OK, al Qaeda fans, this is that exciting background blog you have been dreaming about (nightmares?) for weeks. Here the hot issues you need to understand in order to make the slightest sense of what is happening in the civil war in Iraq.
Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 – Scheming superpowers, France and England, secretly agreed how to carve up their respective future Middle Eastern colonies (spheres of influence) upon the expected loss of World War I by the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey). Ignoring the clear ethnic and religious local divides entirely, this Anglo-French agreement artificially blended three relatively divergent groups (easier to draw straight lines and recognize natural border demarcations than figure out who really would be compatible citizens) in to a single new colony called “Iraq.” Kurds (a bit over 20% of Iraq) live in the north (and across neighboring Syria and Turkey) and are more defined by their ethnicity than by religion. Shiites (about 60% of the population) live in the South and control the Gulf access. Sunnis live in the West and the area between Baghdad and the Kurds, and while they occupy most of the land, they represent around 20% of the total Iraqi population.
Sunni vs. Shiite – These diverse sects of Islam have either gotten along as good neighbors or been at each other’s throats. What began, after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, as a struggle of leadership, escalated into differing theological interpretations of the faith (e.g., Sunnis believe in a literal reading of the Qur’an by every believer, while Shiites believe the Qur’an is a mystical book that can only be interpreted by the most senior cleric(s)), a schism that is generally used by extremist religious factions from time to time to stir up ancient animosities and manipulate the masses to desired political outcomes. Prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, these factions just got along, never really thinking about the differences. The issues weren’t a particular priority until we stepped in. Today, walls have been erected in Baghdad to separate Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods. Sunnis, once the ruling sect, have been slammed and marginalized by Shiite regime of Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki, elected to power in an American imposed “democracy” that effectively gave the majority Shiites a blank check to run roughshod over their former Sunni rulers. Sunni extremists, supported by foreign fighters often supplied by al Qaeda, have been blasting away at Shiite targets in response. While 85% of Islam is Sunni, there are heavy concentrations of Shiites particularly in Iraq (60% Shiite) and Iran (95%). Syria is about 80% Sunni, but the Assad leadership comes from a 10% minority of Shiites (the Alawite sect).
The Syrian Factor – When a sustained drought (climate change!) in northeastern Syria caused a million (Sunni) farmers (and their families) to leave their homes to find another way to survive, this disenfranchised mass (all Sunnis) formed the backbone of the initial Syrian rebellion against the incumbent Shiite Assad regime. Soon joined by foreign fighters frequently supplied by al Qaeda (Sunni), the Syrian rebellion destabilized not just Syria, but all the neighboring countries that straddled supply routes and absorbed the millions of fleeing civilians seeking sanctuary from the battle. Lebanon has been unable to conduct normal elections with an influx of Syrian refugees that now make up 20% of the population. As U.S. drone strikes began to take out top al Qaeda leaders, the next generation of replacement killers broke apart over how far they would be willing to go to implement their goals. Old line al Qaeda leaders were moderating, but the young fighters – adept in social media and computer-enhanced organization – wanted a scorched earth policy that resulted in horrific policy of execution of non-Sunnis and anyone else who opposed them. They broke off from “too moderate” al Qaeda, and yearning for a vast new Sunni nation – stretching from the Mediterranean in the east, embracing what have been traditional Kurdish oil fields around Kirkuk and absorbing the area around Baghdad – became soldiers for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They began their march into Iraq, and we have been watching the news reports of their rampant and violent successes. The above map shows the intended borders of this new nation, leaving the Kurds in the north to form their own state. Foreign fighters flocked to the ISIS cause, joining these extreme Sunni fundamentalists (otherwise mostly locals from Iraq and Syria) seeking to create a Sunni version of the Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran.
