After a shocking week of continuous opposition success as the terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Isil, rolled over the Iraqi forces and captured large parts of west and central Iraq, it is good news that the government is organising its armed forces into some kind of order and has mounted a counter-assault on the important city of Tikrit. In addition, clashes between Iraqi government forces and their allies on one hand, and Isil and its allies on the other, are gaining in intensity all over the country as the government starts to rally.

The government has received help from several of its allies, including the bizarre combination of the Iranians and the Americans, who both share a desire to see Isil humiliated and removed from the scene. The government has also received active support from powerful irregular Iraqi forces and militias who hate the prospect of Isil playing any part in their country.

The US said that armed drones are flying over Baghdad, and the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, foresaw a much more active US role in support of the Iraqi government when he said that the US and its drones are “building a picture so that if the decision were made to support the Iraqi security forces as they confront Isil, we could do so.”

But all this military action is inadequate without some kind of political endgame in which Iraq’s Sunnis and Shiites can share an equitable and inclusive future. It is very much the responsibility of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki as his government’s sectarian policies have driven the constitutional Sunnis into an armed uprising against his government to which they have felt no loyalty.

The Iraqis are about to fight the same war that they shared and won with their American allies in 2006 and 2007 in what became called the Anbar Awakening. It is a tragedy that the gains of that miserable time have been flung away by Al Maliki’s government and the whole thing has to be done again.