Iraq Violence Was 'Waiting Powder Keg'
Updated: 1:10pm UK, Monday 06 January 2014
By Tim Marshall, Diplomatic Editor
The fighting in the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi threatens to hasten the disintegration of a country in chaos.
The upsurge of violence has simply highlighted a pattern of sectarian strife which emerged in early 2013 and shows no signs of ending.
Unlike during the violence of 2006/07, the Americans are no longer around to stand between the sectarian factions.
Fallujah and Ramadi are in Anbar province in the west of Iraq, which is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim and is the stronghold of al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).
Under Saddam Hussein, the Sunnis dominated the country but that came to an end after the US led invasion of 2003.
The regional, ethnic, and sectarian tensions in Iraq were always present since its inception as a state in 1920, but the lid was taken off this simmering pot by the American invasion.
The subsequent botched attempts at nation building widened the sectarian divide.
The Americans fought the Shia and Sunni militia, the Sunni and Shia fought one another, and the Kurds in the north warned everyone to keep their distance.
The US forces struggled and only achieved a degree of relative stability during the 'Sunni Awakening'.
The Sunni tribes, realising they were losing control of Anbar province to al Qaeda, allied with the Americans.
Al Qaeda may have been Sunni, but they were mostly foreign fighters and they had designs on the territory of Anbar. The temporary alliance worked and the violence receded.
In 2011 Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's government refused to allow the Americans even 'basing rights' for a skeleton force and so the US military pulled out completely.
There was now no one left to stand between the factions, or broker deals, if they began to fight again.
The Shia are the majority among the Arabs in Iraq, and under Maliki they have taken control of the main levers of power in the country; the military, the judiciary, the interior ministry, and the cabinet.
Sunnis felt increasingly disenfranchised and the victims of repression.
A year ago they began demonstrations in Ramadi and Fallujah calling for the freeing of tens of thousands of prisoners held without charge by Maliki's forces. The protests spread to other Sunni areas in the country.
The Prime Minister said the demonstrations and protests camps were a front for al Qaeda and secessionists and ordered the security forces to break them up. Hundreds of people were killed in the ensuing violence and a campaign of terrorism across the country killed thousands.
Subsequent attempts at compromise were undermined by hardliners on both sides in parliament.
Anbar province was a powder keg waiting to explode.
Late last month, Maliki ordered a military raid on an ISIS camp in western Anbar, the arrest of a senior Sunni politician in Ramadi, and the clearing of a protest camp.
The backlash came almost immediately. The Sunni tribes rose up and quickly reformed their militias. They took on the government forces pushing them out of Ramadi and Fallujah.
Some, fearing that Al Qaeda would take revenge for the 'awakening', also targeted ISIS fighters.
Now the Iraqi army is poised on the outskirts of the two cities waiting to take them back.
As the Americans found, the fighting will be hard, with no guarantee of success. The longer it goes on, the greater the chance that it will spread and the more it will undermine the national elections set for April 30.
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