User:Joosty8/sandbox

Historical background
Before the creation of the Iraqi state, Iraq’s territory belonged to the Ottoman Empire and was divided into three vilayets (provinces): Mosul Vilayet, Baghdad Vilayet, and Basra Vilayet. After the First world war, the modern state of Iraq was established under a British mandate. The three vilayets together were home to a wide variety of different ethnic and religious groups. In contrast with relatively ethnic and religious tolerance under Ottoman rule, the British unified the population of the three vilayets in one nation-state and appointed, in consistence with their ‘Sharifan Solution’, the Sunni Islam oriented Faisal I of Iraq as king. The decision to implement Sunni leadership, despite a Sunni minority in Iraq, created an exclusion of other religious and ethnic groups such as Shi’ites, Kurds, and other religious minorities.

With the granted independence of the state of Iraq in 1932, the struggle to create an Iraqi national identity became more apparent. Although Faisal I repeatedly tried to bring cultural values and uses of Sunni, Shi'ite and other populations together within the context of Pan-Arabism, the outcome was a more visible distinction between the ethnic and religious groups in Iraq. On the one hand, Shi'ites, Kurds and other sects refused to give up their cultural values and uses. While on the other hand, the Sunnis in power tried to abolish these values and uses in cohesion with Pan-Arabism. Eventually, this has led to a clearer consolidation of the different communities which resuted in the enhancement of division among Iraq its population. Furthermore, Iraq its independence and the struggle to create a national identity resulted in different unsuccessful tribal uprisings and clashes in the 1930s. The government repeatedly managed to knock down the riots and maintain its hegemony.

The first officially documented attempt to outline sectarian frustrations after the establishment of the Iraqi state came with the Najaf Charter document in 1935. In this 12-point manifesto, a group of Shi'ite lawyers expressed their discontent about sectarian discrimination against the majority of the Shi'ite population and called for appointing Shi'ite judges and courts in predominantly Shi'ite areas and development projects throughout the country, especially in the South. Although this manifesto was the first effort to present the sectarian elite with political frustrations, aspirations, and demands of the Shi'ites, they remained unheard.

After 1932, the Iraqi government kept expending its bureaucracy and thus, enhanced Sunni control over the state's machinery. Although greater control of the government meant fewer uprisings and rioting, sectarian tensions of the Iraqi population kept growing. In 1958, a group of army officers under the leadership of General Abd al-Karim Qasim overthrew the monarchy and installed the Republic of Iraq. General Abd al-Karim Qasim was from a mixed Sunni-Shi'ite background and abolished the practice of limiting Shi'ites and other ethnic backgrounds into the military. This made him partly popular but the implementation of other policies meant tension between his regime and religious leaders. Land reforms and reforms regarding family law undermined the power of religious leaders and landlords. This eventually led to a bloody overthrowing of the Qassim regime in February 1963. A variety of Arab Nationalist army officers, primarily Sunni affiliated officers, restored not only loyalties of communalism and sectarianism but also the political power of Sunni Arab nationalists. Although Abdul Salam Arif was appointed president due to its popularity, real political power was in the hands of the Ba’ath Party, which started a reign of suppression, prosecution, and executions. Approximately 3000 people were executed by the paramilitary force of the Ba'ath Party, the National Guards. Abdul Salam Arif became increasingly discontented about the excessive use of violence by the state and overthrew Ba’ath rule with a coup in November 1963. However, sectarian policies remained in place and further enhanced sectarian and inter-communal tensions. Within this tense atmosphere, different officers and cliques planned military coups to overthrow Arif's rule and seize power. Eventually, by the use of two consecutive military coups in 1968, the Ba’ath Party seized power for the second time in a decade.

