ISIS thrives on tension between Iraqs two largest religious groups
By: Struan Stevenson
Al Arabiya, 18 July 2017 - Mosul has been liberated from ISIS (ISIS) at last, after three years of brutal occupation by the pitiless so called jihadists; but at what cost? Like Ramadi and Fallujah before it, Mosul has been reduced to ruins. Barely a single building has been left intact. These great, ancient Iraqi cities have been obliterated. 800,000 people have been rendered homeless from Mosul alone, millions when you count the refugees who fled from Ramadi and Fallujah. Thousands of innocent Sunni civilians have been killed, and tens of thousands among them were injured.
Now sprawling refugee camps and flimsy canvas tents provide a home to families who have lost everything. And what do these people have in common… they are Sunnis. It was their cruel mistreatment and repression by the former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki that sparked the uprising in al-Anbar and Nineveh provinces four years ago.
Maliki was a puppet of the Islamic fundamentalist Shiite mullahs in Tehran. The ensuing civil war sucked in ISIS from neighboring Syria and the jihadists quickly captured around one third of Iraq’s geographical territory. In 2014 the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared the creation of what he described as a caliphate from the pulpit of the 900-year-old al-Nuri mosque with its famous leaning minaret in Mosul. Even that renowned and venerated mosque has now been reduced to rubble.
Struan Stevenson is president of the European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA). He was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014), president of the Parliament's Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of Friends of a Free IranIn tergroup (2004-14). He is an award-winning author and international lecturer on the Middle East.
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