Many Americans are surprised to see Fallujah back on the front pages of newspapers. How did things get so bad that the Iraqi government was compelled to call for American support in its battle against an al-Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria? This crescendo of violence is the culmination of two well-established trajectories. The first trajectory is the worsening violence in Syria and the way in which the unrest has bled into neighboring states. While Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon have borne the bulk of Syria’s refugees, Iraq has suffered greatly under the weight of Syria’s oozing sectarianism. In many ways, Syria (a Sunni majority country long ruled by an Allawite minority) is the mirror image of Iraq (a majority Shi’a country long ruled by a Sunni minority). Iraq had only begun to heal from its sectarian war when the venom of Syria’s […]