“The absence of a competent government… creates resentment, suspicion, desperation, and a sense of victimhood. And this is the nest in which terrorists are hatched” wrote David Von Drehle in a Time article about ISIS in the Middle East.  For the first time in modern Iraqi history, the Shiite Muslims had control of the Iraqi government, but they failed to create a peaceful country. Instead, the Shiite government’s paranoia about keeping this newfound power led them to human rights violations and persecution of the 35% Sunni minority in Iraq.  Initially, the government’s focus was on the elimination of the former governing political party officials, but later they expanded their targets. Soon they were expelling all Sunnis from the government, which led to massive government crackdowns on the Sunni population. In addition to the government, Shia militias victimized the Sunni people by creating death squads and taking control of local villages and cities. Eventually the Sunni people felt everything that Drehle mentioned: “resentment, suspicion, desperation, and a sense of victimhood,” and were forced to turn towards terrorist groups i.e. ISIS, for protection and to help them gain a foothold in Iraq. Sunni oppression is evidently seen in modern day Iraq and it is terrible versions of injustice, such as the Shia government targeting ex-Ba’athists, Sunni government officials, and innocent Sunnis and the oppression from local militias, that led many of the victims to turn to radical groups such as ISIS.

In 1963, a Sunni majority political group known as the Ba'ath party rose to power in Iraq amidst much chaos and conflict. The most powerful leader of the Ba'ath party, dictator Saddam Hussein, rose to power in 1979.  Hussein’s reign consisted of the major persecution of Kurdish and Shiite people. Religious schools (Madrasahs) and public ceremonies were forcefully shut down and many Shiites were brutally treated, imprisoned, or killed. Therefore, on March 20, 2003, the US invaded Iraq and got rid of Hussein’s dictatorship. After establishing an allegedly stable Shia government, the American troops left in 2011. With the US gone, the Shia government blatantly targeted the Sunni population to get revenge for the harsh years of Hussein's Sunni rule. As retaliation, Sunni extremists started bombing the Shiites and the government, and violence and terror became commonplace. In April 2013, the al-Qaeda, steadily gaining support from the Sunni’s, began operating in Iraq, calling themselves the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Once the overwhelmingly Shia government finally took control of Iraq, it began to target and discriminate against Hussein’s baathist government officials in order to remain in control. Due to Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath party members’ anti-Shiite views during their previous reign, the new Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki initiated the process of cleansing the Shiite government of everyone who supported the Ba’ath party or threatened the Shiite power, and called it de-Ba’athification. This campaign led to innocent Sunni government officials being kicked out of security forces, being denied their pensions, losing their jobs, being thrown into jail, and even being tortured. By 2004, already 400,000 ex-baath members had lost their jobs and places in politics. On top of that, Maliki’s government deliberately ignored the fact that many Shia’s had held high-ranking positions in the Ba’athist government as well, and even gifted the Shiite ex-Ba’athists with “a chance to repent.” Such opportunity was not afforded to Sunni and this discrimination angered Sunnis everywhere. Mithal Jibouri, a Sunni tribal leader, went so far as to say, “We would rather have a civil war than accept that Arab Sunnis be jailed or expelled from government for being Ba’athists.”  Despite their anger, many Sunnis felt powerless so they desperately turned to rebel groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS for support and safety. The Shiite government tried to bounce back from the horrible rule of Saddam Hussein by getting rid of the Ba’ath Party in their government, but by practicing the murderous process of de-Ba’athification, they created resentment and tension between the Shia government and the Sunni people.  

Soon, the Shiite government began to expand their discrimination from just ex-Ba’athist officials, to every Sunni government official in general.  The term de-Sunnification was being used increasingly more than de-Ba’athification. For example, former Iraqi Sunni Vice President, Tariq al-Hashimi, was arrested for allegedly plotting with his body guards to get rid of Maliki.  It was later uncovered that the guards who confessed to this were tortured into doing so. In this way, Maliki provoked Sunnis everywhere and essentially handed ISIS the perfect opportunity to swoop into Iraq and gain the loyalty of Sunnis by promising to defend them from the Shia government. Barack Obama, the President of the United States of America, has also stated multiple times that “IS[IS] has been strengthened by the Iraqi government’s mistakes, specifically its marginalisation of Arab Sunnis…” By targeting Sunni Muslims and rendering them desperate and helpless, the Shia government unintentionally brought violence and gave birth to the terrorist movement in Iraq.

