In Baghdad, some believe the rise of sectarian attacks at home is linked to the rise of hardline Sunni militants in the Syrian rebel movement. For those who take this view, the nightmare scenario would be if Assad was overthrown and al-Nusrah became the dominant force in Damascus.
“We are not on the side of the Syrian regime,” Hakim al-Zamili, who sits on the Iraqi parliamentary committee for defence, told IWPR. “We support the Syrian people in their demands for reform. But we are against the use of violence for regime change, because the collapse of the Assad regime and extremist rule in Syria would threaten Iraq’s newborn democracy.”
Zamili warns that such an outcome would inevitably mean renewed sectarian war in Iraq.
“The extremists don’t deny that their ambition is to incorporate Iraq into what they call the Islamic State of Sham and Iraq,” he said.
As evidence of the direct link between militant groups, Zamili pointed to the weekly demonstrations held in Iraq’s Sunni Arab provinces, which he said bore striking similarities to Syrian rebel tactics, even down to the custom of according similar names to each Friday protest.
Political analyst Nabil Salim takes an opposing view, arguing that the Iraqi protests are not inspired by events in Syria, but are instead about dire social and economic conditions at home.
“The Syrian conflict has no effect on Iraq in any way,” he insisted.
Salim argues that the very fact that insurgent activity remains at a high level in Iraq undermines claims that Iraqi paramilitaries have been slipping out of the country to join up with anti-Assad forces.
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