Sectarian Violence and Insurgency: Dissecting the Strategy of Al Qaeda in Iraq

Introduction

Waging insurgent warfare is a complex and challenging endeavour. To make up for a lack of resources and manpower, insurgent movements have little choice but resorting to unconventional strategies of guerrilla warfare. The exacerbation of ethno-sectarian violence is a prominent, yet under-researched response to a condition of strategic inferiority. Drawing upon theoretical and empirical evidence, this essay finds that insurgents exploit ethno-sectarian tensions to gain popularity, recruit sympathisers,wear out the central government, and catalyse the process of regime change.To empirically illustrate the ways in which insurgents exploit the dynamics of sectarian violence, this essay examines the sectarian strategy implemented by Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) from 2003 to 2007. First, the essay traces the conceptual roots of AQI’s exploitation of the sectarian antagonisms between Sunnis and Shias within Che Guevara’s model of insurgent warfare—known as focismo. Second, AQI’s sectarian strategy is dissected in three principal sub-components, defined as instigating hatred, engaging the security forces, and provoking the other. The essay is organised around two main sections. In the theoretical section, the root causes of sectarian violence are analysed through a review of the principal theories of ethno-sectarian conflict. After providing an evaluation of the sectarian interactions between Sunnis and Shias during the aftermath of the United States (U.S.) invasion of Iraq, the section investigates how insurgent groups exploit sectarian conflicts to promote their strategic objectives. In the empirical part, AQI’s sectarian strategy is examined, discussed, and assessed. This combination of theoretical and empirical evidence provides a comprehensive examination of the strategies that insurgent movements employ to protract intra-communal clashes and reap the benefits of sectarian violence.

Sectarian Violence and Insurgency: A Theoretical Approach

While the available literature on the logic of sectarian violence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is both voluminous and rich in content, this phenomenon remains shrouded in epistemological uncertainty. Scholars define sectarian violence by resorting to different conceptual assumptions and often disagree on the parameters necessary to distinguish ethno-cultural violence from other forms of social conflict (Jarman  2012, 1). Although this essay does not intend to provide a detailed overview of the different interpretations of sectarian violence, conceptualising the phenomenon is necessary to understand how ethno-sectarian tensions shape group behaviour during periods of civil unrest. Drawing from the definition proposed by Ami Carpenter, this essay refers to sectarian violence as a‘contagion of destructive attitudes and behaviours that destroys not just human life but the communal basis of human life: social trust, local governance, and the ability to provide for and thrive in diverse groups’ (Carpenter 2014, 5). Put otherwise, sectarian violence arises when antagonistic attitudes rooted in divergent socio-cultural backgrounds erode the social contract that allows different ethno-cultural groups to peacefully coexist. In the socio-political context of the MENA region, sectarian violence occurs on the basis of ethno-religious rifts. The polarisation between the two principal Islamic sects, the Sunnis and the Shias, cyclically spurs conflictual interactions when the power relations underpinning the groups’ coexistence undergoes significant alterations. To examine the root causes of the antagonism between Sunnis and Shias, the scholarship elaborated two principal theoretical approaches, respectively defined as primordialism and instrumentalism.

Primordialists identify the causes of ethnic tensions between Sunnis and Shias as deeply rooted in biological, traditional, cultural, and historical differences that prevent the two groups from peacefully coexisting. This school of thought considers sectarian clashes as inevitable, because communities are hardwired to defend and perpetuate the characteristics that reinforce incompatible social traits (Fearon & Laitin 2000, 849). Because sectarian differences ‘are driven by an unknowable, ancient patchwork of hatreds too mysterious and irrational to be amenable to sociological explanation,’ primordialists conclude that it is impossible to define the drivers of ethnic violence (Jacobi & Neggaz 2018, 481).

Conversely, instrumentalists reject the paradigm of ‘ancient sectarian hatreds’ and consider sectarian differences as identities that are socially constructed and manipulated by local leaders, political elites, and pressure groups (Hashemi 2016, 67). According to this theory, charismatic leaders politicise sectarian divides and capitalise on socio-economic frictions to alter the political discourse and advance their personal agendas. Rejecting the ‘ancient hatred’ narrative, instrumentalists identify in economic inequalities and political cleavages the root causes of the enmity between Sunnis and Shias (Nasr 2000, 172).

