Sure. Haliburton, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Bechtel, GE, BP, Exxon, Blackwater, it's actually a pretty long list.

Perhaps I phrased my answer wrong. What I meant was the stability that was created by western governments in order to facilitate a period of no bid contracts and manipulated peace via the American and British controlled Iraqi puppet government. Stability is certainly a subjective term, no more so in regards to mid-east policy. One man's stability is another man's anarchy.

Weapon manufacturers ? And private militias maybe ?

Edit : and ninja'd ... I think

Iraq has long had very deep religious divisions between those practicing Shia Islam and those practicing Sunni Islam. These divisions were kept in check under Sadam, but once he was removed violence between the groups really flared up (it's hard to get a functional democracy going when two large groups in the population want to kill each other and will readily do so given the chance). With the US military withdrawal the government of Iraq has simply not had the resources to even begin to deal with all of that. ISIS is an extremist group within Sunni Islam, and have been using the deep religious divisions in Iraq to gain influence and control of the predominantly Sunni regions.

Basically Iraq as a country is so incredibly divided that only a despotic military strongman was capable of keeping the country in one piece.

Surely then, the answer is that this is not a country? We westerners drew the borders, and got it wrong. Just a thought.

Which is what appears to be happening right now. The Sunni ISIS are taking over the Sunni areas, the Kurds are grabbing control of their areas in the chaos, and the Shia areas will actually fight back if ISIS try to invade.

Well. Look at it the other way around... Just imagine I'm a military force, completely outclassing the American forces and I'm invading the USA. Yes, they might shoot down one or two of my helicopters, but I have a few hundred helicopters more sitting there. They can't beat me. They kill one of my soldiers? I'll send a drone and kill the Top 10 of their leaders. Why? Because I think the President and his staff are bad people. They're holding up a system where a hand full of super rich people makes more and more money out of the very poor population. This is evil and this evil has to be purged.

After a couple of years I've succeeded. The White House isn't anymore. It's the Red House now. Some random communist is ruling the land now. Everyone is equal, no poor, no rich. The only thing the USA had to sacrifice, was Freedom of Speech and other things that could endanger my system. That's sad, but necessary to make everyone happy - my happy, not your former, false happy. However... Since I've succeeded and the USA is now a happy land of comrades, I call my superior military troops back home.

Now... What do you think will happen? Won't Americans take back their country from that ridiculous communist that someone else put in the White House?

Yes, Saddam was a bitch. I don't think it was the USA's business to remove him, but that's another story. But what happened afterwards... You can't force a country to become democratic and to elect the right people. It's desirable that they do so, but you can't force them. But that's exactly what happened there. They (US and allies) fought a war against everything that was wrong in the eyes of the western countries. But Iraq isn't a western country. It was to expect that things go haywire as soon as the military forces leave.

They weren't fighting Al-qaeda... as for why it happened, the Americans destabilized an artificial country constructed after World War 2. There are primarily three different kinds of people there, the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shias, they all have a loyalty to themselves bigger than to the artificial country.

Pretty much. Iraq, along with some other middle-eastern states (along with some of the Balkan states, while we're at it) are pretty much artificial countries, created either through military conquest (a local warlord gaining power) or intervention by other countries. Such countries typically only remain stable as long as there's a despotic ruler holding them together with military force, and quickly start to splinter into their component groups if that ruler is removed. With Iraq and Afghanistan the situation is made even more difficult due to there being a strong tribal tradition among much of the populace, so it isn't just a matter of having two or three major groups that the country splinters into, but rather having dozens of different groups with various levels of animosity towards each other.

I'm curious to know, but I know it's an unfair question.

How would you go about fixing all this?

I don't have a particularly good answer to that. The difficulty is that the transition from what's essentially tribalism to the modern concept of a nation is one that usually takes hundreds of years of incremental societal developments, and "fixing" the current situation basically means trying to cram those hundreds of years of development into just a few years.

If the geographical distribution of the few major groups is favorable then splitting up the country to separate those groups would make sense, although you'd still need to deal with the issue of needing to facilitate the relocation of minority groups, otherwise they'd likely suffer repression and violence at the hands of the majority group. However, even after doing this it would likely be necessary to have an international military presence at the border between the two new countries to prevent violence and possibly full on war between the two new countries.

However, the geographic distribution is rarely so clean that this kind of approach could be taken. In such a situation, a lasting fix would require a societal attitude shift that would likely take at least 30 years. A strong military/police presence would be needed during this time to keep things from falling apart, along with massive investment in both infrastructure (to bring the country together physically) and education. The goal of the strong emphasis on education would to be to instill the cultural values necessary for a lasting country in the younger generations while essentially waiting for the older generations (who are likely set in their ways) to die off. This all requires a massive and lengthy investment that it would be very hard to convince any country to undertake (since they'd be getting very little out of it compared to the investment) which is why you're not seeing this approach taken.

The more realistic approach is to basically just try to keep the situation contained- prevent it from spilling out to other countries and keep it from getting too bad internally. This would be done by backing at least a somewhat moderate, non-terrible leadership, and providing enough aid in various forms to keep that leadership in power and keep the situation for the citizenry from getting too bad. This is pretty much the approach that's currently being used and while it won't do much to fix the situation it at least tends to keep it from spinning out of control too quickly (although there's no guarantee, as the current situation in Iraq shows).

It was actually after World War 1, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which had conquered and then ruled the area (as artificial provinces) for most of the previous few centuries.

*exits pedant mode*

Don't forget France. Though all of the blame is a stretch, the Turks deserve some of it as well for leaving the region such a mess when they collapsed.

ok a couple of things, first there was only one thing wrong in Iraq in the eyes of the western countries, and that was that Saddam didn't obey anymore. Then they did not force Iraq to become democratic, on the contrary, it was the non violent resistance of Al-Sistani that forced the US to allow elections! If they cared about democracy at all, why ally with all the brutal dictators like Saleh or Saudi. And last..things were haywire as soon as the military forces entered so them leaving will eventually improve things. At least there will be no Wueterichs anymore.
Dont blame the player, blame the game: Imperialism. If Britain hadnt done it, Russia,France etc. would have.

If it's any reassurance, I consider that a good answer.