Eventually, not only Sunni officials, but even innocent Sunni civilians were seen as a threat and were persecuted by the Shiite government with astonishing brutality on a daily basis.   For instance, in 2005, Shiite security forces arrested 30 Sunni preachers from 11 mosques in Baghdad, and killed most of them, leaving their bodies on roads nearby. In another atrocity, nine Sunni construction workers were locked into a metal container and left in the blistering sun to die by the Iraqi brigade. Realizing that the government was not going to stop the attacks, wealthy Sunnis began donating to different resistance groups, one of them being ISIS. As ISIS got more financial backing, they were able to become stronger and more self-sufficient; therefore presenting themselves as the most likely group to overthrow the Shia regime. Another public form of discrimination was government crackdowns during peaceful Sunni rallies. One example of this was on April 2013, in the small town of Hawija. Although the facts are unclear, a police officer somehow died during a peaceful Sunni demonstration, so Maliki sent in the fully equipped Iraqi Military and brutally massacred Sunnis who were present. This horrific event paved a way for ISIS to gain more support by insisting that peaceful protests were not going to be effective, and that the only way to freedom was to “have some muscle,” and “use some measure of violence.”   The Shiite government’s continuous use of violence succeeded only to push Sunni’s towards more extremist resistance methods, and let ISIS establish itself as an “insurance policy” where Sunni’s would be safeguarded if they helped fight against the Iraqi government.

Shia militias who were not affiliated with the army saw the violence and mistreatment unfolding towards the Sunni’s and decided that they too wanted to aid in the revenge against Sunnis. These militias went even farther than the government and created physical “assassinations squads” or “death squads” that targeted all Sunnis. Ahmed Shukary al-Akeedy spoke to Deborah Amos, author of the book Eclipse of the Sunnis, about his brother, former member of Ba’ath party who became a pharmacist but was still hunted down and killed by an Iraqi militia. These militias had lists of ex-Ba’athists, former government officials, and Sunni civilians, which were used to methodically hunt down and kill the Sunnis. Although most were unaware of the lists, it became clear that Sunnis were destined to live a life of fear if they didn’t assist resistance groups in return for protection from the militias. With Maliki turning a blind eye towards the actions of the militias, they were also able to take control of local cities and villages to prevent Sunni’s from gaining power.  For example, the largest militia in Baghdad, the Jayshal-Madhi militia, issued campaigns to “purge Sunnis” from Baghdad and took control of the local hospital. Once in control of the hospital, the Madhi refused to give care to some Sunni patients, and often times had their guns fixed on doctors, even while treating patients.  In this way, militias were able to abuse the Sunni Muslims with the knowledge that Maliki will not punish them. Once again, Sunnis found that only ISIS was able to protect them from the oppression in Iraq. In this way, ruthlessness from militias forced Sunni’s to turn towards terrorist groups for security, which led to a huge presence of terrorism and violence in Iraq. 

Most Sunni’s did not turn to terrorism right away. Sunni support for ISIS was an insidious process that started with Sunnis attempting to live peacefully, but then progressed over time from their demand for a separate state to civil disobedience and peaceful protests to aiding ISIS and resorting to violence.  By oppressing the Ba’athist, government, and innocent Sunnis for so long, the Shiite government and militias indirectly fueled terrorism by leaving Sunnis no other option but to seek refuge under ISIS. Increasing followers and support for ISIS is terrifying because ISIS’s intention is not to protect all Sunnis, but to build the Caliphate or a “country” without borders for Muslims where they will practice Islam in the “right way”. In order to do so, ISIS has taken violence farther than anyone has ever seen before.  If Iraq doesn’t stop treating its civilians so cruelly, then ISIS will keep growing until the terror and the violence not only floods the Middle East, but the entire world.