Who Funded the Sunni Warlords in Iraq? the USA Did...

Gen. Petraeus' policy (and Maliki's arrogant incompetence) have led directly to the the Sunni warlords and ISIS knocking on the door of Baghdad:

We were paying the warlords off to the tune of around $150 Million per year....

This strategy has combined with other developments -- especially the fact that so much ethnic cleansing has already occurred and that violence in civil wars tends to ebb and flow, as the contending sides work to consolidate gains and replenish losses -- to bring about the current drop in violence. The Sunni sheiks, meanwhile, are getting rich from the surge. The United States has budgeted $150 million to pay Sunni tribal groups this year, and the sheiks take as much as 20 percent of every payment to a former insurgent -- which means that commanding 200 fighters can be worth well over a hundred thousand dollars a year for a tribal chief. Although Washington hopes that Baghdad will eventually integrate most former insurgents into the Iraqi state security services, there are reasons to worry that the Sunni chiefs will not willingly give up what has become an extremely lucrative arrangement... http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63398/steven-simon/the-price-of-the-surge