Sectarian Division

A recent New York Times article "Shiite Leader in Iraq Urges Quick Decision on New Government" by C. J. Chivers chronicles the recent developments in the violent insurgency in Iraq. With Iraq's newly elected parliament set to begin tenure on Monday, Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalai, Iraq's highest ranked Shiite cleric has issued a statement for the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani calling for Iraqis to select a new prime minister before the new parliament sits earlier next week. While also calling for selections of a new parliamentary speaker and a new president, The Grand Ayatollah wants Iraqis to remain united not allowing sectarian division of the nation. While the powerful Ayatollah's words are noble in cause they may be falling on deaf ears. With Shiite military units securing their holy shrines in the southern regions of the country and hardening the battlefront against the Sunni militant groups, sectarian borders are being drawn again. And, while the Shiite and Sunni forces face off over the Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf; Kurds in the north have secured the city of Kirkuk with no intention of relinquishing it. 

The Kurdish people are the sect in Iraq that seems to have been forgotten during the recent skirmishes between Sunni and Shiite Forces. However, the Kurds have not forgotten the persecutions over history at the hands of the two more powerful sects that are now at each other's throats. While Shiites and Sunni fight with each other over the majority of the Iraqi territory, the Kurds are retaking ground of their own which they feel has always been theirs. The territories the Kurds are seizing are areas that Saddam Hussein pushed them out of by force via troops and chemical gas attacks in the late 1980s. The Kurdish people were forced to relocate to the mountainous regions farther north or into other countries such as Syria adding to sectarian tensions there. Now, while the Iraqi government is in no position to oppose them, the Kurds seeks to reclaim the lands the feel were stolen.  

Iraq is becoming more divided with each region taken by The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, ISIS, along with other similarly aligned Sunni militant groups. There is a clear voice within each sect that wants to divide the nation up into segregated regions for each group. However, it does not take a doctorate in political science to see that this will only act to escalate the sectarian violence. To add an element of nationalism to the sectarian differences already causing bloodshed would be a supreme folly on the part of the Iraqi government. Unfortunately, the real question remains; does the Iraqi government still have enough influence over the nation to prevent such a course of action. Should this sectarian division boil over into a full-fledged civil war in Iraq, the decision may no longer be in the hands of the government in Baghdad.