At present, it is difficult to see how the ongoing implosion of Iraq can be stalled and reversed. The world started taking note of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has been declared as ‘caliph’ of an ‘Islamic State’ claiming sovereignty over a stretch of territory from Aleppo in north-western Syria to Diyala in north-eastern Iraq only when Mosul fell on June 20. But, his forces had taken over Raqqa, Syria, in March 2013, and Falluja, Iraq, in January 2014.
ISIL, a breakaway group from al Qaeda in Iraq, is basically a part of the Sunni Resistance to the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The US had made unsuccessful, half-hearted, and not always judicious attempts to build an Iraq that could accommodate the three main groups: the Shias, the Sunnis, and the Kurds. But, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who took office in 2006 with support from the US and Iran carried out a policy of alienating the Sunnis and the Kurds. His reckless partisan policies created the conditions for the emergence of a formation called Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) to grow and derive support from the Sunni population.
