Orkhan Sattarov, the head of the European bureau of Vestnik Kavkaza
The chaos and death being spread by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are making Western politicians reconsider the activities of the Western coalition in the Middle East. According to the German mass media, Thomas Opperman, the chairman of the faction of the Social Democrats in the German parliament, indirectly blamed the USA for the tragedy happening in Iraq at the moment. “The events which we can see today in Iraq are to some extent a consequence of the second Iraqi war, which resulted in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein,” Opperman thinks. According to one of the leading deputies of the ruling coalition, discrimination against Iraqi Sunnis under the Shiah government became a pre-condition for withdrawal of the Iraqi army from the Islamic State’s terrorists. “Many soldiers of the Iraqi army were happy to escape,” Opperman said, noting that many Iraqi Sunnis support the Islamic State. “As the government of Saddam Hussein was overthrown, the U.S. destroyed the fragile construction of life of various ethnic and religious groups in Iraq. Only 10 years later could we see the real scale of the disaster,” the deputy says.
According to a representative of the SDPG parliamentary faction, the West should take radical measures to provide 500 thousand Iraqis with humanitarian aid, so that they could survive the upcoming winter. But transportation of humanitarian aid requires at least a minimal security level, but this is impossible in the regions controlled by Islamic State. “The humanitarian aid won’t reach the population, if the terrorists of IS defeat the Kurds,” the politician is sure. In this context Opperman supports the idea of providing the Iraqi Kurds with weapons, despite the risk. At the same time, the German deputy excludes the possibility of sending German soldiers to Iraq.
Angela Merkel will meet German ministers on Sunday and decide on sending defense weapons to Iraqi Kurdistan. On Monday the German parliament will vote on the question of sending weapons to the Kurds, but the results of the voting will have only a recommendatory character. Meanwhile, Spiegel reported that six German soldiers have been sent to Iraq. Their task is to teach the Iraqi Kurds how to use German weapons. It seems the decision on weapon supplies has already been made. In 2003 Germany didn’t participate in the American military campaign in Iraq against Saddam Hussein.
