“Extra weapons and drones are not going to solve this problem. In fact, they will make it worse, because it will encourage Maliki to believe there is a military solution to this problem, and that is what perpetuates civil wars,” said Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution in Washington.
An eruption of violence in Iraq is threatening to undo much of what U.S. troops appeared to have accomplished before they withdrew, putting the country’s stability on the line and raising the specter of a new civil war in a region already buckling under the strain of the conflict in Syria.
In the western Iraqi province of Anbar, Sunnis are in open revolt against the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Militants affiliated with al-Qaeda have taken advantage of the turmoil to raise their flag over areas from which they had been driven out by American troops, including the powerfully symbolic city of Fallujah, where U.S. forces fought their bloodiest battle since the Vietnam War.
The Iraqi army, trained and equipped at great expense by the U.S. military before it pulled out of the country in 2011, is struggling to hold its own against what is at once a populist revolt and a militant insurgency.
On Monday, Maliki urged the people of Fallujah to expel al-Qaeda-affiliated militants to avert a full-on attack, echoing calls made by U.S. forces a decade ago when they warned residents to leave the city or suffer the consequences.
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