In early June 2014, members of the Islamic State, which would soon be known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), launched an offensive in Iraq.
The black-clad group of extremists had already captured several Sunni towns and cities north and west of Baghdad in late 2013 and early 2014, including Fallujah, which had fallen by January 2014. At the time, reports claimed al-Qaeda had sacked the city, but in reality, ISIS was leading the charge.
In Baghdad, the Iraqi prime minister at the time, Nouri al-Maliki, was fiddling as his country burned. Although he had an Iraqi army that had supposedly been trained and equipped with US support, it was sitting in its barracks with its equipment rusting.
In 2011, American forces had left behind a country run by Maliki, who was seen in Washington at the time as just the right man for the job. After all, he was a Shi’ite and a “strong man,” they said. His “strong” hand was supposed to make Iraq secure.
These were the days leading up to the Iran deal, and policy-makers in Washington had thought it was smart to hand Iraq to a pro-Iranian authoritarian such as Maliki. That would ease the Iran deal and reorient US policy to enable Iran across the region, they believed. But Maliki’s Iraq failed to stop ISIS.
Today, it appears Maliki is once again on the road to leading Iraq. How did the man who destroyed Iraq and completely failed make a comeback? He has been in the political wilderness since 2014, slowly rebuilding his constituency.
It is worth taking a look back at how he failed. Maliki’s tinkering and fiddling, as well as his anti-Sunni policies, helped fuel ISIS. When the storm came in 2013 and 2014, aided by the chaos in Syria during the Syrian civil war, Maliki let ISIS take over Iraq.
Why did he refuse to do anything? That is unclear. Perhaps he felt it would be good if the Sunni cities fell into chaos, terror, and ruin.
In Syria, the civil unrest had shifted from a rebellion against Bashar al-Assad to extremism. Jihadists flowed into Iraq, moving down the Euphrates River valley and using other back roads. They brought with them weapons from Syria, and soon they had long convoys of Toyota Hilux trucks, kitted out with machine guns on the back.
In June, ISIS was able to take over Tikrit, the former hometown of Saddam Hussein. They also sacked Mosul between June 4 and June 10, forcing two Iraqi divisions to flee. The Iraqis abandoned most of their equipment, leaving ISIS with a bounty of US-made Humvees and heavy weapons.
ISIS takes over Saddam Hussein's hometown
On June 12, ISIS rolled into Camp Speicher, a training camp for Iraqi military cadets. They managed to capture more than 5,000 Iraqi trainees.
Camp Speicher is about 160 kilometers north of Baghdad. A former Saddam-era base, it had been used by the Americans from 2003-2011.
The Sunni jihadists of ISIS celebrated. They felt they had retaken a Saddam-era post, a symbol of what they saw as a revival of their supremacy.
At Camp Speicher, ISIS showed the world its genocidal nature. It massacred the Shi’ite cadets, killing thousands. The blood ran into streams and fields.
ISIS proudly posted the videos online. The videos inspired 50,000 people worldwide to begin flocking to the ISIS banner.
As all of this unfolded, Maliki did almost nothing. Iraq’s defense fell to the aging cleric Ali al-Sistani, who lived in a small apartment in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf.
Within hours of the massacre at Camp Speicher on June 12, Sistani issued a fatwa that urged Iraqis to take up arms. Anyone who could hold a rifle should go to the front, he said.
Reports would later credit Sistani with having saved Iraq.
Sistani’s fatwa had the result of filling the ranks of Iraq’s defenses. But the mostly young Shi’ite men from southern Iraq had to be trained, and they had no armored forces, helicopters, or tanks. Maliki had squandered all of those resources.
Throughout the hot summer, Iraq continued to burn. In the autonomous Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq, urgent meetings were held among the Kurdish leadership of then-president Masoud Barzani, his Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and the other Kurdish faction, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
The KDP and the PUK discussed the best way to deal with ISIS. PUK members later claimed they had urged for an offensive to fight ISIS.
Barzani was more circumspect. PUK leader Jalal Talabani was in Germany, receiving medical treatment. Barzani’s top officials, his relatives Nechirvan Barzani and Masrour Barzani, were taking charge of organizing the Kurdish Region for what lay ahead.
In early August, as neither Baghdad nor the Kurds in Erbil could decide what to do about the looming threat, ISIS poured across the borders of Sinjar in northern Iraq, attacking Yazidi villages in the plains below Mount Sinjar.
Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis fled, some to the mountain above their villages. Many thousands were captured, and ISIS began a process of murdering the men and older women and selling the young women into slavery.
As the genocide against the Yazidis unfolded, Iraq’s president asked the deputy speaker of parliament to form a new government. Haider al-Abadi stepped into the failed shoes of Maliki.
But for many Iraqis, it was too late. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were now on the march to the front to join the armed forces of the Kurdistan Region, the Peshmerga, who were losing ground to ISIS.
Hundreds of thousands of Shi’ite men were on the move to the front lines near Baghdad, as many believed the capital could fall to ISIS. Ultimately, the defenses held. ISIS was stopped on its drive toward Erbil and Dohuk in northern Iraq and at the gates of Baghdad.
Maliki, meanwhile, was gone.
Now, Maliki may be back, Kurdistan Region-based news channel Rudaw Media Network reported Sunday.
“Iraq’s ruling Shiite Coordination Framework on Saturday announced former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki as its candidate for the premiership, according to a bloc statement,” the report said.
“Following a meeting, the bloc, which is the largest in the parliament, said it had ‘decided by majority’ to nominate Maliki as their candidate for prime minister, based on his political and administrative experience and his role in managing the state,” Rudaw reported.
If Maliki wins, he could be in office for a third time. His State of Law Party has only 29 seats out of 320 in the parliament. As a master manipulator, however, he seems to be angling for the top job.