martes, 6 de agosto de 2013

Attacks, shuttling fighters and spreading sectarianism make Iraq new ... - Washington Post

Combat-hardened Iraqi fighters, meanwhile, are crisscrossing the frontier. Al-Qaida-linked Sunni militants are cooperating with hard-line Islamists among the Syrian rebels, while Iraqi Shiite fighters are joining militiamen from Lebanon's Hezbollah to fight alongside forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad's Iranian-backed regime. U.S. officials believe Iranian arms are still being shuttled to Damascus through Iraqi airspace.

"What is going on in Syria has a big, clear impact on us ... especially since there are attempts to move the battle to Iraq," said Ali al-Moussawi, spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

It's happening as the deadly drumbeat of violence is growing louder across Iraq. Nearly 2,000 lives have been violently snuffed out across the country since the start of April.

The extent of the killing hasn't been this bad for half a decade, when Iraq's last tip toward civil war was easing and American troops were still here to help keep the peace. Attackers killed more than 60 people in a relentless wave of bombings on Monday. Another nine were slain Tuesday.

"The events in the past three or four months prove that the violence in Iraq and Syria are two sides of the same coin," said Haider Ayed, a 35-year-old math teacher and father of two in Baghdad's southwestern Bayaa neighborhood. "We are going through a very dangerous period."

It's a worrying trend for the United States, which is mulling whether to arm Syria's rebels even as it adapts to a new relationship with Iraq following a divisive war that claimed nearly 4,500 American and more than 100,000 Iraqi lives.

The spokesman for the American Embassy in Baghdad, Frank Finver, said the U.S. shares Iraqi government concerns about the level of violence in Syria, as well as about extremists who are trying to capitalize on the situation in Syria and incite violence inside Iraq.

The U.S., Finver added, is working with allies and moderate members of the Syrian opposition to isolate extremists and "ensure their violent and divisive ideology does not take root in Syria or spill over into Iraq."

Iraq officially remains neutral in the Syrian conflict. Al-Maliki has repeatedly called for a peaceful, political solution to the crisis, though he has also warned that a victory for the rebels would unleash sectarian war in Iraq and Lebanon.

On Tuesday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari insisted that Iraq has no official or military role in the civil war, and said Baghdad does not encourage the movement of any Iraqi fighters to Syria.

Still, the cross-border violence continues. An Iraqi border guard was killed and two others were wounded Sunday in clashes with fighters the Interior Ministry said were members of the Free Syrian Army rebel group. Border guards thwarted two other attempts by gunmen and smugglers to sneak into Iraq from Syria, officials said.

No hay comentarios:

Publicar un comentario