Iraq: Out of the desert into Mosul (closed)

[OUTLAW 09]

Because that would ignore the thousands of Sunnis who are in the security forces fighting the insurgency. It would also ignore the several tribes in Anbar who are aligned with the government and fighting militants there as well. Would also ignore the fact that when Ayatollah Sistani called for people to rise up against the insurgency he said that it was the duty of ALL Iraqis to fight not just Shia. Plus the huge amount of intermarriage in Iraq between teh two sects.

JWing--the ethnic cleansing in the 2006-2008 periods was often targeted against the mixed marriage individuals and mixed communities and many of the refugees on the move were from mixed marriages---the ethnic killers from say the Sunni side would kill the Shia partner and the Shi killers would kill the Sunni partners or both killing groups would simply kill the entire family to include children.

This focus on targeting mixed marriages by both sides was seen for the first time in say Muqdadiyah near Buqubah and in Buriz in mid to late 2005. The focus on specific ethnic killings of say Shia began for the first time outside of Baghdad in again Muqdadiyah in the summer of 2005 during a wedding when a suicide bombers killing over and wounding in the 100 range-- Zarqawi wanted to see the reactions of the ethnic groups-Zarqawi was experimenting with the idea in early 2005.

His idea was that if one could destroy the mixed marriages meaning the two religions could co-exist and did exist for years--- then the idea of a Sunni Caliphate would go nowhere.

The ISIS has been targeting the Awakening personnel extremely effectively over the last two years---in Mosul the ISIS literally had lists of Awakening members which is today an automatic death sentence if caught.

Would argue Sistani was well respected by Sunni's when we were still in Iraq but he missed a critical opportunity for taking a firm position concerning the 2010 elections but he did/said nothing--a number of leading Sunni's had tried to get him motivated to engage in the Malaki conflict but again he did nothing so I do not think his "voice" carries much weight with Sunni's after the protest camp clearing ops ordered by Malaki in Dec 2013. Many thought that in the 2005 elections he would have gotten more involved--he simply was interested in religious matters and did not want to get into the political infighting. It was interesting that he was behind the drive for early elections, but settled with Bremer for 2005 being the first election.