The Deadly, Misidentified Turmoil of the Middle East

The world is fascinated and appalled by the tide of humanity exiting their countries of origin - all of them majority Muslim countries which have, one after the other, failed in the living experiment that can be defined as a nation encompassing people with similar ethnic roots, worshipping a major religion, and operating within a political framework reflective of that religion. Each of those nations has failed to provide for its population an equitable share of opportunities to prosper.

And nor have minorities within the greater populations found comfort and security, living under Islam. Tribal ethnic groups remain suspicious and threatening toward one another, occasionally spilling over into violent conflict. While religious minorities are barely tolerated in the most sanguine of the Muslim majority countries, and viciously persecuted in the more emphatically Islamic of those countries.

The single Muslim majority nation bordering the Middle East that was considered the gateway between Europe and the Middle East, and which had been patterned into the democratic model by Kamel Ataturk, dividing church and state, has now reverted to fundamentalist Islam under its current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist Justice and Development party, which has turned Turkey back inside itself, spurning democracy and a free press and reigniting its war with Kurds.

Among all those who follow Islam, it is not the larger Arab population that has proven itself capable of living in harmony with other ethnic and religious groups, but the Kurds who accept with tolerance the presence of Christians, Yazidis and other minorities whom both the Sunni and Shiite sects prey upon. The violent implosion of Syria resulting from its minority Shiite Alawite regime refusing the equality its majority Sunni citizens have appealed for, has arrested the attention of the world.

Masked Palestinian children: destiny, martyrdom

All the more so that the wide-sweeping lethal attacks of the regime against its own population has resulted in a vase tide of humanity seeking haven outside the Middle East, streaming into Europe and overwhelming its ability to accommodate the sheer numbers trying to escape Islam's excesses of violence. But those haven-seekers also come from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Eritrea, Somalia, Libya and Iraq, fleeing poverty and misery. So much for Islam, the religion of peace.

The governor of Kirkuk Province, Majmaldin Karim, observes that should ISIL be evicted from its Mosul stronghold in Iraq, peace will not ensue. In the absence of Islamic State which has overwhelmed Iraq and Syria, ruthlessly grabbing vast tracts of territory in both for its caliphate, raping, slaughtering, terrorizing the population, there will be others eager, prepared and willing to take their place.

In Iraq, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkmens, Shiite militias will all scramble to possess as much of the ISIL territories as they can, and there will be no restoration of order, all viewing the others as opponents. Power sharing between the sects is not achievable in a larger search for agreement and stability. Along with foreign fighters who travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with ISIL, Iraqi Sunnis, repulsed by their Shiite overseers in Baghdad, rallied to fight alongside and within the ranks of ISIL.

Iraq conflict

The Shiite government in Baghdad aligned itself with Iran, complementing Iran's tentacle-spread to achieve a Shiite power grab, comprised of alliances with Syria, Lebanon and Yemen who together with Iran represented a Shiite-dominated power play. Even the Sunni tribes in the Mosul area are split; some joining ISIL, others remaining aloof.

Sunnis who became part of ISIL will find themselves the targets of revenge from those who did not should ISIL be defeated. Yazidi women from Iraq, captured and raped by ISIL fighters and who later escaped their sex slavery, reported that they were often raped not by foreign fighters from Chechnya or Libya, but Iraqi Sunnis they recognized from their own hometowns.

It has been pointed out by those who believe they recognize root causes that the sectarian war is being fought throughout the Middle East by proxies of both Saudi Arabia and Iran. Iran is intent on destabilizing Saudi Arabia, and presenting itself as the powerful alternative to control and conquest, as the ultimate power play in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, invoking its tradition as guardian of Mecca and Medina, will brook no competition.

Islamic Jihad in Gaza

The "peace process" in the Middle East is geared toward settling conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Whose conflict is as nothing in comparison to the one between Shiite and Sunni forces in the Middle East, effectively slaughtering one another at a tremendous rate, where hundreds of thousands have been sacrificed. This is something the world takes little notice of, preferring their focus on Israel and the Palestinians; Israel 'oppressing' the Palestinians when it reacts to being bombed by Hamas using Gazans as effective shields.