That was to explain why you see ISIS with US gear.
The news were covering the invasion and Iraqi soldiers deserting their posts before footage of ISIS showing some useless US gear they claimed surfaced, along with the hereoic Peshmerga looting Iraqi army bases.
The civil war in Iraq is a largely sectarian one
It is not a civil war, it is Iraqi Sunnis, mostly former Baathists, who've been trying to undermine the democratic government of Iraq since 2003. The majority of the attacks in Iraq has been Shia targets. The majority of the victims since 2003 in Iraq are Shia. The highest death toll in the country is Shia. If there was a sectarian war going then I doubt Sunnis would even exist in Iraq 12 years later. You may counter this by saying "Well Sunnis get killed as well"....yes they do but 1. On a much smaller scale and 2. By the very same Sunnis from abroad they invited in. Notice how most of the crimes towards Iraqi Sunnis in the past year has exclusively been carried out by ISIS. This isn't a new pattern; ISIS and its predecessor Al-Qaida killed any Sunnis that didn't work for them and worked with the government. Similarly the attack towards Iraq's minorities has also been mainly done by Sunni terrorist groups. Call it for what it is; Sunnis mainly terrorizing the Shia population and then other minorities since 2003.
that has existed for hundreds of years
.
This is another thing that the western "experts" (lol) and media pulled out of its ass and which people like you and many others believe in, because it takes a complex picture and paints it into a very simple picture of "Muslims are primitive. No solution, Shia & Sunni fighting since the dawn of time etc" which is frankly speaking discriminating and insulting. It's the standard view that is accepted in Western media because readers feels it gives their words credibility and make them look informed on the subject, meanwhile any Iraqi would probably laugh at your face, and with all respect call you an idiot for believing in that.
What is true is Iraq, both as the modern state Iraq and the area occupied under the Ottomans, had a sectarian nature in its politics. When the Ottomans occupied Iraq they oppressed and discriminated against Shia Muslim and Kurds. Governmental positions were mainly occupied by Sunni Muslims. It wasn't just religious discrimination but also discrimination down to ethnicity since it was
Turkish Sunni Muslims who occupied those positions. Nevertheless there wasn't any sectarian war during that time. The Ottoman Empire fell, but there wasn't some great sectarian war either, and instead a new threat emerged: The British Empire. A bunch of Shia and Sunni tribes were uniting together to fight back and defend their country against British Forces that invaded the country. Eventually the Brits installed a non-Iraqi pro-British monarchy who pretty much continued with the Ottoman's policy (i.e. discriminate against Shia, raise Sunnis to power)...it was just that this time it was Iraqi Sunnis enjoying the power and only a few selective ones with good ties to the monarchy. Monarchy goes, Ghazi comes in, discrimination against Shia continues but no wide scale sectarian war and Ghazi depends on riling up people through nationalism and Hitler's ideology in exchange for German support to push out the Brits who did their nasty shit in the country. Guy was an asshole anyway and died in accident (an "accident" Brits were probably involved) and a Pro-British Faisal II comes to power at a very young age. At this point there was still no sectarian war, and in fact Faisal II was slightly better in that his rule discriminated less against Shia, but Sunnis were still mostly in power, and again only a certain subset of them. Most Iraqis still lived poorly. Faisal II gets overthrown and executed, and modern Iraq's most progressive leader steps up. No sectarian war, but Qasim is eventually overthrown by a US-supported Baath group that has a young Saddam Hussein in it. Iraqi communists got massacred in that event. The Baath regime was a socialist secular pan-arabism group, and the top positions were mainly occupied by Shia at the beginning. Discrimination against Shia were still there, they were still oppressed. Sunnis eventually started to replace Shia in the Baath regime and Saddam eventually came to grab the power. During Saddam's time there was no sectarian war even though he was basically the Arab Hitler of the world in how he treated Shia Arabs and Kurds. Kurds got punished by being gassed for betraying "their" country and firing against Iraqi soldiers who were in war with Iran and Shia had a rebellion crushed after the second Gulf War. Saddam goes, democratic government set up and a sectarian war was started twice because Sunnis started it by attacking sacred shrines for Shia muslims.
Yes, in the past 300-400 years the wars you could really call full-fledged sectarian wars are the wars that came thanks to US totally fucking up the country. Drop this fucking nonsense that Iraq has been in some eternal Sunni-Shia war. At the most you could go back to the 19th century and call the filthy Saudi Wahhabi hordes that invaded and tried to sack Najaf and Kerbala as a sectarian war but even then that would be incorrect since it wasn't a sectarian war but Iraqi Shia defending their cities from basically the invading ISIS of the 19th century.
