Backers of Syrian rebels endanger Iraq: Iraqi minister

[Bosonic]

Source: Reuters

Turkish and Qatari support for Syrian insurgents is tantamount to a declaration of war against Iraq, which will suffer from the fallout of an increasingly sectarian conflict next door, an Iraqi Shi'ite politician said.

Hadi al-Amiri, transport minister and head of the formerly armed Badr Organisation, said Sunni Muslim Turkey and Qatar had stymied all efforts to resolve the Syrian conflict peacefully.

Iraq is calmer than in the communal bloodletting that killed tens of thousands in 2006-2007, but the war in neighboring Syria is straining its precarious sectarian balance.

Amiri accused Ankara and Doha, which support the opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, of arming jihadi groups in Syria, where many Sunni militants are fighting, including the Qaeda-approved Nusra Front, which has links to al Qaeda in Iraq.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/27/us-syria-crisis-iraq-idUSBRE91Q0FB20130227

[leveymg]

1. Regionalization of conflict was the inevitable outcome of regime change operations.

Destabilizing the region, and a generalized Sunni-Shiia war across MENA, seems to have been viewed as acceptable, if not entirely desirable, by some in the Clinton State Department and the Petraeus CIA and SOCOM.

Allowing the neocons to again take control over foreign policy repeated an historical error, one which the Obama Administration is just now beginning to realize the consequences of. One can only hope that they manage to pull this back together before the entire region explodes.

[Bosonic]

2. AP INTERVIEW: Iraq PM warns Syria war could spread

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's prime minister warned Wednesday that a victory for Syria's rebels will spark sectarian wars in his own country and in Lebanon and will create a new haven for al-Qaida that would destabilize the region.

The comments by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in an interview with The Associated Press marked one of his strongest warnings yet about the turmoil that toppling Syrian President Bashar Assad could create in the Middle East.

It comes as his government confronts growing tensions of its own between the Shiite majority and an increasingly restive Sunni minority nearly a decade after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Fighting in Syria has sharp sectarian overtones, with predominantly Sunni rebels battling a regime dominated by Alawites, an offshoot Shiite Islam.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-interview-iraq-premier-syria-war-could-spread