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 Like dozens of other communities in Iraq, this small Sunni
settlement in northern Salahuddin province’s Tuz Khurmatu district
has been reduced to rubble. In October, Shi'ite militiamen and
Kurdish peshmerga captured the village from the Sunni militant group
Islamic State. The victors then laid it to waste, looting anything
of value and setting fire to much of the rest. Residents have still
not been allowed to return.
"Our people are burning them," said one of the Shi'ite militiamen
when asked about the smoke drifting up from still smoldering houses.
Asked why, he shrugged as if the answer was self evident.
The Shi'ite and Kurdish paramilitary groups now patrol the scorched
landscape, eager to claim the most strategic areas or the few houses
that are still intact. For now, the two forces are convenient but
uncomfortable allies against the nihilist Islamic State.
This is how the new Iraq is being forged: block by block, house by
house, village by village, mostly out of sight and control of
officials in Baghdad.
What is emerging is a different country to the one that existed
before June. That month, Iraq's military and national police, rotten
with corruption and sectarian politics, collapsed after Islamic
State forces attacked Mosul. The militant group's victory in the
largest city in the north was one step on its remarkable dash across
Iraq.
 Islamic State's campaign slowed towards the end of the summer. But
it has left the group in charge of roughly one-third of Iraq,
including huge swathes of its western desert and parts of its war
ravaged central belt. It also shattered the illusion of a unified
and functioning state, triggering multiple sectarian fractures and
pushing rival groups to protect their turf or be destroyed.
The far north is now effectively an independent Kurdish region that
has expanded into oil-rich Kirkuk, long disputed between the Kurds
and Iraqi Arabs. Other areas in the north have fallen to Shi'ite
militias and Kurdish peshmerga fighters, who claim land where they
can.
In Baghdad's rural outskirts and in the Diyala province to the east
and north towards Samarra, militias, sometimes backed by Iraqi
military, are seizing land and destroying houses in Sunni areas.
Last there is Baghdad and Iraq's southern provinces, which are
ostensibly still ruled by the country's Shi'ite-led government. But
the state is a shell of what it once was. As respect for the army
and police has faded, Iraqis in the south have turned to the Shi'ite
militia groups who responded to the rallying cry of Iraq's most
senior clergy to take on Islamic State.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a Shi'ite moderate who became Iraq's
new leader in September, four months after national elections, hopes
that the country can be stitched back together. Abadi has tried to
engage the three main communities, taking a more conciliatory tone
than that of his predecessor Nuri al-Maliki, who was often
confrontational and divisive. Abadi, the Kurds and even some Sunni
politicians now all speak of the need for federal regions, so the
country's communities can govern themselves and remain part of a
unified state.
Iraq, though, has been splintered into more than just three parts,
and the longer those fragments exist on their own the harder it will
be to rebuild the country even as a loose federation. Such an
arrangement would require the defeat of Islamic State, a massive
rebuilding program in the Sunni regions, unity among Iraq's
fractious political and tribal leaders, and an accommodation between
the Kurds and Baghdad on the Kurds' territorial gains.
Even the optimists recognize all that will be difficult. Finance
Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, a Kurd who wants Iraq to stay united, says
he can picture Iraq eventually regaining its "strength and balance."
But, he concedes, "the country is severely fractured right now."
 Ali Allawi, a former minister of trade, defense and finance, and
author of two books on Iraqi history, agrees. "There is so much up
in the air," he said. "There are the trappings of a functioning
state, but it is like a functioning state lying on a sea of
Jello...The ground is so unstable and shifting."
KURDISTAN
Iraq's Kurds often see opportunity in times of trouble. This year
they moved quickly to take lands long disputed with Arab Iraqis,
including Kirkuk. For a while, talk of secession increased, but then
quieted after Islamic State mounted a successful attack into
Kurdistan in August. Since then, buoyed by U.S. air strikes designed
to hurt Islamic State, the Kurds have recaptured areas they lost and
forged an agreement to export oil from Kirkuk and its own fields for
Baghdad.
Kurdish business tycoon Sirwan Barzani, a nephew of Iraqi Kurdish
President Masoud Barzani, sees this as a moment to advance his
people's nationalist dream. He was in Paris chairing a board meeting
of the telecom company he founded in 2000 when he received news that
Islamic State militants had overrun Mosul. A former peshmerga
fighter in the 1980s, he canceled his holiday plans in Marbella and
rushed back to Kurdistan to help prepare for war, taking command of
peshmerga forces along a 130 km (81 mile) stretch of the Kurds'
front line with Islamic State.
Washington sees the Kurds as its most dependable ally in Iraq. For
Barzani and other Kurds, though, the fight against Islamic State is
simply the continuation of a long struggle for an independent
nation.
Before leading an offensive last month to drive Islamic State
militants back across the river Zab towards Mosul, Barzani said he
met with an American general to talk strategy and coordinate
airstrikes.
