Sunni Fighting Force still Months Away

“The Hashd Shabi can win over territory but cannot hold it without help of the Sunni tribes,” Iraq analyst Haidar Saeed told Al-Monitor in Amman. For that, winning the trust of Iraq's Sunni Muslims will be key in defeating IS.

“About 90% of IS forces are made up of Iraq ashair [tribes],” said Sheikh Raad Suleimani, an influential Iraqi figure and the head of the powerful Dulaimi tribe, some members of whom are believed to fight with IS.

Sunni grievances mounted under the rule of Maliki, who pursued a sectarian agenda. Protests in Sunni regions in 2013 swelled to tens of thousands of Sunnis gathering in the cities of Ramadi, Fallujah, Mosul and Kirkuk to which Maliki responded with a violent crackdown, further stirring dissent.

A raid on a protest camp in Hawija on April 23, 2013, killed 44 civilians, according to a parliamentary committee’s report. When an IS group swept across a third of Iraq last summer, many Sunnis initially greeted them as liberators. Recent reports, such as the one in Der Spiegel, pointed to the involvement of Sunni members of Saddam’s outlawed Baath Party in aiding the extremists in structuring their organization.

Sheikh Najeh al-Mizan, who heads the founding conference of Salahuddin province, told Al-Monitor that Iraqi Sunnis have been marginalized and victimized by Iraq's Shiite-led government with many now fighting against the Shiite-dominated army. His views are typical of a broad spectrum of Sunnis in Iraq, including tribesmen and former Baathists.

Those who took pride in degrading AQI nearly a decade ago now see IS as the least bad option, as they have little trust in the new Iraq government headed by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.