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Myriam Benraad
From protest to armed jihad
Baghdad’s anti-Sunni campaign peaked in December 2011 when the Supreme Court
issued an arrest warrant against Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a leading figure and
member of the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood. Accused of terrorist activities, the latter went
into exile, first in Kurdistan and later in Turkey. All the Sunni Arab provinces were placed
under surveillance, while al-Maliki reduced the scope of their prerogatives by deploying
the army, police and security forces. Economic projects were intentionally slowed down in
these territories. Once again, Sunni Arabs failed to organise a viable opposition, allowing
al-Maliki to act as he saw fit. In December 2012, however, the bodyguards of Sunni Arab
Finance Minister Rafi al-Issawi, a native of Al-Anbar, were arrested. This was the breaking
point, which instigated a large protest movement among Sunni Arabs.
Initially peaceful, this movement called for both a reform of de-Baathification, which
had relentlessly targeted civilian populations, and for a less overwhelming presence of
Baghdad in provincial affairs. While some expected a dialogue with al-Maliki, Sunni Arabs
already contemplated a territorial and political secession on the basis of their identity,
no longer believing in reconciliation nor in their own political representatives. Rather,
it was the local leaders, tribal and religious (such as imam Abd al-Malik al-Saadi, whose
fatwas were followed for some time) who attempted mediation. Yet, in April 2013, al-Maliki
dispatched Iraqi security forces to crush a camp of protesters in Hawija, in the province of
Kirkuk. Through this blind use of force, the Prime Minister sounded the death knell for
any serious negotiation with Sunni Arabs. In mid-2013, the protest movement subsequently
turned into a new insurgency.
Such militarisation obviously served the rise of more radical formations calling for
an armed revolt, some Salafist-jihadist, others neo-Baathist – such as the Army of the
Men of the Naqshbandi Order (
Jaysh Rijal al-
Ṭ
ariqa an-Naqshabandiya
), created in
2006 in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s hanging and led by his late deputy Izzat
Ibrahim al-Douri.
Active in the north of Iraq and in Syria, a number of jihadists and Baathists joined Daesh
very early on, which did not in fact mean that the whole Sunni Arab community supported
the group’s ideology and ultraviolent methods. Populations had largely rejected the first
Islamic State of Iraq in 2006, but simmering discontent among Sunni Arabs in 2013 offered
the jihadists a new opportunity to build popularity and expand their influence. At the end
of the year, the ingredients of a vast Sunni Arab uprising were in place, and raging war
in Syria allowed the Islamic State’s Iraqi vanguard to export its project beyond the border
and capitalise on similar Sunni Arab resentment in this country. A transnational impetus
of ethno-sectarian solidarity took shape against the two regimes of Baghdad and Damascus.
Daesh is therefore not only a terrorist group; it is also a direct outcome of Iraq’s advanced
decay and, to a lesser extent, of the neighbouring Syrian conflict. The Sunni Arab question
in Iraq has remained unresolved for more than a decade and ended up pushing Sunni
Arabs into the arms of the most brutal player on the field, the one which, in this case,
promised them a reversal of their condition and the satisfaction of all their demands. Daesh
is not, as has often been said and written, an outgrowth of the war in Syria; it is in Iraq that