ABSTRACT
The upsurge in politically motivated violence in Iraq that started in 2012 and reached its peak with the fall of Mosul to the forces of the Islamic State (ISIS), or to use its Arabic acronym Daesh, in June 2014, triggered an acrimonious debate. Nuri al-Maliki’s role in Iraqi politics from 2006 and policy decisions taken by the Obama administration from 2009 onwards certainly damaged Iraq’s stability but in doing this they simply exacerbated far deeper and longer-running problems that had been at the centre of Iraq’s political system since 2003. It was the exclusive elite pact’s politics of exclusion that fuelled the cycle of violence that drove Iraq into civil war. By 2006, the conflict was justified in aggressively divisive sectarian language. ISIS’s military rejuvenation after 2012 was certainly masterminded by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and driven forward by the “Breaking Down the Walls” campaign. However, it fed off deeper, longer-running political problems caused by the exclusive elite pact.
