One of Iraq’s top Sunni politicians on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of fomenting sectarian violence to limit the voices of Sunnis in upcoming elections, and he criticized the Obama administration for failing to do more for a country “destroyed” by the United States.
Without more deeply engaged guidance and pressure from Washington, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Mutlaq said, Iraq’s slate of political leaders — including Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — are at risk of leading the nation’s fledgling democracy toward an all-out sectarian meltdown and civil war.
Mr. Mutlaq said Iraq began veering toward dangerously divisive political territory during and after its parliamentary elections in 2010, when the Shiite-dominated coalition rose to power in Baghdad “because of pressure from Iran” and “because the U.S. did not act in a strong way.”
“I think you have a legal and moral responsibility to Iraq,” Deputy Iraqi Prime Minister Saleh Mutlaq told an audience in Washington at the U.S. Institute of Peace. “You came to remove the Saddam regime and in fact, instead of doing that, you destroyed a country, not only the regime.”
The remarks by Mr. Mutlaq, who spoke both publicly and in a private interview with The Washington Times — and who is likely to be the top Sunni challenger to Mr. al-Maliki in Iraq’s April elections — presented some sobering insight into the complexities of Iraq’s political landscape.
His remarks also dovetailed with assessments by a range of foreign policy analysts in Washington, several of whom argue that the al-Maliki government’s bare-knuckle posture toward Sunni political leaders has ramped up sectarian tensions.
Human rights groups for years have criticized harsh security tactics employed by the Iraqi prime minister. Sunni political leaders accused him of acting as a dictator in 2011 when a warrant was issued suddenly for the arrest of the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi.
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