Iraq's former PM who helped fuel ISIS makes unlikely comeback

Iraq's former PM who helped fuel ISIS makes unlikely comeback

SETH J. FRANTZMAN

Sun, January 25, 2026 at 2:48 PM UTC

6 min read

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Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki reacts at a polling station inside Al-Rasheed Hotel during the parliamentary election in Baghdad, Iraq, November 11, 2025. (photo credit: REUTERS/THAIER AL-SUDANI/FILE PHOTO)

Nouri al-Maliki let ISIS take over a third of Iraq in 2014. He spent years in the political wilderness, but now he is angling for a third term as prime minister.

In early June of 2014, members of the Islamic State, which would soon be called ISIS or Daesh in most media, launched an offensive in Iraq. The black-clad group of extremists had already captured several Sunni towns and cities north and west of Baghdad in late 2013 and early 2014. Fallujah had fallen by January 2014. At the time, reports claimed the city had been sacked by Al Qaeda, but the reality was that ISIS was the one leading the charge.

In Baghdad, the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was fiddling as Iraq burned. Although he had an Iraqi army that had supposedly been trained and equipped with US support, it was sitting in its barracks, its equipment rusting. US forces had left Iraq in 2011. They had left behind a country run by Maliki, who was seen in Washington at the time as just the right man for the job. He was a Shi’ite and a “strong man.” His “strong” hand was supposed to make Iraq secure. These were the days leading up to the Iran deal, and policymakers in Washington at the time thought it was smart to hand Iraq to a pro-Iranian authoritarian like Maliki. This would supposedly ease the Iran deal and reorient US policy to enable Iran across the region.

Maliki’s Iraq failed to stop ISIS. Today, it appears Maliki is again on the road to lead Iraq. How did the man who destroyed Iraq and completely failed make a comeback? He has been in the political wilderness since 2014, slowly rebuilding his constituency. It’s worth taking a look back at how he failed.

Maliki’s tinkering and fiddling, as well as his anti-Sunni policies, helped fuel ISIS. When the storm came in 2013 and 2014, helped by the chaos in Syria during the Syrian civil war, Maliki let Iraq be taken over by ISIS. It’s not clear why he refused to do anything. Perhaps he felt it would be good if the Sunni cities fell into chaos, terror and ruin. In Syria the Syrian civil war had shifted from a rebellion against Assad to be consumed by extremism. Jihadists flowed into Iraq, moving down the Euphrates River Valley and using other backroads. They brought with them weapons from Syria, and soon they had long convoys of Toyota Hilux trucks, kitted out with machine guns on the back.

ISIS takes over Saddam Hussein's hometown

In June, ISIS was able to take over Tikrit, the former hometown of Saddam Hussein. They also sacked Mosul between June 4 and 10, forcing two Iraqi divisions to flee. The Iraqis abandoned most of their equipment, leaving ISIS with a bounty of US-made Humvees and heavy weapons. On June 12, ISIS rolled into Camp Speicher, a training camp for Iraqi military cadets. They managed to capture more than 5,000 Iraqi cadets. Camp Speicher is around 100 miles north of Baghdad. A former Saddam-era base, it had been used by the Americans during the US role in Iraq from 2003-2011. The Sunni jihadists of ISIS celebrated as they felt they had re-taken a Saddam-era post, a symbol of what they saw as a revival of their supremacy.

A soldier in an ISIS uniform prepares ammunition. (credit: SHUTTERSTOCK)

At Camp Speicher, ISIS showed the world its genocidal nature. It massacred the Shi’ite cadets, killing thousands. The blood ran into streams and fields. ISIS posted the videos online. They were proud. The videos inspired 50,000 people around the world to begin flocking to the ISIS banner.

As all this unfolded, Iraq’s leader, Maliki, did almost nothing. The defense of Iraq fell to the aging cleric Ali al-Sistani, who lived in a small apartment in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf. Within hours of the massacre at Camp Speicher on June 12, the cleric put out a religious edict or fatwa urging Iraqis to take up arms. Anyone who could hold a rifle should go to the front. Reports would later credit Sistani with having saved Iraq.

Sistani’s fatwa had the result of filling the ranks of Iraq’s defenses. But the mostly young Shi’ite men from southern Iraq had to be trained, and they had no armored forces, helicopters, or tanks. All of those resources had been squandered by Maliki.

Throughout the hot summer, Iraq continued to burn. In the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, urgent meetings were held between the Kurdish leadership of Masoud Barzani and his Kurdistan Democratic Party and the other Kurdish faction, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The KDP and PUK discussed the best way to deal with ISIS. PUK members later claimed they urged for an offensive to fight ISIS. Barzani was more circumspect. PUK leader Jalal Talibani was in Germany receiving treatment. Barzani’s top officials, his relatives Nechirvan and Masrour, were taking charge of organizing the Kurdish autonomous region for what lay ahead.

In early August, as neither Baghdad nor the Kurds in Erbil could decide what to do about the looming threat, ISIS poured across the borders of Sinjar in northern Iraq, attacking Yazidi villages in the plains below Mount Sinjar. Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis fled, some to the mountain above their villages. Many thousands were captured, and ISIS began a process of murdering the men and elderly women and selling the young women into slavery. As the genocide unfolded against the Yazidis, Iraq’s President asked the deputy speaker of parliament to form a new government. Haider al-Abadi stepped into the shoes of the failed Maliki.

It was too late to save many Iraqis. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were now on the march to the front to join the armed forces of the Kurdistan Region, the Peshmerga, who were losing ground to ISIS. Hundreds of thousands of Shi’ite men were on the move to the frontlines near Baghdad, as many believed the capital could fall to ISIS. In the end, the defenses did hold. ISIS was stopped on its drive toward Erbil and Dohuk in northern Iraq, and stopped at the gates of Baghdad. Maliki was gone.

Now, Rudaw media says that Maliki may be back. “Iraq’s ruling Shiite Coordination Framework on Saturday announced former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki as its candidate for the premiership, according to a bloc statement,” a report said on January 25. “Following a meeting, the bloc - which is the largest in the parliament - said it had ‘decided by majority' to nominate Maliki as their candidate for prime minister, based on his political and administrative experience and his role in managing the state.” If he received the votes, he could now be in office a third time. His State of Law party holds only 29 of the 320 seats in parliament. However, as a master manipulator, he seems to be angling for the top job.

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