“Disagreements among Iraqi political groupings have allowed foreign countries to get involved in our domestic affairs, because each grouping is linked in one way or another to one of the foreign powers involved in the fighting,” Taha said.
Taha also pointed to failings in the management of Iraq’s security forces. At the moment, he said, units were spread out over diffuse areas without being armed with accurate intelligence about the plans, strategies and tactics of the insurgent groups they faced.
“Breaches of security will continue for a long time to come because the terrorists now have the initiative,” he said.
A third factor, Taha said, was poverty, which offered the insurgents a ready pool of unemployed recruits prepared to carry out attacks for money.
Interior ministry spokesman Brigadier-General Saad Maan pinpointed the situation in Syria as the source of trouble in Iraq, especially now that rebel groups in the former were suffering reverses.
“The insurgents are trying to open up a new front after the Syrian army regained control of many of the areas they formerly held,” he told IWPR. “That is why they are trying to make headway in Iraq.”
Despite this, Brig-Gen Maan remains optimistic that better security forces, improved intelligence-gathering, and increasing levels of public cooperation will combine to bring the violence to an end.
Laith Hammoudi is IWPR’s editor in Iraq.
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