After three years of bashing Sunni opponents and lending assistance to Iran and Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki’s chickens have now come home to roost. Fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have now overrun the largest Sunni cities in Iraq, Falluja, Ramadi, Mosul, and Tikrit. If statements on their websites are to be believed, ISIL is planning to go all the way to Baghdad—a bridge too far perhaps. But they certainly control the largest swath of the Sunni populated areas of Iraq. ISIL has been able to marshal local Sunni support in their sweep. Al-Maliki, by contrast, has yet to marshal a quorum in parliament to pass an emergency law to help him deal with the crisis.
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