{"id":3374,"date":"2014-06-16T09:30:42","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T09:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=3374"},"modified":"2014-06-16T09:30:42","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T09:30:42","slug":"the-sectarian-conflict-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=3374","title":{"rendered":"The Sectarian Conflict in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is a fair bit of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-middle-east-27863870\">news<\/a> around at present with respect to the current sectarian conflict in Iraq, including the news of mass killings by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Islamic_State_in_Iraq_and_the_Levant\">ISIS<\/a>. And of course we have a number of talking heads appearing on TV talking about the causes of the sectarian conflict. And often blaming the US intervention in Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>Which is of course a complete red herring.<\/p>\n<p>The previous regime in Iraq kept the lid on sectarian conflicts between <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shi%27a%E2%80%93Sunni_relations\">Shias and Sunnis<\/a> with extreme repression. Even a very superficial look at the history of the conflict shows that sectarian conflict was almost inevitable after the removal of Saddam Hussain.<\/p>\n<p>And the blame for that conflict lies with the extremists within both Shia and Sunni communities &#8211;\u00a0<em>not<\/em> with the Americans or British who fought to remove Saddam Hussain. Whilst the western forces may well be guilty of many things &#8211; including human rights abuses &#8211; this sectarian conflict is\u00a0<em>not<\/em> something they brought about.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately sectarian conflicts in Iraq can only be solved by the Iraqis themselves.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a fair bit of news around at present with respect to the current sectarian conflict in Iraq, including the news of mass killings by ISIS. And of course we have a number of talking heads appearing on TV talking about the causes of the sectarian conflict. And often blaming the US intervention in <a href='https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=3374' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[1210,1211,197,1208,1209],"class_list":["post-3374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-religion","tag-iraq","tag-isis","tag-islam","tag-shia","tag-sunni","category-3-id","category-10-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-Sq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3375,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374\/revisions\/3375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}