What began as a jihadist onslaught against Iraqi towns and borders by forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has turned into a more generalized Sunni insurgency against the government in Baghdad.
It has created a powerful, motivated and determined movement that will be hard to extinguish without major concessions to the long disenfranchised Sunni minority.
Influential Sunni tribes have shown that their opposition to the Shiite-dominated rule of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s administration is greater than any reservations they might have about the extremist ideology of ISIS.
In Baghdad meanwhile thousands of Shia, pumped up by their spiritual leaders, are joining the ranks of militias prepared to do battle with Sunni insurgents.
As Iraq appears to slide into sectarian anarchy and inevitable partition, its future of Iraq as an integrated nation looks increasing bleak.
Just six years ago, the Islamic State of Iraq, as it was then known, acknowledged in a leaked communication that it was facing an extraordinary crisis. How, then, did this diminishing regain its present ascendancy in Iraq?
The widely acclaimed surge strategy of US president George W. Bush is largely credited with defusing the sectarian civil war in Iraq. But, within the Sunni community, it was the establishment of the Sahwa, or Awakening Council, that really turned the tide.
Influential Sunni tribes, fed up with the violence of a Sunni Islamist movement dominated by al-Qaeda, turned against it. The price the Sunnis demanded for abandoning the Islamists was a larger Sunni share of the political cake, integration of the Sahwa militias into official national forces and the decentralization of power. It was a unique opportunity for Baghdad to solidify its gains, but one that the central government missed.
Today, Sunni sentiment is hardly different to 2003 at the height of the original Sunni insurgency. Long the rulers of Iraq, the Sunnis were being forced to play second fiddle to the Shiites, by virtue of the latters’ higher population.
What has become apparent in the latest crisis is that, just as the Kurds will never succumb to rule by Baghdad, neither will the Sunnis accept to be ruled by the Shiites.
Baghdad might well crush the current Sunni uprising with the possible aid of the U.S. and Iran. But another insurgency will simply spring up. You can cut the branches of the Sunni resistance but the roots will remain. The country’s eventual fate could be its division into three autonomous entities.
Sectarianism in Iraq is hardly new and dates back many centuries. The Shiite public especially the youth, are particularly influenced by religious leaders such as Moqtada al-Sadr and influential cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Indeed, it is not an Iraqi fightback that is holding off ISIS on the threshold of Baghdad but a Shiite one.
The influence of the spiritual leaders and the fatwas they issue was clearly on display among the truckloads of young Shiite volunteers who heeded Sistani’s call to resist. The fact that Iraqi security forces, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, had to be rescued by the militias tells its own story about sectarian allegiances.
The U.S. has hesitated to intervene, realizing, as former U.S. commander in Iraq David Petraeus warned, that it would be effectively putting the Americans on the side of the Shiites, thus further adding fuel to the fire.
In a statement seen as a veiled criticism of Maliki’s politics of marginalization, Sistani recently urged the creation of "an effective government" and one "that enjoys broad national acceptance [and] that reverses past mistakes." From an initial Shiite call for resistance, a more cautious Sistani is now insisting on an Iraqi identity by putting “all Iraqis on the same level” to stand against the insurgency.
The danger is that after 11 years of bloodshed and Sunni marginalization, Baghdad may find it impossible to resurrect the notion of a shared Iraq. For that to happen, the real influence is in the hands of the Sunni tribes and the local Sunni population not in the guns of the Shiites.
The Sunnis drove out al-Qaeda once and conceivably can do the same to ISIS, but why should they? The present loose alliance of ISIS militiaman, armed local tribes and ex-Baathists share common goals and can help each other for the time being. If the tribes were to trun on ISIS, what guarantee is there that Baghdad would respond by heeding and implementing their demands.
To abandon ISIS in the absence of such guarantees, the Sunnis would risk losing a potent weapon in their armoury.
