The gunmen lined them up—men, women, and children—in the village of Ras al-Maa west of Baghdad and unceremoniously slaughtered them all. That was the first in a wave of mass executions last week of tribal figures in Anbar province who dared to defy the militants of the so-called Islamic State. Spectators were then invited to observe the dead while their killers filmed the bloodied, bullet-riddled corpses with their cellphones for social-media sharing.
Those gunned down weren’t Christians or Yazidis or Shia Muslims, the usual victims of the self-proclaimed caliphate’s cruelty. They were Sunni Arabs, and the killings underlined the fact that the violence of the militant insurgency is not reserved for those deemed infidels, but is unleashed against any who oppose it, or who might, including co-religionists.
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