Both primordialists and instrumentalists propose valuable approaches to the study of the root causes of sectarian violence. While primordialists emphasise the ancestral psychological and cultural traits that connote the Sunni/Shia divide, instrumentalists demonstrate that sectarian dissimilarities display evolutionary traits exploitable by political elites (Fearon & Laitin 2000, 874). Because sectarian differences are considered as salient aspects of culturally heterogeneous societies, both schools conclude that sectarian clashes are an intrinsic component of the socio-political interactions in the MENA region. Yet, both schools equally fail to provide satisfying interpretations for why sectarian violence erupts only during periods of chaos and social disorder. This theoretical discrepancy originates from a lack of phenomenological contextualisation (Strand 2016, 12). In other terms, sectarian confrontations emerge and unfold following different patterns and with different degrees of intensity according to the existing socio-political and ethno-cultural context. These dynamics emerged with particular virulence in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

During Saddam’s epoch, the interactions between Sunnis and Shias did not trigger sectarian clashes because the regime firmly controlled the power relations among social groups and precluded any alteration in the ethno-cultural context from occurring. As a result of the regime’s adoption of Sunni customs and beliefs as Iraq’s national identity, the Shias experienced discrimination and severe restrictions to their freedom of religion (Blatt 2017, 47). The Sunni narrative ceased to be a synonym of national identity only when the United States intervened against Saddam’s regime in March 2003. As a consequence of the regime’s defeat, the national identity based on the Sunni ethno-cultural narrative was erased along with the dismantlement of the symbolism associated with the former regime. The power vacuum inflated the salience of sectarian identifications and incentivised the Shias to propose their own ethno-cultural narrative as the new Iraqi national identity (Haddad 2011, 22). In the aftermath of the regime’s downfall, the competition between Sunnis and Shias over the cultural ownership of the nation polarised the ethno-cultural rivalries and intensified sectarian antagonisms. Tense and radicalised environments similar to post-Saddam Iraq are frequently exploited by organised elites, such as insurgent movements.

According to the U.S. Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24, insurgent movements are grass roots uprisings that rely on ‘the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge the political control of a region’ (US Government 2018, GL-5). To achieve regime change, insurgent groups need to gain territorial ascendancy and mobilise a consistent part of the population against the established government or occupying power. Among the many strategies at the insurgents’ disposal, one of the most effective is the exploitation of the psychological and sociological dynamics underpinning sectarian tensions. Insurgents fuel sectarian violence and induce social disorder to acquire the support of one or more ethnic groups involved in the clashes, gain access to a growing recruitment pool, and canalise the disruptive cycle of sectarian violence against the security forces and the government’s representatives (Alaaldin 2015, 185).

When sectarian violence is rampant and the government’s security forces are unable or unwilling to contain the ethno-cultural animosities, insurgent movements escalate sectarian clashes to increase their ascendancy over a designated mass base. In expounding the role of militias in ethnic conflicts, Barry Posen utilises the concept of ‘security dilemma’ to illustrate how violent non-state actors amplify sectarian violence and capitalise on the population’s vulnerability.  In a situation of security vacuum, when the mobilisation of social groups based on sectarian identities is maximised, ‘small military forces’victimise civilians to precipitate escalatory arms races between sectarian groups (Posen 1993, 33). Episodes of sectarian violence multiply as tit-for-tat aggressions between ethno-cultural groups become self-propelling. As a result, group identity is perceived in zero-sum terms as the fear of group extinction triggers an extreme behavioural attitude defined as ‘siege mentality’ (Haddad 2011,183). Ethno-cultural groups come to consider their integrity as existentially threatened by the other faction and submit to any social group strong enough to break the siege and confront the opponent (Al-Qarawee 2014, 16). Consequently, while the ethno-cultural group in control of the country’s political institutions enjoys the government’s patronage, the other factions are forced to either provide for their own security or to submit to insurgent movements in exchange for protection.

Hence, insurgents frequently consider the exacerbation of sectarian antagonisms as a viable means to advance strategic objectives. When sectarian violence breaks free, insurgents can obtain the support of a considerable part of the ethnic group that they claim to champion whilst discrediting the government as an active sectarian combatant (Cordesman 2007, 23). Although the extreme brutality of this approach disrupts the basis of social coexistence, the exploitation of sectarian violence is a low-cost strategy that promises notable returns to the insurgents. Because the competition featuring the insurgents and the government is centred around the acquisition of the population’s support and/or acquiescence, whoever does better at establishing its authority at the local level is more likely to prevail in the armed struggle (Kilcullen 2010, 152). As David Galula explains in Counterinsurgency Warfare, insurgents are victorious if they succeed in persuading the local communities to reject the governmentas a legitimate political authority (Galula 1964, 4). In the context of ethnic conflict, insurgent movements are in a better position to overthrow the government when they persuade a large part of an ethno-cultural group that the government is evil, untrustworthy, and committed to discriminate its citizens on the basis of sectarian differences (Kydd & Walter 2006, 52).

Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Exploitation of Sectarian Violence: A Case-Study

In this empirical section, AQI’s sectarian strategy from 2003 to 2007 is dissected and analysed to illustrate the ways in which insurgents exploit ethno-sectarian antagonisms to advance strategic objectives. Firstly, AQI’s strategy is outlined through the adoption of Che Guevara’s model of insurgent warfare. Secondly, AQI’s sectarian approach is deconstructed into sub-sections, scrutinised, and assessed.

A Focoist Model of Insurgent Warfare

The following analysis of AQI’s sectarian strategy is facilitated by the support of Che Guevara’s model of insurgent warfare. Written to celebrate the triumph of the 1959’s Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare theorises a novel strategic modality of insurgent warfare – defined as focismo – to explain how a small, determined political vanguard can manipulate the population’s grievances and mobilise local communities in the pursuit of regime change (Guevara 1964, 1). According to Che Guevara, violence is the most effective way to radicalise society and catalyse the population’s ideological fervour against a designated target. The fomentation of violent behaviours accelerates the emergence of popular uprisings, weakening the established authority and thus advancing the insurgents’ cause (Ibid., 2).

From 2003 to 2007, AQI selected a focoist approach as the bedrock of its operational blueprint. Operating in a context of security vacuum and rampant sectarian divides, AQI accelerated the socio-political frictions that political vanguards fuel to secure territorial control, recruit affiliates, and consolidate a clandestine political infrastructure. In the aftermath of the U.S.-led military invasion, AQI’s presence in Iraq was mainly composed of an exiguous group of foreign fighters, the ‘mujahidin vanguard,’ guided by the founder of the movement, the Jordanian Abu al-Zarqawi (Gold 2017, 9). In adherence to the precepts of focismo, AQI started launching terrorist attacks against ethnically mixed neighbourhoods to propel cycles of retaliatory violence between Sunnis and Shias (Kilcullen 2016, 31). This strategy is best explained through Che Guevara’s terminology. The fighting vanguard of the people (the mujahidin vanguard) inflated violence (sectarian clashes) to create the revolutionary conditions favourable for ‘the mass movement’ (the Sunni communities) to rise against the imperialist oppressor (the Iraqi government and the Coalition forces) (Guevara 1964, 2-4).

According to al-Zarqawi, the escalation of ethno-sectarian hostilities was as excellent strategy to secure the Sunni population’s support, discredit the sectarian Shia-led government as an actor involved in the ethnic cleansings, and cause enough casualties among the Coalition forces to coerce the U.S. into withdrawing its troops from Iraq (Gold 2017, 7). The ambition of overthrowing the Iraqi government and establishing a proto-state to rule over the Sunni populations (Ummah) rested on the degree of popular support AQI could obtain from exploiting ethno-sectarian tensions. Because Che Guevara argues that an insurgency is ‘invincible’ when it attains the population’s support, the mujahidin vanguard sought to emerge as the leading group of the fragmented front of Sunni insurgent movements, mainly composed of former regime supporters and Sunni nationalists, to mobilise the Ummah in favour of regime change (Guevara 1964, 4; Cordesman 2007, 3). The importance of manipulating the Sunni populations emerges from a letter written by al-Zarqawi and intercepted by the U.S. intelligence services in February 2004. Responding to request for information on the strategic situation in Iraq advanced by Al Qaeda’s central cadres, al-Zarqawi asserted that ‘if we (AQI) succeed in dragging (the Sunni communities) into the arena of sectarian war, it will become possible to awaken the inattentive Sunnis as they feel imminent danger and annihilating death at the hands of the Shias’ (Zarqawi 2004, 5). Despite the small organisational structure prevented the Jihadist organisation from directly challenging the central government, AQI’s ability to catalyse the Sunni communities’ anger multiplied the insurgent movement’s disruptive potential. The weaponization of sectarian divides allowed the Jihadist insurgent organisation to arise, consolidate, and expand.

