Sunni Iraqis struggle to regain stability, influence
Millions remain displaced, ignored by government.
After the KARMAH, IRAQ —
Islamic State was finally driven from the central Iraqi city of Karmah last year, Sirhan Sallom returned to his home to find it demolished.
Sallom, 70, has since waited in vain for help. In Iraq’s deeply sectarian system, he doesn’t expect much from the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. But he is angry that local and national Sunni politicians haven’t come to the aid of his Sunni Muslim city either.
“These politicians are Sunni — they are supposed to help us,” he said. “They’re useless.”
Fourteen years after the U.S. invasion ended decades of Sunni dominance in Iraq, Iraq’s Sunni Arabs are strug- gling to reclaim relevance and influence. After they were ousted from government jobs and from the military by the post-Saddam Hussein government, their powerlessness and rage gave rise to Sunni militant move- ments like al-Qaida in Iraq and the Islamic State.
Now that those militants are being driven from the Sunni heartland, how the government responds to Sunnis trying to rebuild their lives is likely to have long- term consequences for the country’s stability and secu- rity.
More than 3.1 million Iraqis, the vast majority Sunni, remain displaced from their homes after three years of occupation and battles with the Islamic State. Another 2.3 million have returned. As Sunni towns like Karmah await rebuild- ing, Sunni leaders have not been able to wring much help from a cash-strapped central government more focused on battling the militants and, more recently, the Kurds.
Since 2003, Sunnis, who make up about a quarter of the population, have lost out to Shiites and Kurds, who were both brutally repressed by an elite Sunni minority under Saddam. With Iraq’s government now controlled by Shiites, and the Kurds governing their own autonomous area in the north, the Sunnis are in a political no man’s land.
There were high expecta- tions when Haider al-Abadi became prime minister in 2014 that he could turn the page after the divisive sectarian rule of his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki, and win the confidence of the Sunnis.
Instead, Sunni leaders say, he has forsaken them as he forged closer ties with Iran, the hard-line Shiite theocracy next door. Iran now wields tremendous influence over Iraq’s economy, military and government.
Hamid al-Mutlaq, who represents Karmah in Par- liament, said the government was more focused on working with Iran and Iranian-armed Shiite militias than helping Sunnis rebuild.
“We are now a displaced people, a completely marginalized people — and it’s getting worse by the day,” he said.
“We have a corrupt government controlled by a foreign power, at the expense of Sunnis,” he added.
But Sunni politicians are mired in local feuds. They can hardly advance their own case when they can’t even agree on where to meet to patch up differences. At a Baghdad conference two years ago, Sunni politicians threw chairs at each other as their bodyguards traded punches.
“Our politicians do nothing for us,” said Ismail Jassim, 39, who relies on donations from neighbors in Karmah to survive in his home, which was burned by militants. “We never see them, except on TV at election time.”
The power of Sunni politicians was greatly diminished by the power-sharing agreement adopted after the U.S. invasion. Under its formula, the prime minister’s post, along with the Interior and Foreign ministries, are reserved for Shiites. Kurds get the presidency and Finance Ministry. Sunni Arabs get Parliament speaker and defense minister, but the prime minister is commander in chief, and Shiite army commanders and militia leaders wield significant influence.
Iranian-trained Shi i te militias are part of Iraq’s armed forces and have battled Islamic State militants since they seized nearly a third of Iraq in 2014. The militias have been accused of atrocities against Sunni civilians, and their presence near Sunni areas has alarmed many residents. A Shiite religious flag fluttered last week at an Iraqi military checkpoint outside Karmah.
Kurds have their own army as well, known as the peshmerga. But Sunnis have no national armed force, only tribal militias blended into Iraqi security forces to fight the militants.
Some Sunni politicians have advocated an autonomous Sunni region, butproposals have gone nowhere amid partisan bickering.
“Sunnis have no unified leadership,” said Wathiq al-Hashimi, head of the Iraqi Group for Strategic Studies, an independent research group in Baghdad. “And Sunni politicians seem to care only about narrow personal interests.”
A Kurdish referendum on independence last month further divided Sunnis. Most opposed it, preferring to keep Kurds inside Iraq as a counterweight.