The making of national identity under Ba'ath rule
With the resurrection of power by the Ba’ath Party, Iraq entered a new stage of nation-building. In the 1970s the government under the leadership of then vice-president Saddam Hussein nationalized Iraq's oil industry. With the revenues from the export of oil, Iraq started a project of modernization and nation-building. At that time Hussein was not yet the head of the state but was widely seen as the dominant political actor. Apart from investments in infrastructure and its industry, the Iraqi government launched a program to invest in basic public goods such as schools, Universities, and hospitals. By doing this, Iraq developed itself as a welfare state and encouraged the growth of the middle class at the cost of tribal allegiances. The economic expansion in Iraq pathed the way to the process of nation-building. Citizens throughout Iraq benefited from economic advancement, incomes rose and social mobility became possible, regardless of their ethnic or religious background. Lisa Blaydes, a professor of political science at Stanford university describes two main strategies of cultivating national identity under Ba’ath rule throughout the 1970s and 80s. The first strategy was to enhance social integration through the success of state-sponsored development programs, which were made possible by the growth of the Iraqi economy. The second strategy was to de-emphasis sectarian identity. From the start of the Ba’ath rule, the party's legitimacy was strongly bound to the tribal and regional allies of Hussein. Foremost, because without these allies, a coup was always around the corner. From 1972 onwards, Hussein actively tried to abolish the emphasis on a sectarian identity by incorporating figures from different ethnic and religious backgrounds in his governmental apparatus. Hereby Hussein made appointments based on loyalty and trust rather than on people's ethnic or religious background. While the Shi'ites and Kurds did not reach the highest levels of political power, they still managed to reach high levels of influence within the regime.

Sectarian violence at the beginning of Ba’ath Rule
Under Hussein's rule, the system in which citizens, organizations, and parties were monitored intensified. The strategy behind the extensive monitoring of figures was linked to the fear of losing political dominance over Iraq. Figures who were suspected of being disloyal to Ba’ath rule could face years of imprisonment.

Although the Ba’ath party managed to include different ethnic and religious groups in their governmental system after 1968, opposition and violence with a sectarian nature did occur and was at times highly vocal. For example, different Kurdish rebel groups unsuccessfully tried to initiate rioting and independence in northern Iraq known as the second Iraq-Kurdish war. During the same period, the Shi'ite Da’wa party gained popularity in Iraq. After its establishment in 1970, party activists initiated different riots, most noteworthy the riots in 1974 and 1977. The riots were quickly repressed by the regime due to its scale and scope. So, on the one hand, the Ba’ath party propagated national identity and included different ethnic and religious groups in their government, while on the other hand, constructing a tense atmosphere where there was no room for disloyalty or opposition. When violence did break out, the Iraqi government was able to quickly crackdown the outbreaks due to its military supremacy and resources.

Sectarian violence from 1979 until 2003
From the 1970s, sectarian tensions brewed underneath the surface. Primarily a vast majority of the Shi'ites were discontent about their governmental exclusion. Although Hussein propagated the abolishment of sectarian ideologies and the inclusion of different sects in the military and other governmental institutions, by 1977 only Sunnis maintained positions in the Revolutionary Command Council, the highest form of authority. Moreover, the pursuit of enemies and disloyal people to the regime intensified. For example, Kurdish, Shi'ite, and Iranian citizens were being deported out of Iraq with the motivation of being foreigners, which was often referred to as an act of sectarian cleansing at that time.

The sectarian tensions surfaced with the outbreak of the Iranian revolution and the Iraq-Iran War in 1980. In 1979 the Iranian revolution took place under the leading of Shi'ite Grand ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Iranian monarch Shah Reza Pahlavi was overthrown, pathing the way to the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Khomeini started a propaganda campaign aimed towards Shii'tes in Iraq to follow the ideologies of the Iranian revolution and to revolt against the Sunni dominated regime of Hussein to eventually overthrow it. In 1980, Hussein declared war on Iran and tried to annex the oil-rich Iranian Khuzestan province. Although Hussein had political and economic motivations to go to war with Iran as he later declared in a series of interviews with the FBI: ‘Iran had broken the 1975 Algiers agreement concerning the waterway and interfered in Iraqi politics, this left Iraq no choice but to fight’. The war was also fought on religious grounds. As Hussein later recalls: ‘Khomeini believed the Shi'ite population in Southern Iraq would follow him, especially during the war with Iraq. But, they did not welcome him and remained loyal, fighting the Iranians’.

During the eight years of war, Hussein and his Ba’ath party tried to gain support from citizens with a Shi'ite, Kurdish, and Sunni background by making generous contributions to their communities. For example financial support to  Shi'ite Waqf's and the restoring of Imam Ali’s tomb. Despite far-reaching efforts by Hussein and his Ba’ath party to gain support among different sects, sectarian tensions kept rising, mainly due to the Iraq-Iran War..

