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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumFred Kaplan: If jihadists control Iraq, blame Nouri al-Maliki, not the United States.
After Mosul
If jihadists control Iraq, blame Nouri al-Maliki, not the United States.
By Fred Kaplan
Civilian children stand next to a burnt vehicle during clashes between Iraqi security forces and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, on June 10, 2014.
Photo by Reuters/Stringer.
The collapse of Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city, has little to do with the withdrawal of American troops and everything to do with the political failure of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
As the U.S. pullout began under the terms of a treaty signed in 2008 by then-President George W. Bush, Maliki, the leader of a Shiite political party, promised to run a more inclusive governmentto bring more Sunnis into the ministries, to bring more Sunnis from the Sons of Iraq militia into the national army, to settle property disputes in Kirkuk, to negotiate a formula on sharing oil revenue with Sunni districts, and much more.
Maliki has since backpedaled on all of these commitments and has pursued policies designed to strengthen Shiites and marginalize Sunnis. That has led to the resurgence of sectarian violence in the past few years. The Sunnis, finding themselves excluded from the political process, have taken up arms as the route to power. In the process, they have formed alliances with Sunni jihadist groupssuch as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which has seized not just Mosul but much of northern Iraqon the principle that the enemy of their enemy is their friend.
Something like this has happened before. Between 2005 and 2006, jihadists who called themselves al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, took control of Anbar province, in the western part of the country, by playing on the populations fear of the anti-Sunni ethnic-cleansing campaigns launched by Malikis army.* ISIS, an offshoot of Zarqawis organization, is following the same handbook, picking up support from one of northern Iraqs leading Sunni militias, Jaysh Rijal al-Tariqah al-Naqshbandia, or JRTN. That is a risky move for a group like JRTN, which shares neither the millenarian goals nor the extremely violent tactics of ISIS (which, its worth noting, was expelled from al-Qaida because even current al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri considered the group too violent). But JRTNs leaders have accepted the risk for now to advance their own goal of overthrowing Maliki. (They boast that they have been fighting alongside ISIS, but disavow involvement in the killing of civilians.)
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If jihadists control Iraq, blame Nouri al-Maliki, not the United States.
By Fred Kaplan
Civilian children stand next to a burnt vehicle during clashes between Iraqi security forces and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, on June 10, 2014.
Photo by Reuters/Stringer.
The collapse of Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city, has little to do with the withdrawal of American troops and everything to do with the political failure of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
As the U.S. pullout began under the terms of a treaty signed in 2008 by then-President George W. Bush, Maliki, the leader of a Shiite political party, promised to run a more inclusive governmentto bring more Sunnis into the ministries, to bring more Sunnis from the Sons of Iraq militia into the national army, to settle property disputes in Kirkuk, to negotiate a formula on sharing oil revenue with Sunni districts, and much more.
Maliki has since backpedaled on all of these commitments and has pursued policies designed to strengthen Shiites and marginalize Sunnis. That has led to the resurgence of sectarian violence in the past few years. The Sunnis, finding themselves excluded from the political process, have taken up arms as the route to power. In the process, they have formed alliances with Sunni jihadist groupssuch as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which has seized not just Mosul but much of northern Iraqon the principle that the enemy of their enemy is their friend.
Something like this has happened before. Between 2005 and 2006, jihadists who called themselves al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, took control of Anbar province, in the western part of the country, by playing on the populations fear of the anti-Sunni ethnic-cleansing campaigns launched by Malikis army.* ISIS, an offshoot of Zarqawis organization, is following the same handbook, picking up support from one of northern Iraqs leading Sunni militias, Jaysh Rijal al-Tariqah al-Naqshbandia, or JRTN. That is a risky move for a group like JRTN, which shares neither the millenarian goals nor the extremely violent tactics of ISIS (which, its worth noting, was expelled from al-Qaida because even current al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri considered the group too violent). But JRTNs leaders have accepted the risk for now to advance their own goal of overthrowing Maliki. (They boast that they have been fighting alongside ISIS, but disavow involvement in the killing of civilians.)
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Fred Kaplan: If jihadists control Iraq, blame Nouri al-Maliki, not the United States. (Original Post)
flpoljunkie
Jun 2014
OP
Never made sense that if Iran was our real nemesis, we would take out Hussein
TwilightGardener
Jun 2014
#1
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)1. Never made sense that if Iran was our real nemesis, we would take out Hussein
(enemy of Iran) and install a Shiite (Maliki) and then expect him to not go all tribal and cause a Sunni backlash, and create large chain of Shia-aligned countries cooperating with each other (Iran, Syria, Iraq) that Saudi Arabia and Qatar hated--so SA retaliates with the funding/arming of Sunni extremists to try to upend the Shia rule (but of course they only support "moderates", on paper). None of it makes any fucking sense in terms of serving US interests.