AQI’s metamorphosis from a marginalinsurgent group into the leading actor of a popular uprising demonstrates the short-term efficacy of AQI’s exploitation of sectarian clashes. Following the focoist assertion that the actions of the political vanguard in one area flare a domino effect throughout the whole region, al-Zarqawi adopted a three-phased approach to isolate and wear out the Iraqi government (Payne 2011, 126). Firstly, AQI secured its ascendancy over Iraq’s outer governorates. As soon as AQI consolidated its presence in the provinces surrounding Baghdad, Jihadist fighters penetrated into the capital’s peripheries and put into practice the sectarian techniques experienced and perfected in the first phases of the insurgency. In 2006, Baghdad experienced violent ethno-sectarian hostilities as AQI started targeting the Shia neighbourhoods with synchronised waves of suicide terrorist attacks, kidnappings, tortures, mutilations, and intimidations (Alaaldin 2015, 188).

The rationale underpinning AQI’s multi-layered sectarian approach was decoded by the Coalition forces in June 2006, when a visual representation of AQI’s strategy was retrieved from al-Zarqawi’s corpse (Kilcullen 2016, 134). The sketch illustrated how AQI’s fighters planned to move in and out Baghdad using hideouts and safe houses located all around the adjacent peripheries. Pinpointed the neighbourhoods in which the high density of mixed ethno-cultural groups offered better prospects of spurring sectarian clashes, AQI’s fighters would target the Shias with terrorist attacks and immediately disperse into the peripheries to avoid detection. As self-propelled cycles of sectarian violence erupted within the city’s residential areas, AQI openly intervened by championing the Sunni communities. Consequently, while the government lost control of the capital and was forced into a small enclave protected by the Coalition forces known as the ‘Green Zone,’ AQI earned freedom of movement, the acquiescence of the Sunni communities inside Baghdad, and the opportunity of channelling the population’s frustration against the Shia-led government(West 2009, 2).

Although the Jihadist organisation effectively established its ascendancy over the Sunni population by protracting sectarian clashes, AQI’s long-term strategy was poorly engineered, and the successes of the sectarian strategy were only temporary. The failure of AQI’s approach emphasises a strategic deviation from focismo. Whilst Che Guevara asserts that an insurgency only succeeds when the political vanguard wins the population’s hearts and minds, the Jihadist organisation based its entire strategy on gruesome attacks, inflexible rules, and repression (Guevara 1964, 2). AQI’s ascendancy over the Sunni communities came to an end as soon as the decline in sectarian violence increased the security of both ethno-cultural groups. In 2007, AQI suffered a nearly-complete annihilation engendered by the combined effects of the United States’ deployment of troops within Baghdad (Surge) and the Sunni tribes’ uprising against AQI in Western Iraq (Sunni Awakening).

Forced out of Baghdad and deprived of its stronghold in the Anbar governorate, AQI rapidly lost territorial control as the population’s allegiance shifted from the insurgents to the government. Because the Coalition troops were permanently stationed within Baghdad’s residential areas, AQI could no longer precipitate new cycles of sectarian violence as a relatively peaceful coexistence between Sunni and Shias was restored (West 2009, 5). Starting from late-2006, sectarian violence in Iraq de-escalated as quickly as it escalated during the first months of the same year. According to the Iraq Body Count database of documented civilian casualties in Iraq, while in January 2007 (the first month of the Surge) 3032 civilians were killed in violent attacks, one year later the number was down to 858, registering a 76 per cent decrease (Iraq Body Count, 2019). Unable to feed on sectarian grievances to regain momentum, AQI fell apart as a series of joint U.S.-Iraqi counterinsurgency operations, known as ‘Arrowhead Ripper,’neutralised or dispersed the Jihadists and their supporters (Johnson 2009, 3).

Deconstruction and Analysis of AQI’s Sectarian Strategy

In dissecting AQI’s sectarian strategy, this essay identifies three principal sub-components, respectively defined as instigating hatred, engaging the security forces, and provoking the other, that the Jihadists employed to ignite and protract ethno-sectarian clashes in Iraq. While the following analysis is structured into separate paragraphs to enhance the argumentation’s cohesiveness and intelligibility, each sub-componentis part of the same wider strategy.

