Security forces for the Shiite-led Iraqi government raided a Sunni protest camp in northern Iraq on Tuesday, igniting violence around the country that left at least 36 people dead.
The unrest led two Sunni officials to resign from the government and risked pushing the country’s Sunni provinces into an open revolt against Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shiite. The situation looked to be the gravest moment for Iraq since the last U.S. combat troops left in December 2011.
….”A minority of hard-liners are using these protesters as human shields and have infiltrated these demonstrations. They want to drag the country into a civil war between the Sunni and Shiites,” said lawmaker Sami Askari, who is close to Maliki. “The majority [of Iraqis] reject this.”
But even as Askari and others vowed to stave off disaster, the government appeared hobbled by mistrust. Kurds have boycotted the Cabinet along with most Sunnis. The Sunni education minister, Mohammed Tamim, resigned Tuesday after trying to broker a peaceful resolution between the protesters and security forces in the hours before the early-morning raid. The minister of technology, Abdul Kareem Samarrai, also resigned.
This is all Obama’s fault, amiright? George Bush—currently enjoying a sudden resurgence of love from conservatives this week—was right on the verge of working everything out and bringing peace and harmony to Iraq when Obama was elected and ruined everything. That’s the story I’ve been hearing for the past couple of years from the neocon rump, anyway.
