It fuelled the rise of sectarian discourse, which helped turn political polarisation in Iraq into three years of brutal civil war. The ISIS offensive in 2014 drew U.S. troops back to Iraq years after Washington had tried to wash its hands of the mess it created. Iraq became a textbook case of how exclusion – in this case of disempowered Sunnis under what emerged as Shiite Islamist rule – breeds grievance, the accumulation of which can spawn violence. With the Sunnis out of power, an insurgency led by al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) thrived amid the disorder, which the U.S. was unable to remedy and, arguably, uninterested in fixing. The U.S. occupation enabled Iran to spread its influence through Iraq ... up to the borders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria

Source: The North Africa Journal March 16, 2023 23:36 UTC