First, AQI sought to instigate hatred as part of an information campaign aimed at propagandising the group’s ideology, exposing the Shias’ wrongdoings, and mobilising the Ummahagainst the Shia-supremacist government. From 2003 to 2007, AQI stigmatised the Shias as existential threats for the Sunni communities and principal obstacles to the creation of a pro-Sunni Islamic Caliphate in Iraq. To persuade the Sunnis that liquidating the Shias was a legitimate medium to secure a better tomorrow, the Jihadists initiated a de-humanisation process aimed at downgrading the Shias to the status of sub-human entity (Purohit &Kheiltash, 92). The rhetoric of hatred focused on inducing the Sunnis to overcome the natural ‘human abhorrence’ against murder clearly emerges from the review of al-Zarqawi’s declarations (Stanton 1996,3). AQI’s leader refers to the Shias as‘the lurking snake, the malicious scorpion…the penetrating venom’ responsible for‘crimes and massacres against the Sunnis’ (Zarqawi 2004, 2) (Zarqawi 2005, 1). The denial of the Shias’ humanity was accelerated by al-Zarqawi’s framing of the sectarian attacks as a ‘holy war against the infidels’ sanctioned by a divine entity. In his 2005 ‘Declaration of Total War’ against the Shias of Iraq, al-Zarqawi invokes the Sunnis’ victory over the ‘apostates’ by directly addressing the Sunni communities: ‘this is a call to all the Sunnis in Iraq: Awaken from your slumber, and arise from your apathy….(AQI) has decided to declare a total war against the Rafidite Shi’ites (derogatory term for Shias)’ (Zarqawi 2005, 2). In a context of power vacuum and pervasive sectarian strife, AQI’s instigations of hatred glorified the Sunni symbolism, downgraded the Shias as sub-humans, and incentivised local sympathisers to join the Jihadist organisation. In his study on sectarian discourses in Iraq from 2006 to 2007, Fanar Haddad confirms that AQI’s propaganda altered the popular perception of the ‘enemy.’ In support of his assessment, Haddad reports one of the many anthems chanted by the Sunni communities of Baghdad, which acclaims AQI as saviour and protector of the Iraqi people: ‘in your name Abu Hamza al-Muhajir (al-Zarqawi’s successor) we are inspired… al-Qa’ida are champions (of the Sunnis)!’ (Haddad 2013, 130). AQI’s stigmatisation of the Shias as ‘apostates’ and ‘sub-humans’ generated higher levels of sectarian brutalities and magnified the enmity between the two ethno-cultural groups.

Second, AQI engaged in combat with the security forces to prevent the Coalition from protecting the population and de-escalating the sectarian strife. Because Western democracies are sensitive to the casualties suffered by their military forces, AQI constrained the Coalition to adopt extraordinary precautions for protecting its troops (Pape 2003, 344). The Jihadists extensively resorted to guerrilla tactics to force the Coalition forces into fortified garrisons and prevent the soldiers from patrolling the areas in which AQI was implementing its sectarian strategy. To keep the security forces into fortified strongholds, known as Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), and sever the link between security forces and civilian population, AQI extensively deployed Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIEDs). Whilst IEDs placed alongside roads and highways hampered the Coalition forces’ movements outside the FOBs, the VBIED threat compelled the soldiers to prevent, often with threats and intimidations, any Iraqi vehicle from approaching the military convoys performing sentry duties (Pirnie & O’Connell 2008, 45). To protect the soldiers from blasts of high-explosive bombs, the Coalition provided its active personnel with state-of-the-art Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. Although the deployment of armoured fighting vehicles likely saved the lives of many Coalition soldiers, the decline in the counterinsurgency efforts’ efficiency was notable. David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, witnessed the disruptive effect that the over-reliance on MRAPs had on the trust relationship between security forces and civilian population: ‘(the MRAP) it is truly a “human submarine”- we drive around in an armoured box…peering out through our portholes at the little Iraqi fish swimming by. They can’t see us, and we don’t seem human to them. We are aliens.’ (Kilcullen 2009, 136). From 2003 to 2006, AQI’s deployment of IEDs and VBIEDs attacks proficiently thwarted the security forces’ attempts to de-escalate the spiralling sectarian clashes. The situation was reverted only during 2007, when the ‘Surge’ of U.S. troops and the renewed U.S. counter-insurgency doctrine centred on the protection of the Iraqi population prompted the security forces to venture out of the FOBs and remain within the residential areas affected by sectarian hostilities.

