Fallujah and Ramadi were commonly heard names during the US invasion of Iraq. Hotly contested and strategically vital, the two cities were the location of some of the hardest fought battles between the US and Iraqi army and later Al Qaeda rebels.
Now, however, sectarian violence has divided Iraq, in ways that could see internal conflict on the scale and magnitude of Afghanistan's own descent into chaos during the Taliban's reign of terror.
The Al Qaeda rebels are basically trying to carve out territory in the hope of re-creating the caliphate. Just last month, Al Qaeda rebels had made great strides and were able to secure in part the two cities.
That's when the Iraqi armed forces realized they had to intervene with a larger operation.
Clashes in Fallujah are demonstrating that the rebels might not be as strong as previously thought however.
Many believe that the rebel group, which goes by the name of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, has grown out of resistance to the US presence in the area during the 2006-2007 offensives. But the larger push to create an independent group under the Al Qaeda umbrella, the ISIL, came from Nouri Al Maliki's push to defeat and disband the rebels in the past year.
Maliki is Shi'a, but also increasingly seen as a puppet of the West. His current push to rout the rebels from Fallujah could determine the future of ISIL in Iraq.
ISIL does not have broad popular support. However, they have important military ties with Iran, and are the foremost presence in the Syrian civil war. Still, their brutal methods, reminiscent of the Taliban's own, endear them to almost no one.
But ISIL might not be as strong as thought. In Syria, rebels have basically intimated the rebels to leave or suffer all out annihilation from Syria's own rebels, whose fight was usurped by the ISIL and other al Qaeda affiliated groups.
The future of the ISIL is, in short, going to be determined by two things: the response al Maliki will offer to the present and future actions of ISIL, and the rebel group's own ability to trasnform into a political entity.
If they, for example, declare a territory to be under their control and name an emir, thereby assuming a cloak of legitimacy in the political sense, they could shed the violent identity that defines them now and actually gain a following from Iraqi Sunni, even though the 'emirate' created will only be symbolic and not an independent state at all effects.
The local Sunni leaders, furthermore, do not want to be associated with the violent ISIL agenda. If the president of Iraq and those Sunni tribal leaders find common ground, they could however, considerably undermine ISIL's efforts to rebuild the caliphate.
Op-ed
Source : Deutsche Welle/ 1.8.14
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