"They asked about my plan," Barzani told Reuters in a military base
on the frontline near Gwer, 48 kilometers (30 miles) south of the
Iraqi Kurdish capital Arbil. "I said, 'My plan is to change the
Sykes-Picot agreement'" – a reference to the 1916 agreement between
France and Britain that marked out what would become the borders of
today's Middle East.
"Iraq is not real," Barzani said. "It exists only on the map. The
country is killing itself. The Shi'ites and Sunnis cannot live
together. How can they expect us to live with them? Our culture is
different. The mentality of Kurds is different. We want a divorce."
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THE SUNNIS
Where Kurds saw opportunity in 2014, Iraq's Sunnis saw endless
turmoil and new oppression. Residents in the western and northern
cities of Mosul, Tikrit and Falluja – all now controlled by Islamic
State – complain about fuel and water shortages, and Islamic State
directives that women cover themselves and smokers be fined. They
tell stories about the destruction wrought by shelling by the Iraqi
government and U.S. forces.
In places where Sunnis themselves are battling Islamic State, the
brutality can be unrelenting. Many wonder what will be left when the
war finishes and whether it will be possible for Sunnis to reconcile
even among themselves.
Sheikh Ali Abed al-Fraih has spent months fighting Islamic State. A
tribal soldier in Anbar province, he has sunken, tired eyes and a
frown. His clothes are one size too big for him. He sees the
conflict as an internal battle among the Anbar tribes. Some have
chosen to join Islamic State, others to fight the group. Some of his
enemies, he says, are from his own clan. The fight will not end even
if areas around his town of Haditha and other Anbar cities are
cleared, he says. All sides will want revenge. "Blood demands blood.
Anbar will never stop."
Fraih flew to Baghdad in late December to beg the government to send
help to Haditha, which is pinned to the west and east by Islamic
State and defended by a five km-long (3 mile) berm. Fraih could only
reach Baghdad by military plane. The government had promised for two
months to send food and medicine, but no help had come. The week
before Christmas the government told him help would come in a week.
Fraih tried be polite about the promise, but it's hard. "It's all
words," he said.
Every day, tribal fighters and Iraqi soldiers in Haditha stop
Islamic State assaults and defend the city's massive dam. If Islamic
State take the dam they could flood Anbar and choke off water
supplies to the Shi'ite south. The army, in particular, is
struggling, he said. "In every fight the army loses 50 soldiers.
Their vehicles get destroyed, they are short on fuel, and no new
vehicles are coming. They are hurting more than my own men."
The city's one lifeline to the outside world is a huge government
airbase called Ain al-Assad, some 36 km (22 miles) south. Fraih
recently met U.S. Special Forces there. They assured him that if
Islamic State breaks through the barriers to Haditha, the U.S. will
carry out air strikes. The logic confuses Fraih. "They know the
people have no food, no weapons, no ammunition, nothing. We are
sinking. If you are not going to help us, at least take us to the
south and north. We are dying now."
His faith in getting help from anyone has almost vanished.
"What is left of Iraq if it keeps moving this way?" he asked.
THE SHI'ITES
In a house on the outskirts of Baghdad, a Shi'ite tribal leader sat
and imagined his world as "a dark tunnel with no light" at its end.
"Iraq is not a country now," he said. "It was before Mosul."
The sheikh, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would like to see
his country reunited but suspects Abadi is too weak to counter the
many forces working against him. Now the Shi'ite militias and Iran,
whom the sheikh fought in the 1980s, are his protectors. It is a
situation he accepts with a grim inevitability.
"We are like a sinking ship. Whoever gives you a hand lifting you
from the sea whether enemy or friend, you take it without seeing his
face because he is there."
Iranian-advised paramilitaries now visit his house regularly. He has
come to enjoy the Iranian commander of a branch of the Khorasani
Brigades, a group named for a region in northeastern Iran. The
commander likes to joke, speaks good Arabic and has an easy way,
while other fighters speak only Persian, the sheikh said. He
expresses appreciation for their defense of his relatives in the
Shi'ite town of Balad, which is under assault from the Islamic
State.
The sheikh's changing perceptions are shared by other Iraqi
Shi'ites. They once viewed Iran as the enemy but now see their
neighbor as Iraq's one real friend. The streets of Baghdad and
southern Iraq are decorated with images of Iran's supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The sheikh, though, does not believe he can rely on Iran altogether.
He is sure some Iranian-backed militiamen would happily kill him. He
has heard of one case in Diyala where a militia leader shot dead the
son of a popular Shi'ite tribal leader. He has also watched as
militia fighters aligned with police and army officers kidnapped a
cousin and a friend for ransom. "I feel threatened by their bad
elements," he said of the militias.
If the state doesn't rebuild its military quickly and replace the
multiple groups now patrolling the lands, the sheikh fears Shi'ite
parts of Iraq will descend further into lawlessness. "It will be
chaos like the old times, where strong tribes take land from the
weak tribe. Militias fight militias," he said. "It will be the rule
of the jungle, where the strong animal eats the weak."
(Edited by Simon Robinson)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
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