Al-Maliki wasting Iraqi money in Syria and Iran

Al-Maliki wasting Iraqi money in Syria and Iran

Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed
Saturday 1 June 2013

Last Update 31 May 2013 11:05 pm


A few months ago when I said that the Iraqi government was serving the Iranian regime, I did not have sufficient evidence. I made this observation based on Iraqi stories and activities in Egypt, Lebanon, Gaza and Syria.

Today the picture is much clearer and the evidence is plenty. The government of Nuri Al-Maliki is playing a major role in supporting Iranian projects from financing to military involvement in fighting the Syrian people.

Al-Maliki, who is supposed to be the prime minister of a coalition government because his party — the Islamic Dawa Party — does not have enough seats to form a government on its own, has gradually turned into a full-blown dictator, like the president of North Korea. He is prime minister, minister of defense, providing Sadoon Al-Duliemi with little room to act as deputy defense minister.

Now Al-Maliki has also grabbed the finance portfolio from Rafaie Al-Esawi after accusing the latter of being a terrorist. From the very beginning, he gripped his hold on security and intelligence apparatus. What’s strange is he is also president of the Central Bank. Because of his hunger for power, he is behaving in a dictatorial manner and serving the Iranian regime.
Iran, economically besieged because of its nuclear program, can only sell a fraction of its oil production, and can’t trade with many countries of the world. It can’t even transfer dollars because of the sanctions. But Al-Maliki offers his services for free, spending billions of dollars from the money of the Iraqi people on his political projects.

Iranian bills are sent to Al-Maliki. He also finances Hezbollah and Hamas. He has also offered a $ 3 billion loan to Egyptian President Muhammad Mursi without interest. Qatar offered Mursi a similar sum but with interest. Al-Maliki made a generous deal with Moscow to buy arms and financed the Assad regime of what he needs and even taking care of his external expenditure.

Al-Maliki has been supplying fuel to the Syrian regime for the past two years as Syrian refineries have stopped working.
Al-Maliki in a sense succeeded in lifting the economic siege on Iran, enabling it to continue with its external military adventures and succeed in wasting the money of Iraqis, now one of the poorest countries in the Arab world. Al-Maliki has been ruling Iraq single-handedly since 2006, he makes all the decisions and his wealth is huge. When the Americans left, they handed him $ 70 billion which was left from Iraqi funds. He sells more oil than Kuwait.

The problem is not deprivation and poverty, but it is to do with stability. Iraqi people have already had enough of war that lasted eight years under its previous dictator Saddam Hussein with Iran and 12 years between the Gulf War and following, and the seven years after that fighting terrorism.

It’s as if the years of bloodshed and chaos have not taught Al-Maliki anything. They have not in fact granted the Iraqis any security, peace and development, but opened up personality fights against Sunni leaders like Al-Mutlaq, Al-Hashimi and Al Isawi on the one hand, and Shiite like Muqtada Sadr on the other.

And now there is now a new fight in the support for the Assad regime in Syria. Last week, the world was surprised to see Iraq sending 20,000 fighters to the border with Syria under the pretext of fighting Al-Qaeda.

In reality, he is not concerned about Al-Qaeda threat, but rather fearful of revolutionaries who started liberating “villages” lost by the Assad regime, and trying to open up crossings and move to a new war.

Now with the partnership with Hezbollah, he is fighting alongside the Assad forces in the service of Iran. Iran has already stated that it won’t allow the regime in Damascus to fall whatever the human cost of Iraqi and Lebanese lives and from money by the Iraqi Central Bank.