With a new Iraqi Government finally in place and a growing Mideast consensus on defeating insurgent threats, US Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday pressed Iraq’s Shia leader to quickly deliver more power to wary Sunnis or jeopardise any hope of defeating the Islamic State group.
Kerry landed in the Iraqi capital just two days after newly sworn Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi seated his top Government Ministers, a crucial step toward restoring stability in a nation where security has spiraled out of control since the beginning of the year.
The trip marks the first high-level US meeting with al-Abadi since he became Prime Minister, and it aimed to symbolise the Obama administration’s support for Iraq nearly three years after US troops left the war-torn country.
But it also signaled to al-Abadi, a Shia Muslim, that the US was watching to make sure he gives Iraqi Sunnis more control over their local power structures and security forces, as promised.
Al-Abadi’s predecessor, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, for years shut Sunnis out of power and refused to pay tribal militias salaries or give them Government jobs and in turn sowed widespread resentment that Islamic State extremists seized on as a recruiting tool.
Al-Abadi hosted Kerry in the ornate presidential palace where Saddam Hussein once held court, and which the US and coalition officials later used as office space in the years immediately following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In brief remarks following their meeting, al-Abadi noted that Iraq’s violence is largely a spillover from the neighboring civil war in Syria, where the Islamic State militants have a safe haven. “Of course, our role is to defend our country, but the international community is responsible to protect Iraq, and protect the whole region,” al-Abadi said, in English.