It’s not easy being Iraqi these days. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced by fighting, an extremist Islamist group is intent on establishing a brutal regime throughout the north, and the army seems reluctant to defend a government that has marginalized large swaths of the population.
The violence is largely sectarian between the majority Shias and the minority Sunnis, the situation largely intractable. The Sunnis want, more than anything else, to be rid of the hated Shia regime. The Shia remember years of oppression under the brutal Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein, and they want revenge.
“They are not reconcilable,” said Peter Galbraith, former US diplomat and author of the book “The End of Iraq.” “There is no common ground. Both sides want to run Iraq and each side wants to exterminate the other.”
But the toxic chaos that has consumed the country has also provided opportunity for some, namely the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS), which continues its drive toward Baghdad.
The ISIL isn’t alone in making the most of a messy situation. Here are the five biggest winners in Iraq these days, gobbling up what they can in a land of opportunity: