A desire to contain extremism is a major reason why Putin offered help to the United States in battling the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11. It is also why Russia maintains close relations with Shia Iran, which acts as a counterweight to Sunni powers.

My personal experience in Ninawa Province has been that, at the most fundamental level, people don't really care if it's a Shiite, a Sunni, a Kurd, or a Turkoman that's providing them security as long as that force treats them with respect.

Not counting the brand of Sunni Islam practised by the so-called Islamic State, there is probably no religion in the world that comes in for more flak than Scientology.

Not surprisingly, in most Sunni regions there has little appetite for free U.S.-sponsored elections.

It's clear to me now that we've got to reach out to the Arab Sunni community in particular in an effort to cause some moderate political activity to take place so they join the future of Iraq.

We need to do more to stop Iran's persecution of different religious faiths, including Sunni Muslims, Christians, and Bahais. We must do more to protect the Iranian's people's right to freedom of expression.

By the end of 2008, clearly the Al Qaeda and Sunni insurgency had been relatively stabilized. And in the Al Qaeda's mind, they were defeated.

The civil war across the Middle East between the Shia and the Sunni empowers groups like ISIS and al Qaeda who claim to be the defenders of Sunni rights against Shia attack.

I was kidnapped by Sunni insurgents near Fallujah, in Iraq, ambushed by the Taliban in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, and injured in a car accident that killed my driver while covering the Taliban occupation of the Swat Valley in Pakistan.

For decades, Saddam and his Sunni minority had imposed their will on Iraq, carrying on a 14-century tradition of Sunnis controlling Mesopotamia despite a Shiite majority.

If you think about Protestant and Catholic or Shiite and Sunni, they are basically the same thing... one eats with their left hand, the other eats with their right hand.

The Iraqi National Guard needs to become a reality in order to give hope to the Sunni population, and Sunni leaders that have been the focus of political prosecution should be included in the discussions of Iraq's political future.

In the exodus out of Iraq, we're seeing the effects of just leaving. We left before there was control of chemical weapons stockpiles, without a status-of-forces agreement. We left before the Sunni and Kurds we fought with and fought alongside with were stable, or without empowering them. We left on a political rhetoric.

Syria is attracting a lot more Westerners than the Iraq War ever did because it's the perfect Sunni jihad.

The more the Iranians are seen to be dominating the region, the more it is going to inflame Sunni radicalism and fuel the rise of groups like the Islamic State.

At the center of President Obama's strategy for dealing with the Islamic State is an empty space. It's supposed be filled by a 'Sunni ground force,' but after more than a year of effort, it's still not there. Unless this gap is filled, Obama's plan won't work.

Initially, before the modern state of Iraq was created, there were three separate provinces here: a Shiite in the south, a largely Sunni one in the middle, and a Kurdish one in the north.

With the common Iranian threat bringing the Sunni Arab world and Israel closer together, an Israeli-Palestinian peace would go a long way in improving relations and rebuffing Iran's regional ambitions.

I know of no wars started by anyone to impose lack of religion on someone else. We have lethal Sunni v Shia, Catholic against Protestant, but no agnostic suicide bombers attack crowded atheist pubs.

These Sunni Arabs in places like al Anbar province in Iraq, where I served back in 2007, if they see Iran as the dominant power, a Shiite country, they're going to be much more likely to want to join ISIS.