Iraq on brink of breakup, diplomats warn

BAGHDAD — Western officials fear Iraq is facing imminent breakup, as the jihadist takeover of the north seeks to carve the country into different religious fiefdoms.

Using their strongest language to date, diplomats warned that the “sheer scale” of the crisis could defeat belated efforts by the country’s fractious politicians to resolve it.

“We have used the word crisis about Iraq before, but this is the real thing,” a Western diplomat said in an interview Tuesday. “There is no doubt about the scale of the threat that it poses to Iraq’s continued existence as a state, and it is also a threat to the wider region too.”

The diplomat also voiced doubts about the ability of Iraqi politicians, including Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, to bury their sectarian differences.

While U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Monday that greater unity was the only way to stabilize the country, the diplomat said the politicians were “trapped in a pattern that was hard to break,” adding: “Iraq’s political leaders now mostly realize the problems. But has it translated into action yet? It has not.”

In a further sign of the West’s lack of confidence in al-Maliki’s government, the diplomat disclosed that routine help for Iraq’s counter-terrorism units was being limited because of “significant human rights concerns.”

He added that heavy-handed policing by Iraq’s Shiite-dominated security forces had led to “systematic alienation” of the Sunni minority. As a result, some Sunnis had actively helped the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant take over the cities of Mosul and Tikrit. ISIL “could not have done this on their own,” he said.

The gloomy assessment of the chances of Iraq pulling back from the brink of civil war came in a day of see-saw gains and losses for the country’s security forces.

In Baiji, a town 200 kilometres north of Baghdad, the Iraqi army claimed to have repelled an assault on a major oil refinery by ISIL fighters. Government troops also claimed to have retaken a border crossing with Syria, and fended off an assault on the western town of Haditha, a haven for Sunni insurgents during the U.S. occupation.

However, air strikes on Baiji and the western border of Husseibah were said to have killed an unspecified number of civilians.

The militants countered with mortar attacks on a large former American base in Yathrib, a town 100 km north of Baghdad.

An ISIL claim to have kidnapped and killed Raouf Abdel-Rahman, the Iraqi judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death, was denied by both Iraqi security officials and a former colleague of the judge. The ex-colleague said: “Friends of mine say he is still alive and well and living at a high-security compound.”

OPEC pledged top-ups over Iraq fears, Page A26