Sadam was a Sunni and so the Shia muslims being a minority were largely kept quiet or otherwise oppressed (and you were really fucked if you were Kurdish).
Shia are a majority, and no you were more fucked if you were a Shia. The autonomous Kurdish region now led by the Barzani and his Mafia gang made several deals and had close connections with Saddam. They basically made business and promises that Saddam would leave them alone. Jalal Talabani also had very close connections with Saddam. Barzani's father, who was the leader of the Iraqi Kurds decades ago also had strong connections to Saddam and the Baath regime in which he made plenty of deals with. Speaking of 60's and onwards Kurds have been left relatively alone up until they fired against IA, supported Iranians and Saddam answered by going full nazi and gassed innocents in an entire village. After the Gulf War the Kurds enjoyed even more autonomy and more protection. Meanwhile Shia where gradually getting more and more fucked from the 60's and onwards and they didn't have some corrupt pos leader that made tight connections with Saddam for their own interest and to "protect" Shia muslims.....Saddam and his government outright executed or deported any Shia leader with the slightest influence and/or resistance. The difference is that the Iraqi army back then hadn't infiltrated deep in Kurdish areas, something they had done in Shia areas. Shia had no leader to look after them. You just had to pray that his men wouldn't kill you for any random reason. One had some form of protection, even if it was a light one, the other didn't have anything.
Then Sadam went and a new Government came in that was led by a Shiite (Shia), at the time many of the Sunni were fearful that there would be a large backlash against them from the Shia having been largely oppressed during Sadams regime and they were not just being paranoid because there is enough there to suggest the new Shia government hasn't exactly been quick to denounce or even admit the existence of so called 'Shia Death Squads' who basically want the Sunnis out. For some of the Sunnis, ISIS probably looks like a pretty good deal when compared to the Shia government currently in place.
Wrong wrong wrong. United State's helped forming a state based on sectarian thinking, from the government downright to the military. Instead of choosing and electing people based on their merit United States made it so that Iraq's goverment will have positions occupied by people based on sect. USA WANTED a sectarian Iraq. The constitution requires that the president is Kurdish, The Speaker Of The House is Sunni and the Prime Minister is Shia. The CoM requires a certain portion to consist of Sunnis and Kurds. The CoM has been mixed with Shia, Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq since the government was formed. Iraqi Sunnis have been allowed to vote and to set up their own political parties that can freely participate in the elections, something they've done multiple times. The military requires certain positions to be occupied by Sunnis and Kurds, something that has continued till this day. In fact the amount of Iraqi Sunnis that occupy higher military positions is almost, not as much but almost as much as the amount Shia does and
this is despite the fact that Shia are the majority in the country. An example: Iraq purchased F16s from US and is having them delivered now. 15 pilots have finished training. The pilots are: 5 sunnis, 5 Kurds, 4 Shia, 1 Turkomen (who crashed and died in training) and 1 Christian. You have less Shia pilots from the first 15 pilots in a country where the Shia are a majority.
The Iraqi government also several times bombed Shia militias, so much for being a Shia sectarian government. Again, the Western news, on a GCC payroll, that spouts nonsense of Iraq being a Shia-led sectarian govermnet....drop that nonsense. It's again full of crap. Its been mixed since the first adminsitration was formed, and so has the military (which is why so many posts got abandoned by Sunni soldiers in face of the IS advance), and so has the parties that participated in the elections. If you fucking call that sectarian or Shia led then what the fuck do you even call the rest of the Arab countries around it? Hell, most of them aren't even democratic so where are all the shitty western news telling us how sectarian and Sunni-led they are? Oh right, nowhere because Western Europe and US are busy kissing the ass of GCC in exchange for lucrative oil and arms deals. In fact perhaps Europe and US should look at themselves, it's not like they're doing a spectacular job at integrating their non-European minorities who are full-fledges citizens in the country (tbf USA does a much better job at integration) let alone involving them in the political process of their country. From this perspective Iraq's govt is much more representative of its ethnic groups than most western countries.
