Calls from the trade unions of Iraq that the people are ready to resist ISIS on a nationalist platform, such as by Falah Alwan of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq, will go unheard. Few can appreciate it when Alwan says that “demands to be rid of sectarianism are clear and direct” – noble statements no doubt – but inaudible before the harshly sectarian guns of ISIS. It delivers the Kurdish people to the Kurdish peshmerga and YPG and the Shia to al-Maliki and his favoured militias. The sectarian vaults, opened up by the US Shock and Awe campaign of 2003, now provide the main currency in Iraq and Syria – a tragedy of immense proportions.