ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq’s prime minister, whose government has sided with the regime in the Syrian civil war, blamed the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood for the continuing bloodshed, saying that even Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi was encouraging fighters into Syria.
“I am astonished to see the head of a state telling people ‘go to Syria and fight,’” Premier Nuri al-Maliki told a religious gathering of Faili Kurds in Baghdad on Thursday. “He openly gathers clerics and endorses the fight in Syria,” he added, “They also ask for the killing of Shiites,” he charged.
The Shiite premier has opposed the Syrian revolution since its start in March 2011, and has hosted opposition leaders who believe in dialogue with the Damascus regime.
Syrian rebels have in turn accused Maliki of sending military and financial support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
There have been reports that the Iraqi government has allowed Iranian planes carrying weapons for the Syrian regime to pass through Iraq.
On a visit to Baghdad in March, US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Maliki to scrutinize flights that travel through Iraqi airspace or airports.
Syrian opposition leaders claim that Iraq has provided substantial backing to the Syrian army, which still controls most of the country, against an increasingly battered rebel army.
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) says that, together with fighters from the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite volunteers have been fighting alongside the army against rebel forces.
Earlier this month, The Associated Press news agency quoted Jassim al-Jazairi, from the political bureau of Iraq's Hezbollah Brigades, as saying, “The fight in Syria was ultimately for the sake of Iraq's Shiites as well.”
“We feel that Iraq will be the next target after Syria,” he said, adding that Hezbollah Brigades in Syria were not there only to protect Shiite shrines, but to thwart a rising anti-Shiite movement by extremist Sunnis.
Iraq’s own Sunni leaders have also blamed the prime minister of wasting government money on the war next-door, and contributing to the bloodshed.
But in a recent interview with Al-Arabiya TV, while denying that Iraq had offered “any official support to any of the parties involved in the Syrian conflict,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said: “Iraq doesn’t deny that there are Iraqi volunteer fighters who are heading to fight in Syria.”
Turning to Iraq’s own rising sectarian violence in his speech, Maliki warned the Muslim Brotherhood against a partnership with Al-Qaeda, saying that the group would eventually turn its guns on the Brotherhood itself.
“Quit stupid sectarianism and let’s build our countries on the constitution and common interests,” Maliki called on Muslims in the region.
Thousands of Shiite Faili Kurds live in Baghdad, and have known allegiance to Iraq’s Shiite parties, including Maliki’s Dawa Party.