The Shia Death Squads are again something the Western Media has pushed for in an attempt to add to the Shia-led govt. nonsense. There was Shia Death Squads that killed innocent Sunnis, in fact if we just want to say that Iraqi Shia did kill Iraqi Sunnis then you don't need to look further than the sectarian war Sunnis started in which Shia retaliated. However, this loosely accepted fact that it was just Shia Death Squads has not only been greatly exaggerated but lots of lies has been made about it as well. The same Western news often fail to mention Sunni-led commando units that were active during the same time the so called Shia Death Squads, often connected with the Wolf Brigade, were active. No one mention that there was a commando, SPC, that was a unit headed by a former officer of Saddam Hussen's Baath party, who were known for the same brutality and efficiency as the Wolf Brigade. No one also points out that SPC, which had mostly Sunnis aside from one Shia in it (who was a member in Saddam's Baath party) were very very similar in many ways to the Wolf Brigade. No one mentions how they just happened to be deployed as a counter-terrorist force in the same areas the Wolf Brigade was deployed in. The Western media conventiently ignored the striking similarity between SPC and Wolf Brigade, the parallels and patterns between them, just play it out as a purely sectarian Shia-led government and squad, and in doing so conveniently ignored that many of the so called atrocities that supposedly were committed by the Wolf Brigade might as well have been done by SPC in an attempt to start a sectarian war; after all it's not like Iraqi Sunnis weren't known for starting them post-2003. Shia Death Squads existed, but the extent to which they operated has lots of fabrication. That's not even mentioning that going in police or military uniforms and massacring people is a Sunni pattern in Iraq, they've done it countless of times towards both Sunnis and Shia. In fact that would actually explain SPC's activity around that time since it mostly consisted of former Saddam-loyalists who probably wanted to do nothing more than undermining Iraq's government to restore back the old regime.
Thats not to say that Sunni and Shia sects can't get a long, it's just to say that when you have a look at most of the conflicts coming out of the middle east, it's largely a Sunni vs Shia one. There are plenty of areas where Sunni and Shia get along, but theres also many where they don't and thats where the problem is.
They don't get along because historically, and still up until today, Shia muslims have been historically persecuted, slaughtered and been fucked over by the Sunni Arab world, and more recently in modern times more frequently in other parts of the world like South Asia and Africa. Just in modern times they are oppressed and killed in:
Iraq
Bahrain
Saudi Arabia
Yemen (reluctant to add this....though the Western world and Saleh's regime have helped in keeping Houthis from rising up they've been more or less like Kurds in the sense that they have their own region...they didn't exactly have some Sunni ruler ruling over their head)
Pakistan
Afghanistan
Sunnis being oppressed in modern times would be pretty much Iran...and even there they are treated better than what many Sunni countries treat their minorities.
Again, say it for what it is. Stop trying to say that one is just as worse as the others, because the events and stats don't add up. The Sunnis are killing and oppressing Shias across the Arab world mostly, and the Shia are now, after decades (centuries actually) of oppression fighting back for their survival. It isn't a sectarian war, it's a minority defending themselves from groups belonging to the majority's whose intent is to have them wiped out. It's quite hypocritical of you, much alike the western media, talk so much about Shia this or Shia that yet fail to mention even once that ISIS is an extremist Sunni branch. You're not the only one that does it, for example many western news outlets are reluctant to label ISIS as a Sunni extremist group, it's not that it happens but it's that it barely happens. Yet people in the West laugh at nonsense like RT...as if they are any better in regards to their reporting and the pictures they paint of other conflicts around the world lol.
I'm being very broad in this with little specifics but yeh, ISIS follows a form of Islam that doesn't necessarily reflect the same belief of all Muslims, hence why ISIS, seemingly oddly to many, are killing Muslims also. But Shiites and Sunnis have been killing each other for a long time, it's nothing new. What is new is that ISIS is probably the most extreme group to have ever emerged from this sectarian violence in our lifetime, maybe ever. They don't seem to believe in compromise with anyone, it is their way or death and they have been particularly proud in demonstrating that they will kill anyone and everyone that doesn't fit their particularly brutal lifestyle. If they could get their way, everyone would be indoctrinated into their form of Islam and those would didn't convert or weren't already would be killed or sold into slavery.
Again stop being inconsistent with mentioning one as Shia led and whatever, and the other one just as ISIS without labeling or affiliating it with the sect it belongs to. Also no...ISIS has compromised with many Sunnis...or else the Sunni deathtoll would now be the highest one in the entire Middle East now since they opeate from Sunni cities where they have strong support. It doesn't mean life is great under ISIS for Sunnis, it just means they won't kill them as long as they don't collaborate with the govt.
Though it has also become rather interesting to see that ISIS members either aren't quite as close to the faith as they make out or that their ranks are increasingly becoming filled with angry young men that just want to go out and kill as they have displayed unusual behaviour not in practice with any real form of Islam in some instances.
But mostly it can be summed up that ISIS is full of fucktards.
Agree, while many of them are religious there's been lots of instances where many of their members aren't even particularly religious and just brainwashed.
As a Saudi minister once said something like 12 years ago.....they will change the geopolitical game so that Shia's blood will be running on the streets and that they'll be crying for help. Looks like he succeeded with their blood running on the streets at least.
