Reversion + Fear = Terror

"Both the increasing frequency, and statistically the increasing deadliness of [their] co-ordinated nationwide bombings in Iraq underlines the extent of their operational reach and the huge depth of their resources."
Charles Lister, IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center

cbc.ca

Iraq held a brief flirtation with social quiescence, a damping down of the ferociously toxic tribal and sectarian violence unleashed with the absence of the tyrannical fist of Saddam Hussein. Even the presence of a hundred thousand foreign troops stationed there to guide the country back to a semblance of order and good government was incapable of curtailing the madness of blood lust that overtook Shia and Sunni factions intent on destroying one another in 2006/07.

But it did reach a crescendo of carnage and bloodletting. It merely represented sectarian distrust and fear one of the other translating into death, mutilation, horrors. And while it resulted in horrendous blights of human descent into madness, the results did not prove their permanence. The majority Iraqi Sunnis, witnessing the even greater ruthlessness and lack of humanity of the invading al-Qaeda jihadists experienced a revulsion greater than that they held for their Shia national counterparts.

That relative social peace that resulted lasted just about as long as the tripartite governance put in place with the encouragement of the United States was able to function. Until the Shia Prime Minister Nouri Maliki issued a warrant after the departure of the Americans, for the arrest of the Sunni Vice-president under the country's antiterrorism laws.  The Al-Iraqiya parliamentary bloc representing Iraq's Sunnis had already withdrawn from the coalition.

Tariq al-Hashemi had issued his own accusations against Prime Minister Maliki, of abuse of power. He is now a wanted man, finding haven in Qatar. Now the majority Shia who were once repressed under the minority Sunni Baath party of Saddam Hussein who fought a long, destructive and bitter war with Iran, holds the reins of power. And has forged an amiable relationship with Iran. Placing Iraq alongside Syria, though not yet in the same league, within the Shia power bloc.

And as in Syria, al-Qaeda's new affiliate, recently renamed the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is intent on slaughtering Shia Muslim 'heretics' and restoring the country to Sunni rule. The country has been wracked in the last several months with co-ordinated, well-orchestrated car bombings, al-Qaeda's specialty. The odds are looking fairly convincing that the country will be again gripped on bloody sectarian violence, as it experienced in 2006 and 2007.

A traffic policeman thought a car looked suspicious, parked close by a parking lot and alerted everyone on the street: "Car bomb!" Pedestrians responded immediately in a huge panic, not knowing where to run for shelter -- in which direction to rush, while cars turned about in confusion, clogging the streets, and drivers rolled down their car windows in anticipation of glass exploding inside the vehicle from the concussive force of a blast.

And in four minutes the car did explode with a plume of black smoke wending toward the sky. Seven people were killed, over a dozen more injured. This was only one of a dozen explosions within the space of an hour that overtook the country on Wednesday morning. In total several days ago the bombs that struck in mostly Shiite areas killed 74 people. Before that day, in the days previous, ghastly scenes of beheaded bodies were being discovered.

That same Wednesday morning jihadists entered the home of a Shiite family in the Sunni-majority town of Latifiya and slaughtered seven people. Four children and three adults. All the members of that family had been decapitated. Security forces have embarked on operations dubbed "the revenge of the martyrs" in Sunni neighbourhoods. Hundreds of Sunni 'extremists' have been arrested; the government claims a bomb-making factory was discovered.

The rift between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis is marked and steadily widening; while Shia government moves have antagonized the Sunni community, they have barely effected the level of violence erupting through the country. Al-Qaeda's Internet videos of executions they carry out within Iraq have inspired fear and foreboding throughout the country. The 'martyrs' on each side of the equation are set to exact their revenge.

Iraqis now fear that within their own country -- exclusive of the Kurdish autonomous region -- there is no safety to be found; not in the markets, their restaurants, the neighbourhood sport fields; even children's soccer games are vulnerable to becoming targets for the jihadists.

And with the ongoing conflict in Syria, the further influx of refugees from that war-torn country where the atrocities are accelerating, it appears more and more likely that Iraq too will be swept into a cyclone of terror and vengeance killings.

The spreading malignancy of Islamism and its jihadist mentality of hatred and annihilation.