Who Should be Blamed for Muslim Terrorism?

[JonLP24]

25. I can help a little with the last question in how it relates to the current situation

Nouri al-Maliki was selected to be the first Iraqi prime minister in 2006 by the CIA & US Government. He was a notable Iraqi Shia political leader during Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1970s who was living in exile in Iran.

He turned out to be a very bad choice. Most of the government was Shia which was understandable given the majority Shia population but that isn't what the problem was.

From a Sunni perspective, they had reasonable concerns that he was allowing the Shia militias to grow (sectarian violence fought between the sides and tit-for-tat kidnapping that's been going on for years and still going on in these newer conflicts)

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Does Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki have the political spine to deal with Iraq's No. 1 problem — the Shi'ite militias? There's a growing suspicion in Baghdad that he does not. Having promised, for the umpteenth time, to crack down on the sectarian death squads wreaking havoc on the Iraqi capital, the prime minister promptly turned around and castigated U.S. forces for doing precisely that. The Iraqi leader claimed that a predawn raid Wednesday on a militia stronghold by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers had been conducted without his approval, and said such attacks would not be repeated.

<snip>

For the beleaguered residents of Baghdad, this has become a familiar Green Zone farce. Beholden to the very militias he has vowed to crush, the increasingly hamstrung prime minister has forced U.S. troops guarding the city to don kid gloves when dealing with the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to the radical Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, which has been blamed for much of the sectarian violence that kills an average of 100 Iraqis a day. And there is palpable frustration among U.S. soldiers patrolling the streets of Baghdad that every time they strike against the Mahdi Army, they are publicly scolded by the Iraqi prime minister. "Every time he does one of these about-turns, he makes the Madhi Army stronger and the government weaker," says a Western diplomat in Baghdad. "And of course, it drives the [Americans] up the wall."

Moqtada al-Sadr commands enough seats in the Iraqi parliament to topple the prime minister, which is what makes his Mahdi Army untouchable. Still, few in Baghdad doubt that the Mahdi Army is conducting a campaign of organized violence against Iraq's Sunnis. TIME has uncovered evidence of a Mahdi Army program of ethnic cleansing designed to drive Sunnis out of mixed neighborhoods. As a member of a Shi'ite Islamist party himself, al-Maliki dares not incur the wrath of his own community. The last Iraqi leader who tried to face down al-Sadr, former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, paid a heavy political price — in two general elections following his authorization of U.S. forces to smash the Mahdi Army in the summer of 2004, Allawi has been soundly defeated. That cautionary tale is not lost on al-Maliki.
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1550694,00.html?cnn=yes

That was 2006

Then he started conducting raids of Sunni politicians which left them one of the dead

BAGHDAD — Iraq's prime minister ordered an investigation on Tuesday into a violent government raid in Diyala Province earlier in the day that left one provincial official dead and another under arrest. His rapid response reflected fears that the raid, reminiscent of the sectarian attacks once carried out regularly by Shiite-dominated security forces, could inflame sectarian tensions in the fragile province.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/world/africa/20iht-20iraq.15446434.html?_r=1&

The highest ranking Sunni politician was brought up on terrorism charges which certainly reeked of a political prosecution, I think Turkey eventually granted him asylum.

Maliki’s government issued charges against Hashemi on the eve of the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops in December, causing a political crisis in the fragile national unity government. Hashemi’s Iraqiya bloc, the main alliance supported by Sunnis, announced a boycott of the cabinet and parliament.

However, most of Iraqiya’s lawmakers returned last month, easing the crisis, and many of Iraq's political commentators say the affair ended up strengthening Maliki’s grip on power.

The Interior Ministry in Baghdad has said it has formally requested the Kurdish authorities hand over Hashemi to stand trial in Baghdad. Kurdish Deputy Interior Minister Jalal Kareem told Reuters on Thursday the regional government had yet to receive any such request.

Hashemi says the charges against him are political, and he will not return to Baghdad to face them because the courts are biased. He has offered to stand trial in Kirkuk, a part of Iraq where Kurds and his fellow Sunni Arabs hold sway.

