Then another MP said that what had actually happened was that the Russians had given the Iraqis a month to finalise the deal and that this hadn’t been done – so the deal needed to be totally renegotiated.
Finally, in this game of foreign affairs he-said-he-said, some of those making accusations of corruption and incompetency have been accused of doing so to advancing their own agendas. Some said the deal had caved in under pressure from the US, which remains Iraq’s biggest provider of arms. Others accused the Sadrists – who are part of al-Maliki’s ruling coalition - of criticising the deal just because they’re one of the only political groups with their own armed forces and they wish to maintain their own power; more weapons to the Iraqi army would neutralize them further.
All of which hardly makes for a disciplined, unified statement from the Iraq Parliament on this issue.
When it comes to Russia, it has not always been this way. As researchers Tareq Ismael and Andrei Kreutz write in the September 2001 edition of the Arab Studies Quarterly, the relationship between the two nations over the years has been influenced by three main factors. Geography – Iraq’s proximity to the Soviet Union and the historic Russian desire for a warm water port. Politics – Iraq’s influential Communists and their Kurdish population, both of which were anti-imperialist. And economics – Iraq’s oil wealth and a relatively well-off population.
Moscow and Baghdad first established diplomatic relations in September 1944. However in 1955, Iraq signed the Baghdad Pact, a US-sponsored treaty that also included Turkey, Pakistan and the United Kingdom, among others, that was supposed to protect the region against Soviet expansion. This resulted in the cutting of all diplomatic ties between Baghdad and Moscow and Iraq, ruled by a pro-Western monarchy, became a frontline for the Cold War.
Comments are closed.