Mosul is the second biggest city in Iraq with a population of 1.7 million residents from a diverse range of religious and ethnic backgrounds. Mosul is also strategically important as it sits on a rich deposit of oil and a pipeline leading along the volatile border with Syria to the shores of Turkey, carrying 15 percent of Iraq’s oil output.

On Tuesday, fighters for Global Jihad, some of whom came from Syria, captured Mosul and hundreds of thousands of residents fled from the city in panic, heading for the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

The stunning take-over signals the beginning of a new and dangerous stage in the turbulence rumbling through the Middle East in the last three years. This is a stage that brings the entire area to the threshold of war between Sunnis and Shiites and between moderates and fanatics within the religious factions. Arab regimes fearing for their survival are still combating Al-Qaeda as well.

The capture of Mosul is first and foremost a blow to the democratic regime in Iraq that replaced the dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government is proving to be incapable of preventing the slow collapse of the Iraqi nation.

This is partly because current leaders give preference to the interests of the Shiites in Iraq over the need to promote the Sunni Iraqis who were brushed aside after the toppling of Hussein, who relied heavily on Sunni tribes in central Iraq.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) is the beneficiary of al-Malaki’s protectionism. This organization, bred out of the ranks of al-Qaeda, captured two cities in the Sunni dominated Anbar province of Iraq last year, the most important of which was the city of Fallujah which the militants still hold today.

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