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Daesh: a long decade of Sunni Arab alienation in Iraq and the Middle East
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among Sunni Arabs, both out of anger and under the pressure of hardened insurgents. Shia
Islamists and Kurdish nationalists emerged triumphant from this critical political episode,
while Sunni Arabs confirmed their greater insulation.
The drafting of a new constitution in the summer of 2005 only accentuated this
trend, to the extent that underrepresented Sunni Arabs were blamed for most of the
crimes attributed to the former despot. In October the same year, two thirds of Al-Anbar
and Salahaddin governorates rejected the text, while Sunni Arab fighters – nationalists,
Islamists or those nostalgic for the old authoritarian order – started to radicalise and move
closer to Salafist spheres. Concurrently, Al-Qaeda in Iraq made the struggle against the
United States and Shia “apostates” its priority objective. This sectarianisation culminated
during the clashes of 2006 in confrontations involving Sunni insurgents and Shia militias
in Baghdad – a symbol of Islam’s past glory that the jihadists wish to restore at all costs, even
through the use of the most extreme and abject violence.
Following this outbreak of violence, the years 2007 and 2008 were characterised by a
rather brief interlude of hope for Sunni Arabs with the emergence of the tribal “Awakening”
(
Sahwa
), in which many Sunni sheikhs cooperated with US troops. Nevertheless, Sunni
Arabs remained on the margin of the political system, entirely rooted in Shia dominance,
while the Kurds strengthened their autonomy in the north. Once “transferred” to the Iraqi
government, the Sunni Arab tribes that rose up against the Islamic State of Iraq (in its initial
form, proclaimed for the first time in the fall of 2006), were stalked by Baghdad, neither
willing to integrate them into the military apparatus, nor ready to concede any political
representation to their leaders. At that stage, nothing stood any longer in the way of former
Baathists and Salafists to present themselves as the only representatives of Sunni Arabs,
the guarantors of their future in Iraq and in the Middle East, “besieged” by “miscreant”
interferences. Among the self-proclaimed protectors of Sunni Arab populations was Islamic
State, which, albeit weakened by tribal resistance and US counter-insurgency, had not said
its last word.
In early 2010, on the eve of symbolic elections (the last held under occupation), Sunni
Arabs wished to believe again that a return to Baghdad was possible and relied on the secular
Shia candidate Iyad Allawi, leader of the Iraqi National Movement (Iraqiyya), a pluri-
communal platform, to express their many grievances. Their confidence was, however,
scuttled when, following months of stalemate and fruitless talks, the Shia Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki, invested in 2006, refused to endorse his opponent’s victory, undertook a
quasi-coup and concentrated all powers while reactivating de-Baathification – from then
on, his rivals all became “Baathists” and “terrorists”. For Sunni Arabs, this was the last
straw and a terrible humiliation: although won through the ballot box and thus perfectly
legitimate, their victory had been stolen from them.
Iraqiyya did not survive this snub and declined, eventually falling apart under the weight
of al-Maliki’s political manoeuvres and those of his allies, anxious to thwart the resurgence
of a potentially threatening Sunni Arab constituency in Iraq. Allawi, for his part, left behind
him a population scalded by the government’s discriminatory and repressive policies, and
eager to challenge al-Maliki by all means possible.