Who Represents Iraqi Sunnis?

Earlier this year, Maliki provided tribal leaders with financial support and arms, considering them to be politicians, in the hope of turning them into representatives of the Sunnis. They included Ahmed Abu Risha, who announced last April that he is on the verge of liberating Fallujah from IS. Yet, the opposite has happened.

Many solutions were proposed to solve the Sunni situation after 2003, mainly the division of Iraq based on Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish identities. But this idea was not convenient for Iraqi Sunnis, who found that the division would turn them into a minority. This has pushed them to repeatedly boycott the elections and not recognize politicians in parliament as their representatives.

The Sunni support for Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite politician, as their representative in 2010 was an example of an attempt to rebel against the tripartite partition, which prompted Iraq’s Shiites to overcome their differences to preserve the rule within the national alliance, which represents them politically.

Maliki’s rule did not help the Sunnis determine which party represents them; he excluded political figures who were eligible to form the nucleus of a Sunni representation, such as former Finance Minister Rafi al-Issawi. Dozens of political, tribal and religious figures who were subject to accusations and charges of supporting terrorism were not eligible to speak on behalf of the Sunnis. Yet, a cleric such as Sheikh Abdul Malik al-Saadi introduced himself after the 2013 demonstrations as an agreed-upon Sunni religious authority.