The Sunnis include a number of influential tribes, among them the Dulaim, Shamma, al-Jaburi, the Ubaydis, the 'Azza and the al-Bu Nasir. The founder of the Islamic Army of Iraq, Sheikh Ahmed al-Dabash, an influential imam from the Batawi family and for many years a thorn in the side of the U.S., acknowledged in a recent interview that thousands of his men are participating in the ISIS-led insurgency.
Al-Dabash, who is among tribal leaders demanding the creation of an autonomous Sunni region, said: “Is it possible that a few hundred Isis jihadists can take the whole of Mosul?...No. All the Sunni tribes have come out against Maliki. And there are parts of the military, Baathists from the time of Saddam Hussein, clerics, everyone came out against the oppression that we have been suffering.”
Similarly, the leader of the political wing of the Tribal Revolutionary Council, Sheikh Zaydan al Jabiri, has declined to endorse ideology of ISIS but highlighted their common enemy, the Shiite dominated government.
Ali Hatim Al-Suleiman, an emir of the Dulaim tribe echoed the sentiment of other tribal leaders. “It is the tribal rebels who are in control of the situation in Mosul. It is not reasonable to say that a group like ISIS, which has a small number of men and vehicles, could be in control of a large city like Mosul. Therefore, it is clear that this is a tribal revolution, but the government is trying to force us all to wear the robe of the terrorists and ISIS.”
Sheikh Khamis Al Dulaimi, a tribal leader in the Anbar Military Council of Tribal Revolutionaries, declared: "This is a revolution against the unfairness and marginalization of the past 11 years."
A common theme among these tribal leaders is their underlying fear of ISIS. According to Sheikh Bashar al-Faidhi of the Association of Muslim Scholars: "We're terrified of them. They are a problem. But we have to have priorities."
The tribal leaders were the key to the recent escalation of ISIS influence but they are also the key to any eventual move to oust the jihadists.
Animosity, hatred, fanaticism and revenge have created a vicious cycle that is hard to break. The sectarian bloodshed since 2003 will be difficult to heal and a long history of division will note be easily overcome.
Passions are so high that the slightest damage to a Shiite shrine could see the battle morph into all-out war, perhaps involving thousands of enraged Iranians who might join in the bloodbath. The bombing of the al-Askari shrine in Samarra in 2006 unleashed two years of sectarian mayhem.
Many of the youth, who are now in their teens, grew up in a cycle of sectarian terror. It is youths such as these who once swelled the ranks of Shiite militias such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army to oppose the U.S. occupation.
However, the sectarian landscape has changed immensely since 2003. One look at Baghdad tells the story. The city has segregated itself greatly along religious and to a lesser extent ethnic lines. In the country as a whole, the constant demarcation along ethnic and sectarian lines highlights the only real solution – the division of Iraq. Even that solution raises the spectre of sectarian and ethnic cleansing.
The Sunni insurgencies against Baghdad are in some ways similar to past Shiite insurgencies against Sunni rule. Al-Da’wa al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Call), was established in 1967 by Shia clergy and activists against the Baathist rule. The Da’wa was a revolutionary movement that aimed to create an Islamic state in Iraq. Its military wing was the al-Badr Brigade. Grand ayatollah Muhammad Sadeq al-Sadr and his two sons - Muqtada al Sadr’s father and elder brother - were killed in 1999.
However, the bonds of tribal affiliation have sometimes proved stronger than religious affiliation. Shiite tribes helped to protect border regions in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war against their Iranian co-religionists.
Ultimately, religious passions do not rule the head or heart of every Sunni or Shiite. But with lack of jobs, inclusion in society and government, and a bleak future ahead of them, many Iraqis have little to hold on to.
* Bashdar Pusho Ismaeel is a writer and analyst with a focus on the Kurds and Middle East affairs. He has worked with the BBC, Asharq al-Awsat, the Washington Examiner, the Asian Times, the Kurdish Globe, and al-Arabiya. Website: www.bashdar.co.uk, email: bashdar@hotmail.com.
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