Where Sunni and Shi'a Get Along

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The chasm between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims only seems to grow in the Middle East, fed respectively by an emergent Iran, on one side, and a defensive Saudi Arabia, on the other. However, in Afghanistan, it is a different story. The relationship there between the two major divisions of Islam appears today to be one of equanimity. Throughout the recent Ashura memorials — perhaps the most emotional of the Shi'a calendar — there was not one report of sectarian violence in the country. In the capital I met many Sunnis attending the chest beating rituals, though they abstained from the bloodletting themselves. "Living as we do in a war-stricken country, it is useless to fight against each other," says Khalil Umrani, part of a 12-member shura (council of elders) that organized this year's Ashura celebrations at a Kabul mosque. "It is not important whether we pray with open hands [as the Shi'a do] or closed hands [as the Sunni do]."

So how is it that a nation so divided by civil war, with Sunni-dominated Pakistan on one border and Shi'a Iran on the other, one-time home to the viciously anti-Shi'a al- Qaeda, manages to escape much of the violence that is tormenting other Muslim nations? Following Ayatollah Khomeini's call for pan-Shi'a unity in 1980, thousands of Afghan Shi'a (predominantly from the Hazara ethnicity, but some Tajik and Uzbek as well) poured across the border to aid Iran in its 10-year war against Iraq. Suffering terrible casualties, most expected some acknowledgement of their efforts. Yet when they left the front and got back to Iran, they were treated not as heroes, but as lowly refugees. "A lot of these fighters returned to Afghanistan with a bad taste in their mouth for the idea of pan-Shi'ism," says Niamatullah Ibrahimi of the Crisis States Research Center at the London School of Economics.

Apart from this Shi'a antipathy for Iran, Michael Semple, Deputy to the European Union Special Representative for Afghanistan, also detects a strong government role in the prevention of sectarian violence. Unlike Pakistan, where division is ingrained in local politics, Semple says that "Anti-sectarianism is being deliberately used by the political class here in Afghanistan." While Afghanistan may seem to outsiders a fractured country, Semple says there is still a very strong centralized system of power. "Everybody wants to be somehow associated with the state, especially the establishment, and you have to obey certain codes of behavior, certain rules. One of those is that you can't be sectarian. And I think a lot of this comes down from [President Hamid] Karzai."

It is a remarkable situation because Afghanistan has had a history of sectarian violence — and even in these days of civil co-existence, Sunni and Shi'a still see themselves as separate communities. When pushed, few Shi'a men say they would marry a Sunni woman, or allow their sons to, and vice versa. "It's a culture thing," one Sunni friend explained to me. "We don't celebrate their customs and they don't celebrate ours, but that doesn't mean we are going to fight." Well, not all the time. There are sporadic outbreaks of violence, though nothing of the gruesomeness and persistence of Iraq. Last year's Ashura commemoration in Herat, for example, saw 105 people killed and 150 wounded.

The sectarian split is largely along ethnic lines. The Shi'a Hazaras, who reside in central Afghanistan, have traditionally been looked down upon as second-class citizens by their Sunni Pashtun countrymen. Since the late 19th century, strong fatwas have been issued against Shi'a, largely as ideological justification for their expulsion and extermination. Hazara neighborhoods of Kabul were among the most devastated during the civil war, and thousands were massacred when the Taliban took Bamiyan.

Even today, while the Hazara may be disabused of Iranian generosity, their Sunni countrymen suspect them of Iranian ties. Says Semple: "Hazaras were traditionally the most dispossessed in the country. Many are returning back from being refugees [in Iran] and are determined to make for themselves a better life than they had before. So the people who were traditionally the rural underclass are now settling on the outskirts of town. They are earning small capital and buying land. Before you know it there are conspiracy rumors about Iranian involvement in Afghanistan furthering their plot to take over the world," says Semple.

Nevertheless, the appearance of unity prevails over that of division. For example, the newly formed Islamic Brotherhood Shura, a group composed of Sunni and Shi'a, has spent the past year working on programs designed to quash sectarian violence and discrimination. "We have learnt good lessons from Iraq and Pakistan," says Qari Zia-u-ddin, a Sunni member of the Shura. "It is clear and there's no doubt that the enemies of Islam want to bring division amongst Muslims. But we are brothers and united. We will seriously stand against those who try to separate us." The sentiment is the same on the street. Says Ali Mohammad, 27, a Shi'a day laborer in Kabul: "There is no difference between Shi'a and Sunni. We like each other. In Afghanistan, our people have realized that this war between Shi'a and Sunni will be fratricidal war which has no benefit neither for us nor for our nation." With reporting by Ali Saffi Ahmad/Kabul