A displaced Iraqi young woman, who fled Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, after it was seized by the Islamic State (IS) group, stands outside a tent at a makeshift camp for internally displaced persons (IDP) in Ameriyat al-Fallujah, 30 km south of Fallujah on June 6, 2015.Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP / Getty Images
People fleeing the central Iraqi city of Ramadi after it was captured by Islamic State forces last month were in for a rude surprise when they attempted to make their way to the safety of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
Terrified and exhausted from walking more than 100 kilometres from their homes, great numbers of these displaced people were turned back at the one remaining bridge that links the predominantly Sunni province of Anbar with the mixed Sunni-Shia Governate of Baghdad.
The official explanation was the fear that some of the people "fleeing" might actually be members of Islamic State looking to get a toehold in the capital.
On some days, officials announced that only those with "sponsors" inside Baghdad would be allowed to enter.
On other days, only women and children could pass over the rickety floating bridge – the men were told to return to Ramadi and join the fight to retake it.
"We do not want to encourage young, able men who can fight Daesh [Islamic State] to emigrate," Saad Maan, an interior ministry spokesman, told reporters last week. "They say they are coming out to accompany and protect their families. This is not a good enough excuse."
The concern, however, is that Iraqi citizens are being denied access to their country's capital simply because they are Sunni.
These people, members of the once-privileged community that amounts to about 17 per cent of the population, are experiencing first-hand what it's like to be a Sunni Muslim in today's Iraq, dominated by the Shia majority.
For centuries, Sunnis ruled over the majority, whether as part of the Ottoman Empire, the British mandate, Iraqi monarchy or under Saddam Hussein.
Flushed out of their fertile Sunni Triangle between the mighty Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, many must now choose: Will they return home and accept Islamic State rule or will they try to find sanctuary in a dwindling number of places. Jordan and Kurdistan have all but shut their doors, which leave the vast desert to the west just about the only place to which they can turn. These people really are caught between a rock and a hard place.
Returning home carries a double-edged risk: Even if they do survive Islamic State extremists, they face the prospect of being turfed out by Shia-dominated Iraqi forces if and when they ever take back Ramadi and the other towns of Anbar.
That's been the practice in the areas where Islamic State already has been beaten back.
When IS forces were recently driven out of the long-time Sunni stronghold of Tikrit, birthplace of Saddam Hussein, the mission was carried out by a coalition of forces – 3,000 government troops, 1,000 Sunni tribesmen and 20,000 Shia militiamen, all led by Iranian commanders.
"For Iran-backed Shiite militias to take Tikrit was a symbolic humiliation of the Sunni Arabs," wrote Juan Cole, director of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Michigan. It did nothing to attract Sunni support for the effort against Daesh, even though most Iraqi Sunnis oppose its brutality and extreme fundamentalism."
No Sunni residents have been allowed to return to Tikrit.
"There are some areas where they can't be allowed back," said Hadi al-Ameri, leader of the Shia militia umbrella group known as Popular Mobilization Units. "If all the citizens go back into these areas ISIL will go back in with them."
This scorched earth approach now is being applied in the areas around Baiji, site of Iraq's largest oil refinery, reclaimed by Shia militias earlier this year, and in Jawf al-Sakkar, southwest of Baghdad. This farm community in the heart of the most fertile area of Iraq, was cleared of IS fighters in October, but remains a ghost town.
As a Celtic chieftain once described Roman conquest: "They create a desert and call it peace."
Such is the fate, it would seem, of Iraq's Sunnis.
"The community is either displaced, or under the rule of terrorism," said Hamid al-Mutlaq, a Sunni member of Iraq's parliament. "It's a kind of project to keep them hungry, by displacing and killing them."
Today's Sunnis, Mr. Mutlaq concluded, must choose between Islamic State and Iran.