During the war years, Shi'ite soldiers, officers, and citizens flew the country and sought refuge elsewhere, primarily in Iran and Syria. In addition, war casualties on both the Sunni and Shi'ites sides further enhanced rivalry among these groups. Although the majority of people with a Kurdish background were not subjected to high casualty rates during the war, Hussein saw the activities from Kurdish political groups as a betrayal against his regime. The groups were being accused of cross-border military and intelligence cooperation with Iran. The Ba’ath regime punished these activist groups in northern Iraq by using extensive violence. This echoed further into their community, contributing to a stronger sentiment of sectarian division.

In the aftermath of the Iraq-Iran War, sectarian distrust exploded and became more visible during the first Gulf War, initiated by the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. Coalition forces responded by bombing Iraqi targets, mainly in the southern regions of Iraq. These counterattacks affected particularly Shi'ites, which endowed both casualties and damage to infrastructure. Following the retreat from Kuwait in 1991, uprisings erupted throughout 14 of the 18 provinces in Iraq. The rebels were mainly Shi'ites and attacked the existing political power but also their social exclusion under Ba’ath rule. The uprisings were predominantly religious in nature with the protesters showing pictures of Shi'ite religious leaders, such as Khomeini, and religious symbols. As researcher and journalist Khalil Osman describes the uprisings:

"The rebellion in southern Iraq was marked by a vigorous assertion of Shi’ite identity, featuring overtly Shi’ite religious symbolism and rhetoric.… But the passionate and strident assertion of Shi’ite identity vis-à-vis the despotic Ba’athist state gave rise to fears and feelings of exclusion among Sunnis, which resulted in their loss of sympathy for the rebellion."

The uprisings were eventually suppressed by the use of brutal force and extensive violence by the regime. Although the restoration of Sunni state control and security proofed to be a hurdle for the Ba’ath regime, they managed to restore order. Besides different assassinations on political and religious influential figures in the 1990s, widespread sectarian violence in Iraq exploded again after the removal of Hussein from office in 2003.

Sectarian violence between 2003 and 2005
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq in which Hussein and his Ba’ath party were removed from office, sectarian violence increased and later exploded following the parliamentary elections in 2005 into a Civil War.

Due to the political power vacuum after the removal of Hussein, different factions with different religious and ethnic backgrounds tried to gain power. The major parties where: The Mahdi Army, The Ba’ath Loyalist, Kurdish Separatists, and Al-Qaeda. The Shi’ite Mahdi army under the leadership of Muqtada al-Sadr fought against the US-led coalition forces following their ideology of an Iraqi state without Western influence. In turn, Al-Qaeda and other Sunni orientated militias fought against the Mahdi army, smaller Shi’ite factions, and the coalition forces. During the power vacuum from 2003 to 2005, attacks between the parties, militias, and coalition forces occurred frequently, causing tremendous amounts of casualties on all sides although, exact numbers are uncertain. After the parliamentary elections of 2005 which a coalition of Shi’ite parties won, sectarian violence exploded, pushing Iraq into a Civil War (see also: Sectarian violence in Iraq (2006–2009)).

Original Wikipedia page
Sectarian violence in Iraq is a recurring issue throughout the history of the region, since the modern borders of Iraq were mostly demarcated in 1920 by the League of Nations. The country, as established, was immediately home to a variety of religious and cultural groups that have clashed as power has ebbed back and forth between them.

When Saddam Hussein came to power concerns turned to the division between Sunni and Shi'ite factions in Iraq. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, having been exiled from Iran in 1964, had taken up residence in Iraq, at the Shi'ite holy city of An Najaf. There he involved himself with Iraqi Shi'ites and developed a strong, worldwide religious and political following against the Iranian Government, whom Saddam tolerated. Khomeini began to urge the Shi'ites there to overthrow Saddam, contributing to Saddam's decision to expel Khomeini in 1978 to France. In early 1979, Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution, thus giving way to an Islamic republic led by Khomeini. The influence of revolutionary Shi'ite Islam grew apace in the region, particularly in countries with large Shi'ite populations, especially Iraq. Saddam feared that radical Islamic ideas—hostile to his secular rule —were rapidly spreading inside his country among the majority Shi'ite population. Ultimately, an eight-year-long Iran–Iraq War ensued, ending in a stalemate.