Sunni Factions – While ISIS fighters seem to be the only invading Iraq, that statement is far from the truth. Drawn together to battle a common enemy, several factions – another Sunni extremist group (Islamic Jihad), the secularists (Baathists) who once ruled Iraq (Saddam Hussein’s group), local tribal forces (Sunnis who hate the al-Maliki Shiite regime) but are only interested in their local communities, etc., etc. – these forces are very unlikely and unstable partners of interim convenience. Should the fighting stop and the territory conquered, we should expect internecine Sunni struggles to remain violent. For example, a recent battle, near Kirkuk, recently erupted between ISIS and Baathist forces, leaving 17 dead.
Shiite Factions – Iran is the uber-Shiite power in the world, and most certainly is looking at the ISIS juggernaut in neighboring Iraq with particular fear. ISIS threatens to destroy Shiite shrines as they march, and Iran swears that it will use any power at its disposal to prevent that from happening. Iran’s stooge in Iraq is recently re-elected President Nouri al-Makiki. One of his first acts upon the departure of U.S. forces was to order the arrest of the Sunni’s highest ranking elected official. He invited Iraqi Shiite militia, theretofore hiding in Iran, to return to Iraq and to become part of the Iraqi Army. But Shiite militia generally are small political clusters and generally do not trust each other. Militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army would probably be the most recognizable militia, but there are equally powerful Shiite warlords ready to fight with their own loyal militia. Al-Maliki needs those militias to fend off the ISIS invasion, but their mutual animosity has resulted in their being accorded very different geographical defense assignments around Baghdad so that they do not turn on each other. The deeply respected Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has issued a call to arms for Iraqi Shiites (he actually included government-loyal/moderate Sunnis as well, but… well…. ) everywhere to come to the aid of the crumbling Iraqi Army to defend the homeland against ISIS. If there is ever to be any form of détente or accord between attacking Sunnis and defending Shiites, expect al-Sistani to be an essential ingredient in that negotiation. And despite his recent solidification of power in Iraq, expect that President al-Maliki must depart his office to extinguish the flames he has fanned for so many years. In fact, many expect that the United States would require his resignation as a condition for any U.S. weapons being deployed against ISIS. Catch-22: those Shiite militias have a dark past, many with allegiance only to their charismatic leaders… and they have a lot of dead Sunnis on their minds. The civil war could simply get a lot worse, fracturing Iraq into the three nations that many experts have predicted.
The United States of America – American actions, starting with their misjudged and under-planned 2003 invasion of Iraq, reopened old wounds, emboldened extremists to join a direct conflict with “the Great Satan,” created al Qaeda (and other extremist) recruitment posters (remember those ignominious picture of our torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib Prison?) and installed a Shiite majority as the power, effectively handing the country to Iran’s sphere of influence, decimating any hope for treating Sunnis as anything but second or third class citizens in their own country. Dick Cheney – whose credibility in justifying his position on Iraq was decimated even by right-wing-sympathetic Fox News – has become a court jester-meets-Rasputin of American politics. Cheney, with arch-junior-fool Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sharing a parallel credibility malfunction, architected the George W Bush administration’s military and diplomatic strategy on Iraq and Afghanistan. Even overlooking the long discredited-WMD excuse for invading Iraq, Cheney just needed a war to convince Congress to repeal all the restrictions imposed on presidential war power after the failed Vietnam War. A trillion dollars and 4,500 dead Americans later, Iraq is devolving into the very civil war that experts predicted in 2003. That President Obama continued this war unnecessarily for years definitely adds a big piece of the blame to his administration. Why didn’t we support al-Maliki against the rising tide of Sunni extremists as he requested or as so many GOP critics want to know? That he was now Iran’s best friend and those Sunni militants served to contain Iran might have had something to do with it… and the fact that Americans were sick of our involvement in the region. Had we left Iraq to Saddam Hussein, the factions would sill hate each other, the drought in Syria would have spurred dissent, but the mess that represents modern Iraq would never have spun out of control as it has today.
So now you have some of the basic facts you need to know better to understand the mess we call Iraq.
I’m Peter Dekom, and why we didn’t understand the long-standing cultural and historical facts before we dived head-first into the empty swimming pool is still puzzling, but it still seems to be the modern American way.
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