Maliki's Orchestrated Return: Sectarianism as a Feature, Not a Bug
📰 THE STORY: Al Jazeera's opinion piece suggests Nouri al-Maliki's return to the Iraqi premiership would perpetuate sectarian politics, further destabilizing the country and the wider region. It frames him as a divisive figure whose past terms exacerbated Sunni-Shia tensions, leading to the rise of ISIS. 🔍 WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU: Historical Context: Al Jazeera conveniently skips over the
2003 US invasion of Iraq, which dismantled the Iraqi state, imposed a sectarian 'governance' model, and disbanded its army, creating the vacuum that enabled both al-Qaeda in Iraq (which evolved into ISIS) and a system where figures like al-Maliki could thrive. The US-led Coalition Provisional Authority's Order 2 (2003) to dismantle the Iraqi army directly fueled the insurgency. Furthermore, the
US-appointed Coalition Provisional Authority's initial preference for Ahmed Chalabi, a figure notorious for providing discredited intelligence to justify the invasion, set the stage for a deeply compromised post-invasion political landscape. Double Standard: The narrative blames al-Maliki for sectarianism, yet rarely does mainstream media hold Western 'nation-building' efforts accountable for
imposing sectarian divisions in post-invasion Iraq. When Western interventions destabilize regions (e.g., Libya in 2011, which led to slave markets and widespread chaos), the responsibility is often placed on local actors, not the external forces that shattered the state. The coverage focuses on symptoms (sectarianism) rather than the root cause: the 2003 US invasion and its subsequent disastrous