To secure the loyalty of the Shia population during the war, Saddam allowed more Shias into the Ba'ath Party and the government, and improved Shia living standards, which had been lower than those of the Iraqi Sunnis. Saddam had the state pay for restoring Imam Ali's tomb with white marble imported from Italy. The Baathists also increased their policies of repression against the Shia. The most infamous event was the massacre of 148 civilians of the Shia town of Dujail.

Despite the costs of the war, the Iraqi regime made generous contributions to Shia waqf (religious endowments) as part of the price of buying Iraqi Shia support. The importance of winning Shia support was such that welfare services in Shia areas were expanded during a time in which the Iraqi regime was pursuing austerity in all other non-military fields. During the first years of the war in the early 1980s, the Iraqi government tried to accommodate the Kurds in order to focus on the war against Iran. In 1983, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan agreed to cooperate with Baghdad, but the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) remained opposed. In 1983, Saddam signed an autonomy agreement with Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), though Saddam later reneged on the agreement. By 1985, the PUK and KDP had joined forces, and Iraqi Kurdistan saw widespread guerrilla warfare up to the end of the war.

Towards the end of this war, on 16 March 1988, the Kurdish town of Halabja was attacked with a mix of mustard gas and nerve agents, killing 5,000 civilians, and maiming, disfiguring, or seriously debilitating 10,000 more. (see Halabja poison gas attack) The attack occurred in conjunction with the 1988 al-Anfal Campaign designed to reassert central control of the mostly Kurdish population of areas of northern Iraq and defeat the Kurdish peshmerga rebel forces. The United States now maintains that Saddam ordered the attack to terrorize the Kurdish population in northern Iraq, but Saddam's regime claimed at the time that Iran was responsible for the attack a position which the U.S. supported until several years later.

Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq
Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, certain elements of the Iraqi insurgency have made a point of targeting Shias in sectarian attacks. In turn, the Sunnis have complained of discrimination and human rights abuses by Iraq's Shia majority government, which is bolstered by the fact that Sunni detainees were allegedly discovered to have been tortured in a compound used by government forces on November 15, 2005. This sectarianism has fueled a giant level of emigration and internal displacement.

Some people advocate an independent nation for the Shias of Iraq. The idea that Iraq could be split into Kurdistan in the north, Iraq in the center and Basra in the south. The thinking is that if each community is busy nation-building, they would not be attacking each other as they would be within a single country where the communities may be striving for political dominance at expense of other communities instead of working together.

Between October 2003 and March 2005 alone, 36% of the 700,000 Iraqis who fled to Syria were Assyrians and other Iraqi Christians, judging from a sample of those registering for asylum on political or religious grounds. Furthermore, the small Mandaean and Yazidi communities are at the risk of elimination due to ethnic cleansing by Islamist extremists.

Entire neighborhoods in Baghdad were ethnically cleansed by Shia and Sunni militias and sectarian violence has broken out in every Iraqi city where there is a mixed population. Sunnis have fled Basra, while Shias were driven out of cities and towns north of Baghdad such as Samarra or Baquba. Satellite shows ethnic cleansing in Iraq was key factor in "surge" success. Some areas are being evacuated by every member of a particular group due to lack of security, moving into new areas because of fear of reprisal killings.

For decades, President Hussein 'Arabised' northern Iraq. Now his ethnic cleansing is being reversed. Thousands of ethnic Kurds pushed into lands formerly held by Iraqi Arabs, forcing at least 100,000 of them to flee to refugee camps. Sunni Arabs have driven out at least 70,000 Kurds from Mosul’s western half. Nowadays, eastern Mosul is Kurdish and western Mosul is Sunni Arab. The policies of Kurdification by KDP and PUK after 2003 (with non-Kurds being pressured to move, in particular Assyrian Christians and Iraqi Turkmen) have prompted serious inter-ethnic problems.

In 2014, a Wahhabi group called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) began to overtake much of Northern Iraq. Known for its extreme interpretation of the Islamic faith and sharia law and its brutal violence, ISIL has sought to attack Shia Muslims, indigenous Assyrian and Armenian Christians, Yazidis, Druze, Shabaks and Mandeans in particular.