Some areas of Iraq’s western border are slipping out of control and the foreign minister has warned that his country faces renewed civil war in the event of President Assad’s downfall in Syria.
Before the tenth anniversary today of the start of the allied air assault that was the prelude to the removal of Saddam Hussein, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Hoshyar Zebari, said that a region-wide sectarian schism caused by Syria’s civil war was opening between Sunni and Shia populations throughout the Middle East.
“No matter what is the final outcome of the Syrian crisis, there would be a heightening of sectarian tension throughout the region,” he said in Erbil, Northern Iraq. “Shia-Sunni polarisation would be a fact of life, not only for Iraq