KSA, Qatar reigniting sectarian war in Iraq: Analyst Interview with Zayd al-Isa The Saudis need that because they have been trying to convince their people that they are engaged in confronting and combating an existential and intensifying threat coming from the Shias and namely from Iran.” Press TV has conducted an interview with Zayd al-Isa, a Middle East expert from London about recent surges of violence in Iraq. The following is an approximate transcript of the interview. Press TV: Zayd al-Isa there obviously is a plan involved, I read in one of the articles that you had mentioned; the countries involved Saudi Arabia, namely, Qatar and Turkey. What is being played out on the ground, will they achieve their objective, [and] will [Iraqi Prime Minister] Nouri al-Maliki be able to counter this push by them inside Iraq? Zayd al-Isa: I do believe that they won’t actually achieve their objectives of toppling the fledgling democracy in Iraq. They have been trying and throwing their weight, throwing their support since 2003 behind discrediting, derailing, destabilizing and ultimately severely undermining the fledgling democracy in Iraq. They have so far spectacularly failed and their attempts have spectacularly backfired by strengthening their Iraqi government, which has been elected by the Iraqi people and has widespread support amongst the majority; the overwhelming majority of people in Iraq who are Shias. We have seen that there has been a dramatic surge in attacks, there has been a dramatic surge in violence in Iraq and that is all largely due to the revitalization, reinvigoration of the al-Qaeda. And that is all through the arming and the financing and also paying salaries by Saudi Arabia, by Qatar to Jabhat al-Nusra. And we have all heard the declaration, clear-cut unambiguous declaration by the criminal leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declaring that Jabhat al-Nusra is nothing but merely an extension of al-Qaeda in Iraq and its leader [Abu Mohammed] al-Jawlani is simply one of its foot soldiers. All that arming [and] financing which has been done openly and publically and was widely referred to by The New York Times [and the] Guardian, which confirmed that the Saudis and the Qataris are spearheading their effort to destabilize both governments in Syria and ultimately destabilize the government of Iraq by throwing their weight and emphatically supporting al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is working hand-in-hand with the ex-Baathists. And let’s not forget the protests which have been heavily backed up by the Saudis and the Qataris are actually providing ultimately the cover and also the means for al-Qaeda to increase dramatically its recruitment by utilizing the ramping up of the sectarian rhetoric and the ratcheting up of the sectarian tension where the Saudis and the Qataris have pushed it from a simmer to a boiling point because they desperately need to see a sectarian war reigniting in Iraq. The Saudis need that because they have been trying to convince their people that they are engaged in confronting and combating an existential and intensifying threat coming from the Shias and namely from Iran. Because they have been all along been trying to portray themselves as the defenders and the guardians of Sunni Islam, but they are backing and being at the forefront and spearheading the counter revolutions or popular uprisings in Egypt, in Tunisia and in Yemen against the Sunni people in those countries; [and they] have exposed and patently exploits that deceitful myth by the Saudis. That is why they need desperately now to start off and to stir up and foment a sectarian war in order to be seen to be backing up the Sunnis in order to stave off any popular internal uprising in Saudi Arabia, which has by the way, surmounted the sectarian divide in that country and has spread to the heartlands of the Saudi regime.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:38:44 +0000
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