Cc tinsley buzzfeed unsolved wiki
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From early 2012 Saudi Arabia backed the Free Syria Army (FSA), which had a national Syrian rather than a Sunni sectarian focus, even though most were Sunni Muslims. Riyadh, initially sponsored moderates among those who took up arms against Assad. The presence of Shi’a militia in the Syria conflict, many with an explicitly anti-Sunni agenda, helped to radicalise anti-Assad fighters, who were overwhelmingly Sunni, and further sectarianized the conflict.However, it is important to note that turning to sectarian fighters was neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia’s first reaction, and their policies evolved from the failure of earlier options. Several of these retrained units were based around sectarian identities, as were the non-governmental pro-Assad militia they encouraged.
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It sent its own Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force officers, led by Major General Qassem Suleimani, to direct the war effort and retrain Syria’s military. From 2012 it sent Islamist Shi’a militia to Syria to fight for President Bashar al-Assad, with up to 8,000 fighters from its Lebanese ally Hizballah and 12,000 Afghani and Pakistani fighters present by 2017. Its government turned a blind eye for the first few years of the war to private Saudi donors sending money to radical Sunni groups, and it did little to clamp down on its sectarian preachers appearing on satellite television watched in Syria.Iran’s sectarian activity was even more pronounced. Saudi Arabia has sent arms and money to overtly sectarian Sunni Islamist fighters. Saudi Arabia and Iran have contributed to this. That said, an identity component has often been present, with violence, sexual assault and looting taking place along sectarian lines. In some areas, the war has been driven more by political, economic and international factors than sectarianism. There has been variation across Syria and over the course of the conflict. This suggests a degree of pragmatism from both governments, rather than being driven exclusively by sectarian zeal.The Syrian conflict is often characterised as sectarian, but this is one strand of several driving the civil war.
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Instead, sponsoring sectarian actors was a plan B after backing other, more inclusive actors failed. Drawing on research by myself and Morten Valbjorn that examines the relationship between Syrian fighting groups and their external sponsors, this article argues that in Syria identity politics was not the immediate policy pursued by either Saudi Arabia or Iran. However, a closer examination of the Syrian case would challenge this.
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This has led to a characterisation by many that both are sectarian actors that immediately reach for identity politics as a tool of influence. Both have utilised sectarian identity politics to further their goals and both have contributed to the growth of violence along sectarian lines. Saudi Arabia and Iran have both been deeply involved in the Syrian civil war from its beginning in 2011, each sponsoring rival sides.