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26 Dec, 2013 14:51

‘West has created a monster in Iraq and they are still not admitting it’

‘West has created a monster in Iraq and they are still not admitting it’

Iraq has not reached the bottom yet, but sooner or later people will get tired of being misled by their politicians, Sabah Al-Mukhtar, president of the Arab Lawyers Association, told RT.

Go to RT's special project on our Iraq page

RT:We've heard the bloodshed in Iraq explained away as sectarian rivalry between Sunni and Shia Muslims. So why are Christians now being targeted?

Sabah Al-Mukhtar: As far as the news is concerned, I think they were not actually targeted as such, but the explosion was near a church. It’s a very sad day for the Christians, who had just finished their Christmas service to be caught in this. I don’t think they were targeted as far as I can tell from the news. And actually, in terms of the general picture I don’t think it’s Sunnis versus Shias, it’s the Iraqis fighting each other with the instigation of a variety of people from within the country, the region and outside and that’s why we have such a high toll of casualties in Iraq, which is ten years after that so-called liberation of Iraq by the Western powers, by the USA. Iraqis have lost more people now than ever before. The country is destroyed more than it has ever been before and this is not a natural disaster, this is a willful act by the international community, especially the UN and the Western powers.

RT:You said its Iraqis fighting each other. So it’s not religious then, who is fighting who, as you see it?

SM: Well, principally the “divide and rule” philosophy is not something new; everybody practiced it in every area and every time in history. The “divide rule”: you divide people along any lines you want, whether you want on sectarian or ethnic, you have the Kurds and the Arabs, you have the Muslims and the Christians, you have the Shias and the Sunnis. You divide them on anything and then you have also the class division between those who have and those who don’t have. So these various fault lines in addition to the abuse by those who are in power and those who want to get into power. So you have Maliki who is a new dictator in Iraq, and you have other politicians who want to remove him so that they can be in his place. There is what is called political process, which is really a sham; it is not a real political process because you cannot have political process when you are losing something like 20-30 people a day. This is a civil war.

The fault at the end of the day must lie with the government because any government anywhere has a duty to protect the people, has a duty to protect the society, and has a duty to make a life of ordinary people tolerable at least. And this is what this government is failing [to do]. Nevertheless, the international community is still not condemning this government enough, and including Russia, it is not doing this either.

RT:If we look ahead to the New Year, is there any light on the horizon or the situation will deteriorate even worse?

SM: Unfortunately, I cannot share the optimism of the next year. I think Iraq has not reached the bottom yet. I think there will still be more bloodshed. However there will come a time, not long [further] I hope, that people will get tired of being misled by their politicians or by money or by threats. Indeed we have also the terrorist organizations, which exist in Iraq, which were not there before the Americans liberated Iraq in 2003. Iraq never had Al-Qaeda; it never had the terrorist organizations. It may have had a dictatorship, yes, but it didn’t have these elements in Iraq. And this is what the West has created in Iraq. They have created a monster and they are still not admitting it. We can look at Tony Blair, at George Bush and see that none of them is doing that.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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