This is Democracy Now, DemocracyNow.org, the War and Peace Report.

I'm Amy Goodman with Nermine Schich.

As we continue our interview with the award-winning Iraqi journalist and author, Reith Abulahad,

as we mark the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq this week.

His book is just out, a stranger in your own city.

Travels in the Middle East, long war.

He's joining us today from Istanbul, Turkey.

Thank you so much for staying with us, Clayth.

Part of the power of your book are the places that you describe in Iraq and what happened

and the stories of people.

But before we go there, if you can talk about how the invasion of Iraq by the United States

led by George W. Bush, president at the time and Dick Cheney vice president, led to the

rise of ISIS.

So I mean, because of the sectarian politics, the sectarian establishment created an

Iraq after 2003, the political system was based on something called Mahasasa, which is

dividing the state's ministries and institutions among the different sects, ethnicities, political

parties.

So each one of these groups would be controlling a number of ministries and they would be treating

these ministries as their private fiefdom, so ciphening contracts, ciphening public funds

and creating private militias, private armies.

That sectarian establishment led to the sectarian politics that led to the civil war in Iraq

in 2003.

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