On New Year’s Day, Iraq woke up reeling from a wave of bomb blasts which had swept across the country the previous day, serving as a terrible portent for a year of violence to come. Unrest was sparked in December when Prime Minister Maliki ordered the arrest of former finance minister and prominent Shia politician Rafia al-Issawi’s bodyguards and other staff members on alleged terrorism charges. The arrests, coupled with reform of the country’s anti-terror laws which the country’s disgruntled Sunni minority says targeted them specifically, laid the foundations for what was to come in 2013.

January was among the year’s least bloody months, though a series of Sunni Muslim rallies against Shiite Prime Minister, Nouri al- Maliki, and warnings of an ‘Iraqi Spring’ highlighted sectarian tensions which would reach boiling point by April.