Former EU MP blames U.S. policy for Iraq’s sectarian problems

A former EU MP calls upon the U.S. to decrease sectarian tensions in Iraq by working to curb Iranian influence in the region.

Former EU MP Paulo Casaca has argued that U.S. policy in Iraq has led to the rapid spread of sectarianism within the country. He emphasized in an interview with JerusalemOnline that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has grown rapidly within the country mainly due to “the tremendous strategic errors committed by the US.” While he accuses Iran of being responsible for transferring the jihadist theater of war from Afghanistan to Iraq, he believes that the Obama administration by undoing the surge enabled Iran to gain tremendous influence in the country and this inevitably led to sectarian tensions between Shias and Sunnis within Iraq.

“Since 2003, and to a large extent because of the tremendous increase of power the misled invasion of Iraq gave to Iran, a whole set of new terrorist off-springs have been flourishing in the region and most in particular in Iraq, where we count today up to 20 different Iranian sponsored terrorist Shia-groups,” Casaca noted.

“The horrific stories of torture, assassination, kidnapping for ransom in both the secret and the official prison network done by these terrorist organizations can easily be obtained interviewing Iraqi refugees in the region or even in Europe,” he told JerusalemOnline. “Some of them are even well documented in film. If the US in particular and the West in general does not know them, this is simply because it does not want to know them.”

“The US blindness went to the point where the removal of Al-Maliki was first understood as inevitable by the Iranian regime leaders than by the Obama administration,” he claimed. “Nouri Al-Maliki acted as a gang leader and he mistreated not only Kurds and Sunni Arabs but everyone even other Shia Arab leaders close to the Iranian regime.” Casaca stressed that the U.S.’ blind support for Maliki until relatively recently led to the sectarian issues faced by Iran today and this policy also adversely affected U.S. relations, with the Kurds, the U.S.’s best potential ally within Iraq.

“The US dogmatic support to Maliki also went beyond what even Maliki paymasters (the Iranian regime) found reasonable to do,” Casaca stressed. “Whereas the US made a blockade of arms supply to Kurdish Peshmerga under the pretext arms should be channeled through proper means (that is, Maliki), the Iranians understood the magnificent opportunity to gain a foothold in the Kurdish leadership supplying them arms. So, when the Kurdish forces – basically all of the existing armed Kurdish armed forces, the KDP, the PUK and those affiliated with the PKK – were facing slaughter at the hands of ISIS, Iran came in as their savior.”

Casaca calls upon the U.S. to take measures to curb Iranian influence in Iraq by not backing Shia groups that increase sectarian tensions within the country by committing massive human rights violations against Sunnis and by assisting the Kurds in their struggle against Islamic State. He believes strongly that the U.S. should only support groups that don’t persecute women, minorities and rival ethnic groups. Such policies do nothing but contribute toward sectarian tensions within the country.