*3.3. Hypothesis Three: There Is a Lack of Shia–Sunni Interreligious Peacemaking Because Peacemaking Occurs through Other Channels*

We started this analysis by showing that only less than two percent (1.7 percent) of the world's interreligious peacemaking organizations have had an explicit Shia–Sunni focus, according to the KAICIID Peace Map. One explanation for this may be that such dialogue occurs through inter-governmental international organizations, such as the United Nations (UN), or internal, informal, processes within states a ffected by Shia–Sunni conflict.<sup>5</sup> This hypothesis is also plausible if we consult earlier research on Sunni and Shia Muslim relations (e.g., (Brunner 2004). According to this research, there is a lack of organizations that would have the capacity or trust to engage in a serious dialogue in

<sup>5</sup> The KAICIID Peace Map also includes smaller, specialized UN agencies, for example the UNESCO Chair in Interreligious and Intercultural Relations or the UNESCO Chair in Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue for South-East Europe.

conflicts between Sunni and Shia Muslim actors or communities. Attempts are often made by individual Muslim theologians or by one side in a conflict, but there is a lack of well-organized ecumenical organizations that hold the trust and capacity to engage in peacebuilding, dialogue, or negotiations.

Indeed, there has been an extensive engagemen<sup>t</sup> of the UN, not least through mediation and involvement in Shia–Sunni conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, or Afghanistan. However, the high degree of UN engagemen<sup>t</sup> also reflects a lack of regional capacities to manage these violent conflicts. Thus, there have been few internal institutional responses from the countries and societies themselves. Instead, "because of the low level of institutionalization across the sectarian divide in the region (i.e., across the Saudi–Iranian divide) the UN is by default called on to monitor and mediate peace agreements" (Sisk 2017, p. 272).

It is further important to recognize the failure of the major regional organizations, the OIC, GCC, and Arab League, to bridge the Shia–Sunni divide. With 57 member states, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)—until 2011 known as "Organization of Islamic Conference"—is the world's second largest international organization, after the UN, formally representing more than 1.5 billion Muslims around the world. In 2006, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu reached out to Sunni and Shia leaders in Iraq and invited both sides to a reconciliation meeting that resulted in the signing of the Mecca Declaration on 20 October 2006. The OIC's involvement was received largely positive by the international community and contributed to alleviate Shia–Sunni tensions in many parts of the country. The OIC has also been involved in the process leading to the Djibouti Agreement in the Somali conflict in 2008 and supported dialogue processes between the governmen<sup>t</sup> of Thailand and the Muslim minority and between the governmen<sup>t</sup> of the Philippines and the MNLF rebels. More recently, however, criticism against the organization has been on the rise, specifically due to its internal divide. First, the double and triple membership of many member states in organizations that perform similar work, such as the African Union or the Arab League, bears the risk of duplicating mediation efforts by di fferent actors and institutions. Second, the OIC Secretary General's authority to initiate mediation in conflicts depends on the political will from member states (Sharqieh 2012, pp. 230–31). Related to this is a third challenge that concerns rivaling strategic interests among OIC member states, especially regarding Saudi Arabia and Iran. The relationship between the two states evolved from a regional rivalry into increased hostility after the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran in 1979 and the subsequent war between Iran and Iraq, which saw significant support for Saddam Hussein's Iraqi governmen<sup>t</sup> from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states (Keynoush 2016). Eventually, the First Gulf War (1990–1991) marked the beginning of an increased US engagemen<sup>t</sup> in the region, which, due to the US alliance with Saudi Arabia, contributed to renewed resistance and countering strategies by Iran (Mason 2014, p. 24). Already nearly two decades ago, Haynes (2001, p. 154) identified these states as "the chief rivals for superiority in the OIC ( ... )" who "used some of their oil wealth to try aggressively to expand international influence," a situation that has hardly improved since. More recently, it was in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings in 2011 that the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia escalated and became increasingly influential for the political dynamics in the region (Mabon 2015). Thus, if their interests diverge on a specific conflict, Iran and Saudi Arabia tend to prioritize their own strategic interests over those of the OIC. Moreover, they also influence the behavior of allied states, thereby complicating any mediation e ffort even further. Given the conflicting interests of some of its key member states, the OIC's capacity to play a mediating role in Shia–Sunni conflicts is further hindered by its organizational set-up that requires consensus among member states for major decisions to be taken (Sharqieh 2012, pp. 230–31).

