The Guardian: Iraq ‘doomed’ if new prime minister fails to bridge sectarian divide

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The British Guardian Newspaper quoted senior Iraqi politicians that Iraq risks being torn apart by warring sects unless Haider al-Ebadi, the new prime minister, can gather the country’s estranged factions behind him and form a government.

“This is all or nothing,” said one senior Iraqi official who is hoping for a senior ministry within the new cabinet. “None of us are sure that he can do it. And if he can’t, we are doomed.”

Nouri al-Maliki, Abadi’s predecessor, announced he was stepping downlate on Thursday having previously rejected repeated calls for his resignation. Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Nations and the US were united in welcoming the move. “Today, Iraqis took another major step forward in uniting their country,” Susan Rice, the US national security adviser, said.

But while Abadi has won broad international and regional support, he faced the formidable task of convincing Iraqi citizens that they retained a stake within the state’s current borders, regional observers said.

A push by Islamic State (Isis) militants through northern Iraq to the border with the Kurdish region has alarmed the Baghdad government, drawn the first US air strikes since the end of American occupation in 2001 and sent tens of thousands of Yazidis and Christians fleeing.

A Yazidi lawmaker and two Kurdish officials claimed yesterday that Isis insurgents had killed 80 members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority in a village in the country’s north. “They arrived in vehicles and they started their killing this afternoon,” senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters. “We believe it’s because of their creed: convert or be killed.”

A Yazidi lawmaker and another senior Kurdish official also said the killings had occurred and that the women of the village had been kidnapped. The reports remain unconfirmed. /End/