that
sectarianism in the region has largely been the product of the
institutional weaknesses of Gulf states, leading to excessive alarm by
entrenched Sunni elites and calculated attempts by regimes to discredit
Shi'a political actors as proxies for Iran, Iraq, or Lebanese Hizballah.
Wehrey conducts interviews with nearly every major Shi'a leader, opinion
shaper, and activist in the Gulf Arab states, as well as prominent Sunni
voices, and consults diverse Arabic-language sources.