Iraq is on the brink of disintegration, British experts warned on Thursday in one of the most dramatic studies on the developments in the Middle Eastern country.
The report, from the foreign policy think tank Chatham House, said the government in Iraq was nearly powerless in the face of not one but ”many civil wars and insurgencies involving a number of communities and organisations struggling for power”.
Entitled Accepting Realities in Iraq, the report also called on the United States and Britain to change radically their conduct of operations in Iraq or face the break up of the country.
Chatham House also said the al-Qaeda terrorist network was a great influence on the violence in Iraq despite being limited by competing insurgencies.
The US troop increase in the Baghdad area had not helped curtail the violence, the report added, but only shifted it to different regions of the country.
The report’s author, Gareth Stansfield, specifying the greater influence of Iraq’s neighbours upon the country, called on the US and Britain to allow these neighbours leeway in bringing stability to Iraq.
At the same time, the report criticised Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey for stoking instability in Iraq out of selfish motives.
Stansfield concluded that the combined violence had affected Iraqi society as a whole, weakening the already fragile bonds that kept the country together. — Sapa-dpa