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Whatsapp US President George W. Bush declares 'mission accomplished' on board the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on 1 May 2003, four years after the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Eleven years after Australia committed troops to the war against Saddam Hussein, our military is heading back to Iraq to fight Islamic State militants. To what extent do the original invading and occupying powers have themselves to blame for the rise of Islamic extremism in Iraq? Annabelle Quince investigates.

In 2003, former PM John Howard committed Australian troops to the war in Iraq at the behest of George W. Bush. Last week the prime minister, Tony Abbott, did the same, this time following the lead of President Obama. The purpose of the mission: to contain or destroy Islamic State forces.

I really think in Iraq so much of what happened was one mistake begat another mistake begat another mistake and just led to more suffering and misery for Iraqis.

Yet the radical Sunni group owes its existence, in part, to a series of missteps during the invasion and occupation. After deposing Hussein, the US military simply did not have enough boots on the ground to maintain order. The security situation deteriorated and looting and rioting were widespread.

A program of de-Ba'athification led by US Special Envoy Paul Bremer, may have been even more damaging. Bremer, a career diplomat who had never been to Iraq and did not speak Arabic, signed the order for the removal of Ba’ath Party members from all government positions on the plane on his way to Iraq.

‘[De-Ba’athification] did not create a distinction between those who were ideological members of the party versus those who had been forced to join, and it did not distinguish between those who had committed crimes and those who had not committed crimes,’ says Feisal Istrabadi, the founding director of the Indiana University Center for the Study of the Middle East, who was Iraq’s representative at the UN between 2004 and 2007.

‘All of a sudden, 750,000 people—because, in addition to de-Ba'athifying he also dissolved the army and the security forces—didn't know how to feed their families of five the next day. It was a blunt instrument in the extreme, and the Sunni of Iraq, the second largest ethno-confessional group, the Arab Sunni, came to call it not de-Ba'athification but de-Sunnification.’

A new constitution, drafted in 2004 by an American-picked group of 25 experts, did not help matters, according to Istrabadi, who was on the panel. When elections were held in 2005, they were largely boycotted by the Sunnis.

Read more: A historical view of the divide between the Shia and Sunni

‘There wasn't a really very strong Sunni voice,’ says Ned Parker, Reuters’ bureau chief in Baghdad. That of course led to the Shiite Islamists who had fought Saddam's regime in the 1980s having the most powerful posts within the security forces and then using that leverage and ability to go after Sunnis or Ba'athists they still saw as a threat to long-term Shiite rule.’

‘So you had the death squad killings occurring of Sunni civilians. I really think in Iraq so much of what happened was one mistake begat another mistake begat another mistake and just led to more suffering and misery for Iraqis.’

The security situation deteriorated; the country was on the brink of civil war and tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed in sectarian violence. In January 2007, amid growing instability, the Bush administration sent an extra 20,000 soldiers to Iraq.

The surge, as the strategy was known, proved to be a success. It wouldn’t have worked, however, without the Awakening Movement, a grouping of Sunni sheiks who turned against Al Qaeda, which at the time was operating out of Anbar province west of Baghdad. The surge and the Awakening Movement were so successful in lowering the level of violence that new elections were held. Nuri Al-Maliki, the Shiite prime minister, was returned to power, despite not winning a majority of seats.

‘The last four years in Iraq, the final term of Prime Minister Maliki was a wasted opportunity for all sides,’ says Parker. ‘There was such animosity between Maliki and his own partners within his Shiite bloc, and Maliki with the Kurds and Maliki with the Sunnis, that all worked against each other.'

Listen: The franchised terrorism of al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden

‘Rather than try to implement reforms that would have promoted reconciliation, none of that happened. It was every man for himself.’

Sunnis again felt largely unrepresented, and protests turned into clashes between the governments and Sunnis around the country. At the end of 2013, Al-Maliki decided to attack the city of Ramadi in Anbar province, purportedly to destroy Al-Qaeda affiliated militants, but also to clear away a protest camp and arrest a leading Sunni lawmaker.

The government attack sparked a revolt by the Sunni tribes in Anbar province, who were joined by Islamic State militants from across the border in Syria. Anbar was devastated, with widespread destruction and 430,000 people displaced.

‘At that time the fighting between the government and Sunni insurgents or angry tribesmen hadn't spread,’ says Parker.

‘Islamic State was able to use this period, the first six months of the year, to develop more. It also exposed to the Islamic State how weak the Iraqi army was. This taxed the army and created openings for the Islamic State elsewhere, helped radicalise the Sunni population.’

‘Arguably if the Iraqi government under Maliki had been able to strike a deal with the different Anbari tribes, both those who were on Maliki's side and those who were fighting Maliki, the Islamic State could have been contained. So that period of time really was a wasted period.’

Instead, Islamic State militants spilled north past Mosul and down the Tigris River Valley towards Baghdad as the Iraqi army collapsed.

‘The initial decision for air strikes by the Americans in August when the Islamic State was making a charge into Kurdistan, from the standpoint of a strategist in Washington, it made real sense,’ says Parker.

Iraq: whatever happened to mission accomplished? Listen to this episode of Rear Vision to find out more.

Subsequent airstrikes, such as that near Amerli, a Shiite Turkmen community that was besieged, haven’t been so clear cut. In the aftermath of the airstrikes, the formerly besieged Shiite militia torched Sunni houses and villages to stop Sunnis returning.

‘The Islamic State could take that campaign—which was done with good intentions—and say, “The US is helping militias and the militias are now bombing Sunni homes.” That's the kind of dangerous scenario that the international coalition will be facing in Iraq, and they have to weigh heavily each time they take a step; can this be exploited by one side against the other?’

‘The military [action] actually has to be coupled with political progress or this coalition of the Americans and others, including Australia, could be looked upon as being on the side of a Shiite-led government against a Sunni population. Even if that's not what is really happening, it will be easy for the Islamic State to twist events to look that way.’

Rear Vision puts contemporary events in their historical context, answering the question, ‘How did it come to this?’