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/16/201083.html

Yet another Sunni politician was raided and arrested -- Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki told demonstrators on Wednesday to stop their protests or face government action, contending that the protests were being hijacked by groups to harm the national interest. Demonstrations against his Shiite-dominated government erupted on Dec. 21 after a raid by security forces on the office and home of the Sunni finance minister, Rafie al-Issawi, and the arrest of 10 bodyguards. Last week, thousands of Sunni Muslims took to the streets again, blocking Iraq’s main road and trade link to Syria and Jordan. Mr. Maliki told Iraqi state television that some of the protesters’ demands were legitimate, like calls for jobs. But he added that the government had been patient long enough, and that protests should not continue indefinitely. In a statement from his office on Wednesday, Mr. Maliki said that “the enemies of the political process, the armed terrorist groups and the remnants of the former regime” were being given a chance to infiltrate the demonstrations, threatening national unity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/world/middleeast/iraq-maliki-demands-that-protesters-stand-down.html?_r=0

Which sparked protests which started out as peaceful with demands such as Sunni participation in the new government.

(This letter is from a Marine addressed to Kerry right before the shit hit the fan)
Fallujah is currently under siege once again. You have stated that US troops will not be sent back to Iraq to assist in the current siege, but you have agreed that the US should send weapons to the Iraqi government. I am writing to implore that you do everything within your ability to stop shipments of US weapons to Iraq, whether they are sold, gifted, or loaned. Arming an oppressive regime so that they may better crush a popular uprising is not in the best interest of Americans or Iraqis.

During that 2nd siege of Fallujah we killed thousands of civilians, displaced hundreds of thousands, destroyed nearly the entire city, and brought immeasurable loss and hardship upon those poor people. Since then I have devoted my life to raising awareness about the suffering I helped create in Fallujah, and to assisting Fallujans in their struggle with a public health disaster and ongoing repression.

I feel a moral obligation to do whatever is within my power to help these people who I once hurt. But I was not a lone actor in Iraq. I had the support of a nation behind me and I was taking orders from the world’s most powerful military. The 2nd siege of Fallujah was not exceptional; rather it was symbolic of our military’s conduct in Iraq and the way that our mission impacted the lives of Iraqis. Our war and occupation took so much from them. It resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions displaced, permanent environmental contamination, and a new repressive regime that most Iraqis regard as begin more brutal than that of Saddam Hussein. This is the legacy of America’s involvement in Iraq. The least that we can do at this point is to end our complicity in their suffering.

The current violence in Fallujah has been misrepresented in the media. The Iraqi Ministry of Interior asserted earlier in the month that al Qaeda had taken over half of Fallujah and the media parroted this assertion. However, journalists who have done serious investigations into this assertion found it to be false. The uprising in Fallujah is a popular uprising, not one lead by an international jihadist group. The Iraqi government has not been attacking al Qaeda in Fallujah. Their assault has been indiscriminate, killing dozens of civilians and wounding even more. Many of these deaths have been documented by human rights organizations within Fallujah.

I know that the US plans to send further shipments of Apache attack helicopters and Hellfire missiles. If we continue to send weapons to the Iraqi government, we will be further complicit in this violence. Iraqis have long known the Maliki regime to be brutal and repressive. This is not a regime the US should be sending weapons to. Some of your colleagues in Congress have voiced this same concern.
http://5pillarsuk.com/2014/06/16/post-saddam-era-the-oppressed-sunnis-of-iraq/

This is where ISIS comes in who follow the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam. Sunnis don't view the new government as legitimate and they have plenty of good reasons to feel that way. However, they have significant differences, ISIS is protection against the Shia militias and they tolerate them given the current situation in Iraq. Also many Sunnis have also fled as well as thousands of other refugees since ISIS started their campaign.

There was obviously conflict before all that which is probably why the new prime minister (there also was the elimination of the Ba'th party (also Sunni) but don't know too much about) but here is a great opportunity to mend fences, build better lives, and a better future and he just blew it.