More relevant, of course, is the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which set that country on its current path. This now includes the takeover of multiple cities in the north by the extremist organization the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Of principal concern is ISIS's recent capture of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city and the heart of the nation's Sunni population.
ISIS is an offshoot of the al-Qaida brand of extreme Islamist, or jihadist, militancy and terrorism. Growing out of an earlier organization called al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) and just over a year old in its current form, the organization has been involved in the war in Syria and in Iraq. Recently disavowed by al-Qaida, ISIS is believed by some observers to be on its way to eclipsing the former.
Due to the grievances of many of the country's Sunnis, on account of how they have been treated under Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, ISIS has friends. According to Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for the Independent,
Isis is a well-organised and well-led organisation which meticulously prepares attacks and supplements them with suicide bombings carried out by foreign volunteers. It may also be that Saddam Hussein’s old officer corps and specialists from his Mukhabarat security service and special forces are responsible for Isis's expertise. (Jun. 11)
What this spells for Iraq's future and the future of the region is too soon to tell. In the meantime, the suffering of the Iraqi people just got worse.
Regardless of outcome, the context of the ISIS phenomenon is clear and includes enormous US involvement. A short list of the White House's actions, from Reagan to Obama, would take into consideration:
- support of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, especially during the vicious Iran-Iraq War, which was started by Hussein
- dismissal of diplomacy regarding Hussein's subsequent invasion of Kuwait, and creation of the 1991 Gulf War, which reduced the country, according to UN envoys, to "preindustrial" levels
- subjection of Iraq to devastating post-Gulf War sanctions (1990-2003), alone claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands of children under five
- invasion and occupation of Iraq (2003-11), conducted under preposterous pretexts (WMD, democracy promotion)—including claims that al-Qaida was operating in-country—and costing the lives of perhaps half a million Iraqis
This list has resulted in an Iraq that just barely functions as a nation-state, and one that was better off under Hussein's iron fist.
US force projection in the Middle East and Southwest Asia has helped foster the very extremism and terrorism used to justify US regional involvement in the first place, al-Qaida being among the more noteworthy byproducts. ISIS is merely a continuation of this narrative.
There are numerous additional factors that have contributed to the circumstances producing the different extremist groups now making headlines: Maliki's governance, funding from the Gulf Arab states, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's brutality, Soviet/Russian meddling, to name a few. However, for Americans, there are two crucial considerations when looking to prevent their government from continuing its destructive policies in that part of the world: (1) the focus should be US behavior, because it's the country they can best hope to influence, and (2) the harm it has done far outweighs the other factors.
