Destroyed house with a buried car in Mosul on November 22, 2017. Picture by Noe Falk Nielsen/NurPhoto/Sipa USA/PA Images. All rights reserved. No one knows how many Iraqis have died. Some estimates put the number of deaths at more than one million. But, it is undeniable that the fifteen years of war have divided Iraqis along sectarian lines, turned Iraqi cities, such as Ramadi, Fallujah and Mosul, into ruins and caused instability in the region.
The United State unleashed a widespread violence when it decided to dismantle the Iraqi state, such as throwing thousands of Iraqi troops and civil servants out of work, replacing it with a dysfunctional and corrupt semi-state.
Shortly after the invasion, "Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" led by Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi emerged in the country. The extremist group carried out wide-scale violent sectarian attacks in the name of the establishment of the Khilafa (Caliphate). While the formerly Iran-exiled Shiitefactions like the "Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq" (SCIRI) with its military wing "Badr Brigade" returned to Iraq intending to establish a theocracy based on the Shiite doctrine of wilayat al-faqih, which allows a cleric to have ultimate say over the foreign and domestic policy of a nation. The removal of Saddam's regime also encouraged the emergence of native Shiite factions like the "Sadr Movement" of Moqtada al-Sadr who formed the Jaish al-Mahdi militia. Consequently, this triggered infighting against fellow sectarian factions over state resources and dominance.
