How badly would an American pullout affect Iraq? According to the nation’s foreign minister, all of the security gains would evaporate and bring the country back to the brink of civil war. Hoshyar Zebari spoke to the Associated Press to make sure Americans know exactly what is at stake:
Iraq’s foreign minister said Tuesday that he believes his country has averted a civil war after five years of “tears and blood,” and warned that an abrupt U.S. troop withdrawal would be disastrous.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told The Associated Press that mistakes had been made by all sides but Iraq has reached a turning point.
“These past five years I think were full of hopes and promises but also of tears and blood … and we’ve gone through a very, very difficult transformation,” said Zebari, a Kurd who has held his post in each successive Iraqi administration since the U.S.-led invasion on March 20, 2003.
He noted that the Iraqis had established a government and gained freedoms that were absent under nearly three decades of Saddam Hussein’s rule, despite violence that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,000 U.S. troops.
Why speak up now? Zebari has grown concerned about the election-year rhetoric coming from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Both Democrats continue to assure voters that they’ll bug out of Iraq faster than the other, even if their colleagues in Congress have learned to avoid talking about Iraq altogether.
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