Gilbert Achcar, a political science professor at the University of Paris, in an interview in June, 2006 – “What you’ve got there is not a full-fledged civil war-fortunately, because that would really be an absolute disaster. But there is a low-intensity civil war, and it’s increasing in intensity. The presence of U.S. troops doesn’t prevent it from unfolding, but is actually a main factor in fueling it.
The way the U.S. representative on the ground, Ambassador Khalilzad, has been behaving in the last year or so, is also very much part of what I am saying. He has been throwing oil on the fire continuously, trying to play one community against another, trying to get alliances and counter-alliances, trying to break other factions. He is interfering very, very heavily in the political situation, and not as some kind of honest broker, but as someone applying a very classical recipe of divide and rule.”[1]
Gareth Porter. “Does U.S. Occupation Prevent Civil War in Iraq? Think Again.” Foreign Policy in Focus. January 20th, 2005 – “The United States is not playing the role of disinterested trustee in Iraq, allowing Sunnis and Shiites or Arabs and Kurds to work out their differences. Instead, the counterinsurgency war prevents the Sunnis and Shiites from negotiating a new arrangement for power sharing. Such negotiations will only happen if and when it is clear to Iraqis that the United States is on its way out. Americans who are worried that an early withdrawal would be irresponsible should reexamine the question of which course is most likely to contribute to violence, and which one has the best chance of minimizing it.”
Comment & Debate