Third, AQI engineered its sectarian strategy to provoke the Shias’ retaliatory response against the Sunni communities and obstruct reconciliation processes. As Yahia Said observed during the build-up of the sectarian civil war within Baghdad’s residential areas, the sectarian violence instigated by AQI was ‘by no means one sided’ (Said 2005, 86). Incentivised by the government’s ineptitude to enforce law and order, Shia-supremacist militia forces grew in popularity as they mobilised to defend the Shias in the struggle against the Sunnis. The practices that Shia militias, such as the Mahdi Army, employed against the Sunni communities were not dissimilar from the methods that connotated AQI’s approach. Against a backdrop of lawlessness, Shia death squads waged a campaign of ethnic cleansing of mixed ethno-cultural neighbourhoods, displacing Sunni residents under death threats, property damages, harassments, kidnappings, tortures, and reprisals (Hagan et al. 2015, 680).  Aware of the Shia militias’ tendency to victimise Sunni civilians, AQI launched devastating attacks against the symbols of the Shia ethno-cultural heritage to exacerbate the popular rage and generate as much sectarian violence as possible. For instance, scholars consider AQI’s bombing of the Najaf Mosque on August 2003, which killed the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq along with many Shia worshippers, as one of the triggering episodes of the ethno-sectarian clashes (McClure 2010,125). However, the most visible episode of AQI’s provocation strategy was the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest sites for the Shias. After the bombing, the number of victims of sectarian attacks soared as the Shia militias’ anger was released on Sunni neighbourhoods. Alaaldin reported that ‘within days of the bombing, more than 1200 bodies, mostly of Sunni Arabs’ were found all across Iraq (Alaaldin 2015,188). AQI’s long-term employment of devastating attacks against Shia neighbourhoods and places of worship encouraged the emergence of a ‘siege mentality’ that periodically re-ignited self-sustaining cycles of sectarian hostilities. During the peak of the 2006/7 sectarian civil war, AQI’s provocation strategy intensified the ethno-sectarian antagonisms and persuaded both groups to consider the other as an existential threat. As Abu Kemael, former leader of the Mahdi Army, stated in his account of the sectarian cleansing operations conducted against the Sunni communities, ‘it was very simple…anyone Sunni was guilty.’ (Cockburn 2008, 185). AQI’s manipulation of the sectarian violence was interrupted only in 2007, when the security forces succeeded in imposing law and order and preventing the militias from targeting the population.

Conclusion

Drawing upon theoretical and empirical evidence, this essay demonstrated that insurgent movements exacerbate sectarian clashes to advance their strategic objectives. To illustrate the ways in which insurgent movements manipulate the enmity between social groups, this essay selected Al Qaeda in Iraq’s sectarian strategy as a case-study and applied different theoretical frameworks to support its scrutiny. Insurgents intensify sectarian violence to induce social disorder, obtain ascendancy over the territory, recruit sympathisers, wear out the security forces, and delegitimise the government’s authority. As demonstrated by the analysis of AQI’s sectarian strategy, the manipulation of sectarian struggles can have positive effects on the insurgents’ short-term strategy. The mujahidin vanguard exploited sectarian tensions in Iraq to foment a state of chaos and mobilise the Sunni population against the established authority. From 2003 to 2007, AQI resorted to three principal sub-strategies, defined as instigating hatred, engaging the security forces, and provoking the other to escalate the sectarian clashes and protract the state of social disarray. Although the exploitation of sectarian violence advanced AQI’s short-term objectives, the Jihadists failed to capitalise on their early successes. This long-term strategic failure underscores AQI’s deviation from Che Guevara’s focismo. Instead of proposing to the Sunnis a better alternative to the oppressive Shia-led government, the Jihadist organisation offered nothing more than a repressive theocracy. Consequently, AQI suffered a nearly-complete annihilation as soon as the decline in sectarian violence persuaded the Sunni communities to reject the insurgents’ patronage in favour of the security forces’ protection. Because insurgent movements continue stirring up sectarian clashes acrossthe MENA region, revisiting the Coalition forces’ experience in Iraq could help todays’ counterinsurgents in forestalling new waves of sectarian violence. However, the restoration of an enduring, peaceful coexistence between Sunnis and Shias firstly requires the return of political stability at the regional level. As long as war and disorder hamper the reconciliation processes between the two ethno-cultural groups, insurgents will continue exacerbating sectarian violence to advance their strategic objectives.

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