Yet Iraqis themselves bear much blame. The historically dominant but minority Sunnis have never acknowledged their reduced status or indeed their numerical inferiority since Saddam Hussein’s fall. They let resistance to America’s intrusion morph into a brutal, religiously bigoted movement. They turned their noses up at Iraq’s new democracy and squabbled endlessly, failing to unite behind credible leaders, so encouraging the now Shia-dominated establishment in Baghdad to rule over them with bribes, threats and thuggery.
Iraq’s Shias, for their part, have largely flocked behind rabble-rousing, unscrupulous politicians. Those men, including the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, during his eight years in office, have done little to build sound or just institutions. Instead they have played political games, packing offices with cronies and siphoning cash from the oil geysers that Iraq sits on top of. This system of spoils has signally failed to lessen the misery of most Iraqis.
In response to the admittedly egregious and constant provocation of attacks by Sunni terrorists, Shia leaders have countenanced or sponsored vicious militias bent on vengeance, some armed and financed by Iran. Mr Maliki himself has repeatedly displayed a paranoid sectarian streak. Ignoring American pleas, he failed to support the Sahwa, or Awakening, a 100,000-strong Sunni tribal force that in 2007-08 helped stanch civil war by hounding terrorists, including the progenitors of ISIS. With little heed to Sunni feeling, he arrested not only prominent Sunnis on flimsy charges of terrorism, but thousands of ordinary folk. “The army was here to control, not protect us,” says Ahmed Hisham, a 22-year-old student from Mosul.
Mr Maliki not only brushed off Sunni protests that have festered for more than two years. In April 2013 his troops shot at least 50 protesters dead at a peaceful sit-in in the Sunni city of Hawija. Rather than reach out after the capture of Falluja by angry rebels, he sent his army to shell the city and helicopters to dump barrel-bombs, even as Iranian-backed militias openly recruited and dispatched Iraqi Shias to fight against Sunnis in Syria.
Mr Maliki has been equally unsubtle in trying to keep the Kurds in check. Repeatedly he has withheld the region’s share of the federal budget as punishment for Kurdish moves towards greater independence. Baghdad’s control of oil revenue made this tempting, but the payback has now come. In response to pleas for help against ISIS Kurdish leaders have smiled and shrugged.
A débâcle such as Mosul might have toppled a different prime minister. Mr Maliki has instead sought to turn it to his advantage, lashing out at Kurdish and Sunni leaders for purported treachery. Terrified by the renewed spectre of Sunni terrorism, many Shias have grudgingly fallen in behind him, accepting that now is not the time for change at the top. Thousands have also rallied to calls by religious leaders to join the army. For the time being a wary stalemate holds, but the new, precarious balance marks a shift that is portentous. The partial Sunni uprising—for this is how most Iraqis view recent events, rather than as a simple lunge for power by ISIS terrorists—presents multiple challenges.
One of these is presented by ISIS itself, with its ambition to create a medieval-style Islamic state bridging the Sunni parts of both Syria and Iraq. Few among Syria’s Arab Sunni majority of around 70% or the quarter or so of Iraq’s 33m people who are Sunni share that dream. Most Sunnis reject ISIS’s brutality, its imposition of ultra-puritanical Islamic laws, and the fact that perhaps a third of its 12,000-odd fighters is made up of foreigners. In a BBC interview, one Sunni ex-general from Mosul described his fellow rebels as “barbarians”.
But ISIS cannot be taken lightly. The group, which evolved from the most radically jihadist wing of resistance to American occupation, was indeed nearly wiped out by the Sahwa. Helped by Mr Maliki’s obtuse policies, it had bounced back even before its recent windfall in Mosul. The latest ISIS yearbook, a document not unlike a corporate report, details no fewer than 9,540 attacks, including 1,083 assassinations, in Iraq alone last year, not including its operations in Syria.
bis zum Ende gestellt. Wenn die IS merkt, dass die anderen ernst machen werden da schnell wieder harmlose, leicht unterbelichtete Ziegenficker draus. Die Anführer wandern in den Untergrund und lassen von da an den Krebs "Weltherrschaft gegen die Ungläubigen" wieder weiterwuchern. Dank einiger Opfer hat man dann auch super Märtyrer. 
Jawoll! Einreiseverbot für ISIS Kämpfer 