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    26-Apr-2015

Serious ramifications - By Walid M. Sadi, The Jordan Times

 

 

Recent revelations buttressed by a report published by the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel a few weeks ago suggest that former Baath officers who supported the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein aided and abated Daesh’s ongoing military offensives in Iraq, and made it possible for it to make sweeping military conquests, including the capture of the strategically important city of Mosul in the north.

 
These persistent reports also suggest that Iraqi Baathists who had gone underground after the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime are effectively in league with Daesh and entered a marriage of convenience with it to fight off the Shiite-led Iraqi regime.
 
No one can be sure about the depth of relation between Saddam supporters and Daesh militias, in their effort to wreak havoc on the new political order in Iraq.
 
The Daesh-Baathist alignment, or realignment for that matter, is labelling itself as a Sunni insurgency against the rise to power of the Shiites in Iraq.
 
It would be most unfortunate if indeed the fight for control in Iraq over were essentially a Sunni-Shiite  struggle.
 
Leon Panetta, US director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2009 to 2011 and secretary of defence between 2011 and 2013, was quoted on more than one occasions as faulting President Barack Obama for the Iraqi mess by withdrawing US troops and creating a vacuum in the country.
 
He also faulted Obama over Syria.
 
With regard to Iraq, Panetta was quoted as predicting that Iraq will turn into another Afghanistan sooner or later. These dire predictions are proving to be true as victory in the war between the Iraqi army and Daesh proved elusive so far.
 
There is growing fear that the armed conflict in Iraq is not only about re-establishing  the political order, but also about spreading sectarian warfare whose fire may not be so easy to put out.
 
If indeed Iraq turns into another Afghanistan, the fact could have serious implications for Jordan due to the geographic proximity of these two neighbouring countries.
 
Jordan has big stakes in the outcome of the fighting in Iraq and needs to be on its guard lest the armed conflict there should spill over.
 

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