Gates Says al-Qaeda in Iraq Seizes on Anti-Sunni Maliki
By Tony Capaccio - Jan 13, 2014
Al-Qaeda affiliates in Iraq have exploited Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s antagonism toward Sunnis, fueling an escalating conflict, former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.
Maliki “has turned out to be far less inclusive and more of a sectarian leader then we had hoped” after the U.S. “handed the Iraqis a golden opportunity in 2009, 2010,” Gates said today in an interview in New York. “Since then, he’s really been sort of antagonistic towards the Sunnis in a kind of unrelenting way.”
Gates, 70, who oversaw the U.S. war in Iraq before President Barack Obama withdrew the final American troops there at the end of 2011, said that it’s premature to conclude that Iraq has descended into a sectarian civil war.
Maliki “does have some political savvy and may be alarmed enough at what’s happening that maybe he’ll do some things differently in terms of outreach” to the Sunni minority, said Gates, who’s beginning a promotional tour for his memoir, “Duty.”
“So much of the violence we are seeing in Iraq, I think, is a re-energized al-Qaeda” seeking “to stoke this sectarian violence in Iraq and, frankly, turning that whole Anbar” province and “adjacent parts of Syria into an extremist enclave.”
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-13/gates-says-al-qaeda-in-iraq-seizes-on-anti-sunni-maliki.html
