By Any Means Possible

"It is doubtful that ISIS have the expertise to use a fully functioning chemical munition but there are materials on site that could be used in an improvised explosive device. We have seen that ISIS has used chemicals in explosions in Iraq before and has carried out experiments in Syria."
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, former commander, British chemical weapons regiment

In 2002, an Iraqi official stood next to destroyed aluminum aerial bombs at what was once Saddam Hussein's premier chemical-weapons production facility. Getty Images

Is that good news? Rather doesn't sound like it. Here is the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham seemingly in the ascendancy. They had a slow start, and a disagreement with the leader of al-Qaeda, but they've gone one 'better' on al-Qaeda in the chilling brutality of their ability to shock and repulse. If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad thought it prudently useful to use his chemical weapons against his own Sunni population, why then, ISIS did the same, and no doubt plans to redouble their efforts.

Originally well funded by Sunni fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, they no longer require such financial handouts to do their work; a fortunate endowment of half-a-billion fell into their hands when they looted the Mosul bank. That was courtesy, actually of what was left of the Baathist Sunni Saddam Hussein loyalists, rather disgusted and annoyed at being side-lined and oppressed by the governing Shiite Nouri al-Maliki who feels that it is his right to reverse the sectarian divide.

Overrunning northern Iraq, ISIS just also happened to run into the al-Muthanna chemical weapons complex with its deadly store of mustard gas and sarin. Located 90 kilometres north of Baghdad, it was on their way, in any event. Apart from the urban legend of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program that brought the U.S. to invade in 2003, the chemical complex really was the venue for the development of industrial-scale chemical weapons.

And although the Iraqi army turned tail and ran, doffing uniforms lest they be identified by the advancing ISIS militias,  unwilling to defend with their lives a city comprised of Sunni and Shiites, Kurds and Turkomen because what's it to them, anyway, that same military's soldiers and helicopter gunships are holding their own in battle against ISIS for control of Iraq's largest oil refinery at Beiji. Now that would be a bruising loss. An ISIS representative there confirmed that while the facility which extends over miles of desert, remains in government hands, they're putting up a fight.

Isis fighters raise their weapons as they stand on a vehicle mounted with the trademark Jihadists flag in Anbar province.  Photo: AFP/GETTY

 

It is only the presence of helicopter gunships that has weighted the balance in the government's favour. On the other hand, fighting alongside the Islamic State of Iraq & Al Sham is Sunni tribal members and those who were once part of Saddam Hussein's old Baath Party. The Sunnis fighting alongside the ultra-fundamentalists though they may deplore the depths of their depraved brutality because they have been humiliated and held in contempt for far too long by their Shiite taskmasters.

It doesn't look too hopeful for Western, primarily American, intervention at this juncture. Too little too late; and in any event, this is a sectarian Islamist battlefield. Nothing can now keep the two from each others' veritable throats; from slitting them, or drawing and quartering their bodies. ISIL now represents the fiercest, most brutal fighting group in the world. They envision their Sharia state of an eventual global Islamist state. Linking with other al-Qaeda militias like Al Shabab and Boko Haram.

In desperation Iraqi political leaders are looking to an alternative to Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, someone with authority who will unite the three major groups in Iraq, giving equality of position to Shia, Sunni and Kurdish factions, removing the quagmire of suspicion and resentment arising from one insisting on dominating the others. But the patchwork of division has begun. Iraq has already lost one-third of its territory to ISIS.

Dividing the country further into the long-awaited Kurdish homeland, and a segment each for Sunni and Shiite to accommodate those restless and hate-mongering demographics seems inevitable. Such a division should go a long way to snuffing out the violent antipathy between Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis. If the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham permits, that is.

Saudi Arabia has warned against intervention in Iraq while calling for a new government to be established in Baghdad. Iran has its troops in Iraq, aiding its Shiite sectarian compatriot against the ravaging, ravening Sunnis supported by Sunni fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia. The proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia has whelped a brood of snarling predators slaking their thirst for blood on the hapless of each religious divide in the country.