In Anbar province, where the rebellion against the government of Nuri Al-Maliki is spreading, one wonders why was it allowed to snowball into a big battle when it could have easily been resolved politically by Baghdad? There is no oil in Anbar, and no real power centers, it is only a barren land and and its people are angry and fed up with the continuing persecution by Al-Maliki regime. The prime minister could have personally resolved their issues rather than make promises that he can’t keep, or at worst he could have ignored them, instead of sending troops to commit the massacre of hundreds of people who were unarmed demonstrators.
As we look for answers as to what is there in prime minister’s mind, who has shown his desire time and again to achieve targets outside of the dispute between him, protesters and demonstrators. There is a larger prey in the bird trap.
Al-Maliki, on one hand, wants to show that he is the protector of Shiites by chasing Sunnis, while at the same time tries to weaken his Shiite rivals who threaten him politically. He deliberate excluded and chased his Sunni political opponents while he also ignored his Shiite opponents. On the other, Al-Maliki is an ally of Iran and pushes Iraq to support the Syrian regime. He opened up Iraqi borders and territories for the passage and crossing of the massive Iranian military paraphernalia supporting Assad.
Sources confirm he has aided Assad financially and logistically during the past months, and his forces participated in fighting Syrian fighters on the border more than once. He is now waging a war, with a bigger goal of chocking the buffer zone to eliminate the Syrian revolution and its supporters on his country’s borders and beyond.
One cannot understand the enthusiasm that has moved the Al-Maliki government to send troops to the northwestern regions, and this is the second time he has done so since being in power.
The first was against Sadr’s militia under the title “Charge of the Knights” six years ago, and Sadr supporters fought back under the banner of “the fight against religious advocacy militias and Iranian intelligence.” Al-Maliki’s thirst for more bloodshed cannot be understood except in the framework of a close alliance with the Iranian regime. He is doing a parallel job of the second agent for Iran, Hassan Nasrallah, who recruited militias to fight alongside Assad’s forces to quell the revolution in Syria, especially in Al-Qaseer, Homs countryside and even the border areas with Lebanon. So, it seems that we see here allies to Tehran fighting alongside Assad on the both Syrian fronts, southeastern and western, i.e., Iraq and Lebanon.
But the success of the Iranian pincers fighting against the Syrian people depends on the ability of Assad to remain steadfast in Damascus for the coming months. This is unlikely with the progress of the fighters determinedly toward the capital of Aleppo and Daraa. This brings us back to the previous question, so why is Al-Maliki implicating himself in a losing war? We noticed that all the speeches by Al-Maliki and his recent interviews, concentrated on Syria and the fate of the Assad regime, which are in harmony with the Iranian government’s statements.
Thus suggesting that he is committed with his Iranian ally, to support Assad by sending troops to the troubled areas of Iraq and even beyond the Syrian border. He believes, like the Iranians, the fall of the Assad regime, and the establishment of an alternative anti-Iranian regime in Damascus, represents a war against him, Iran and Hezbollah.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards admitted that the fall of Syria is tantamount to the fall of Tehran, meaning that this would open the doors of hell on the Iranian regime, and they would face an internal and external revolution. Or so it is portrayed by one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Guards, when justifying the huge military involvement for Iran to save the Assad regime from collapse.
