The takeover of western and northwestern Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and its entrenchment in northwest Syria are turning the Syrian-Iraqi arena into the main combat zone between Sunni radicalism and Shiite radicalism in the Muslim world. At this stage it’s hard to assess whether ISIS will manage to govern the extensive regions it has taken over, or whether Iranian intervention and perhaps even involvement by Hezbollah will manage to block this extreme Sunni faction. Either way, the region is now on a slippery abyssal slope. The jihadist extremists exploited the weakness of the central governments in their failing and divided states.
One does not need a particularly rich imagination to guess the implications of an ISIS takeover of one of the many holy Shiite sites along the length and breadth of Iraq, and what a god-awful tumult will ensue if ISIS fighters destroy the sacred Shiite site at Samarra, as extremists did in 2006 triggering the Iraqi civil war. Samarra may hold additional significance for ISIS as the birthplace of the organization’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and is a stone’s throw from the area controlled by his forces.
