Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile and Upheaval in the Middle East

While the U.S. military “surge” began to suppress violence in Iraq in 2007, a surge of another kind with more catastrophic consequences was already in full swing. Millions of Iraqis, mostly Sunnis, fled the country, creating a refugee crisis that has only recently been acknowledged as such by the U.S. government. Veteran reporter Amos traces the exodus and the effects of the shift in power from the formerly Sunni-backed regime of Saddam to the Shiite government erected by the U.S. invasion. She deftly examines the political and cultural consequences of the marginalization of the Sunnis while focusing on individual Iraqis who have fled to such countries as Syria and Lebanon in the wake of a new sectarian and tribal-based order in Iraq. Exiles themselves ruminate over whether years of dictatorship, U.N. sanctions, war, and persecution have eroded Iraqi identity. Amos’s breathtaking work implicates not only shortsighted American policy but the age-old schism between Sunni and Shia and the cagey maneuverings of such meddling neighbors as Syria. The weight and complexity of the Iraqi problem is on full display, with shreds of hope pushing through the layers like scrub in the desert. (Mar.)