In Iraq, as in Syria and elsewhere, the US-Iran alliance means that Washington is now seen as an enemy of Sunnis - 90% of the Muslim population, in the Middle East and globally U.S. Iraq air raids help Kurds, Shi’ites at expense of Sunnis #Iraq, 09-09-2014: Helped by the United States and Iran, Kurdish forces and Shi’ite militia are finally beating back Islamic State militants who overran most Sunni Arab areas in northern and centralIraq nearly three months ago. But the aftermath illustrates the unintended consequences of the U.S. air campaign against Islamic State. Kurdish and Shi’ite fighters have regained ground, but Sunni Muslims who fled the violence are being prevented from returning home and some have had their houses pillaged and torched. Rather than help keep the nation together, the air strikes risk being used by different factions for their own advantage in Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic conflicts. The fallout also risks worsening grievances that helped Islamic State find support amongst Iraq’s Sunnis, and allows the militant group to portray the U.S. strikes as targeting their minority sect. That may make it more difficult to bring Sunnis on side and convince them to fight the militants. ...The unlikely coalition of Kurdish peshmerga fighters, Shi’ite militias and the U.S. air force won a major victory when it broke a siege of the Shi’ite Turkman town of Amerli last week and drove Islamic State from 25 nearby Sunni towns and villages. But the aftermath is far from what the Americans envisioned. Smoke now rises from those Sunni villages, where some houses have been torched by Shi’ite militia. Others are abandoned, the walls daubed with sectarian slogans.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 12:38:07 +0000
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