Another major organization that could potentially act as a peacemaker in violent conflicts across the Shia–Sunni fault line is the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Established in 1981, the alliance has six member states: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. It promotes cooperation on economic, security, cultural, and social a ffairs. Similar to the OIC, since the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2011, the GCC has experienced a process of internal fragmentation that has been largely attributed to di ffering security interests of its members (Al Jazeera 2017; Lenderking et al. 2017). By summer 2017, a split between GCC members Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (plus non-GCC member Egypt) on the one side, and Qatar on the other side, became evident. Qatar was accused of colluding with Iran and Iran-backed militias, as well as funding terrorist organizations in the region. This crisis reflected a deep fragmentation within the GCC and also in the wider Middle East. Kuwait and Oman refused to align with the anti-Qatar bloc, with the Emir of Kuwait offering mediation among the parties. The ethnically diverse composition of Kuwait (30 percent Shia citizens) made the governmen<sup>t</sup> particularly weary of the risks of sectarian conflict in the region (Bianco and Stansfield 2018, pp. 614–17). Kuwait's mediation efforts, however, remained unsuccessful, to a large extent due to the refusal of the Saudi-led bloc to participate in the talks (Bakeer 2017). The distinctive socioeconomic and sociopolitical traits of the GCC members, despite sharing strong historical and cultural bonds, are currently diverging rather than converging. As long as this development of internal fractionalization of the GCC persists, it appears unlikely that the organization will be able to act as a unitary actor in a mediating function (Bianco and Stansfield 2018, p. 634).

A third major regional international organization is the Arab League, which for a long time was known for its principle of noninterference in international conflict. Between 1945 and 2008, it had only mediated in five of 22 civil wars in the Middle East. However, with the beginning of the Arab Spring, the organization seemed to be taking a more active stance, as it supported a no-fly zone over Libya and suspended the country's membership, as well as that of Syria later during that same year. Yet, like the GCC, the Arab League has suffered from the increased regional polarization that has unfolded since the Arab Spring. Supporters of the uprisings, such as Tunisia, have had contrasting interests to defenders of the status quo, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Another source of conflict has been the Muslim Brotherhood, sponsored by Qatar but labelled as a terrorist organization by Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The member states' relations with the Iranian regime are complicating things further, since the Arab League is comprised of both Iranian allies, such as Lebanon and Iraq, and adversaries, most importantly Saudi Arabia. The organization also lacks a charter that would enable it to take binding and enforceable resolutions in relation to its member states, but the political will of its member states to take the necessary reforms is currently missing (Bröning 2014; Worrall 2017).

The UN-dominated peacemaking has led to a situation where interreligious dialogue has not been at the center of attention. Indeed, a common critique against traditional diplomatic approaches is precisely that such engagemen<sup>t</sup> tends to avoid a deeper engagemen<sup>t</sup> with religiously anchored dimensions of conflicts. It has been suggested that Western governments often lack openness and sophistication in their interactions with religious institutions in countries experiencing religious conflict (Smock 2006, p. 1). A similar criticism is voiced by Marshall, who criticizes that religion has remained largely absent from the core disciplines of international relations, in both academic and practitioner-focused debates, as well as in large parts of civil society. In this context, Marshall identifies "a broad religious 'illiteracy' within policy communities," including a lack of professional frameworks to address religious questions (Marshall 2013, p. 2).

However, there have been traditional, less institutionally developed approaches to interreligious peacemaking that have been utilized to address the Shia–Sunni violence in the region. For example, it has been shown that tribal law and traditional conflict resolution mechanisms have been widely utilized in Iraq following the sectarian violence and have helped to bring about reconciliation between communities (Carroll 2011). It is plausible that the deficit in institutional interreligious Shia–Sunni peacemaking reflects the occurrence of such peacemaking practices through less formal channels, including traditional and tribal mechanisms, in line with what was argued by Bouta et al. (2005). The extent to which this is the case remains to be explored, but it could potentially be an explanation for why we see so little institutional Shia–Sunni religious dialogue. Recent research shows that top-down appeals can be conducive for cross-sectarian cooperation across the Shia–Sunni identity cleavage (Chang and Peisakhin 2019).
