by Jack
Sectarian violence in Iraq is approaching all out civil war. There was a time when Iraq’s Sunni population was eager to rid Iraq of Al Qaeda and accept a secondary role in the Shi’itte government, but President Maliki (Shi’itte) essentially told them to F off and pursued a campaign of arrests and murder of Sunni leaders. This has resulted in the deaths of about 3,000 Iraqi civillians at the hands of terrorists on both sides in just the last 4 months with another 7,000 severely injured.
Iraq is also caught up in the Syrian war. Half the country wants to stay out of it, calling it a political war, not a religious war and then you have the others, influenced heavily by Iran who says the Syrian war is a holy war and has issued a number of fatwahs from high ranking clerics to help the rebels resist the Basha al-Assad regime in Syria. Meanwhile fighters and guns move across Iraq to the war zone, and some stay in Iraq to start a Syrian-type revolt. Essentially this breaks down to two Islamic states within Iraq that are on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict and threatening to bring on civil war inside Iraq, motivated by revolution in Syria.
“Wayne White, a former senior US State Department Iraq analyst, attributed the uptick in violence to Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s failure to include Sunnis in the political process since the US troop withdrawal.
In related news car bombers and armed men blew through the gates of Abu Graib prison and allowing mass prison escape. Up to 500 high ranking Al Qaeda leaders are said to be among those that escaped (were freed).
Daily Mail.
Yep, and this could be bad news for us too.