Iraq probably didn’t need to become any more fractious.
The country is deeply divided along sectarian lines with the Shiite government effectively making up for lost time spent under Saddam by marginalizing Iraq’s Sunni minority in the wake of the US invasion that ousted the Ba’athists.
Complicating matters is the presence of Islamic State (which in its early days recruited from the ranks of Saddam’s conquered security apparatus), who still control the country’s second-largest city as well as several oil fields.