[RUDAW.NET] Iraq won the battle to retake the city of Tikrit from the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group, backed by a coalition of the unlikely in Iranian advisers, Shiite militias, and US-led Arclight airstrikes, but the country now faces what could be its most important battle: Winning the support of the Sunnis.
Sunni tribes played a key role during the US occupation fighting back al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic State group's predecessor, and their distrust of Baghdad's Shiite-led government eased the myrmidons' takeover last summer. But as Tikrit now sits in ruins, still patrolled by fractious Shiite militias, the powerful Sunni tribes remain as distrustful as ever as further offensives in their heartland loom. |