Sunnis largely boycotted the last national vote in 2005, and their resentment fuelled a bloody insurgency.

Boko Haram has waged an increasingly bloody insurgency since 2009 to create an Islamic state in Nigeria.

The Pakistan Taliban have been fighting a bloody insurgency against the Pakistani state since its formation in 2007.

Sunnis boycotted Iraq's 2005 national elections, and disenfranchised Sunnis fuelled the bloody insurgency that raged in subsequent years.

One of the main drivers for the bloody insurgency since 2003 has been political marginalisation of a long-dominant Sunni minority.

Pakistan, mired in a bloody insurgency of its own, denies it harbours militants in its tribal lands along the border.

Pakistan, mired in a bloody insurgency of its own, denies it harbors militants in its tribal lands along the border.

It was the first time the militants have made an explicit territorial claim in more than five years of bloody insurgency.

But at about the same time Boko Haram militants began a bloody insurgency to carve out an Islamist state in the northeast.