The May 9th article “After Wrestling Tikrit From ISIS, Iraqis face Sectarian and Tribal Tensions” mentions the Jabours of Alam, just north of Tikrit as the essential Sunni moderates that allied itself with the Baghdad government. Now that all attention is focused in Anbar and the Ramadi loss to ISIS expect Baghdad to ignore Tikrit. Pity the Jabours because ISIS will return and annihilate the tribe as an example to those Sunnis considering allying themselves with Shia Iraq.
To battle ISIS the allies are required to be somewhat effective political unions. Among the the players in the Middle East only the Kurdish regional government of Kurdistan is one. We should support their effort to unify their people as part of our pacifying strategy in the region that includes Syria, Iran and Turkey as well. The remainder of Iraq and Syria is in the middle of a civil war and must be abandoned to benign neglect because there is no fixing it. Our military aid only makes it worse as the last of the Jabours will undoubtedly recount in some future telling of our inept foreign policy.
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