Iraq violence aimed at undermining Prime Minister: Activist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Sabah Jawad, director of Iraqi Democrats against Occupation from London, about Iraq seeing a surge in terrorist attacks ahead of the general elections scheduled for later this month.

What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: How do you perceive the recent appalling wave of violence in Iraq, and what are those behind it trying to achieve with this violence and destruction?

Jawad: Well we should actually see more of such atrocities taking place in Iraq in the next three weeks and more, increased level of terrorist activities because the elections is coming up at the 30th of this month and there is a lot of political power in Iraq and the regional powers want to undermine the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his government and they do not want him to have a majority in the next parliament as well.

So they are going to utilize this kind of security situation to achieve their purpose of undermining the prime minister. The prime minister will [have] to do something about it because the situation is as you have seen in the past few days in Fallujah deteriorating and in fact there are even reports of the terrorists are in control of the Fallujah water dam and they planned to deprive the southern cities and middle cities in Iraq of necessary water as well.

It has been re-opened slightly in the past few days but the government is threatening to undertake some military action to dislodge these terrorists from the Fallujah dam.

So as you see the situation is deteriorating and people will try to undermine the positions of the prime minister in the next election and also some regional powers like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait and other sheikhdoms in the [Persian] Gulf want to undermine the prime minister. So it is set to continue for foreseeable future until after the election.

Press TV: And Mr. Jawad, when you talk about those behind these attacks, please also elaborate on their motives and what they are trying to achieve by carrying out and conducting these sets of violence in the country?

Jawad: Well the whole political process in Iraq is based on divisions basically and those who oppose the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki they want to undermine him and not only people who are well-known opponent of the prime minister, even some elements within the so-called Shia alliance want to undermine the prime minister like the Southern Movement, like Islamic Ammar al-Hakim people and so on.

So there are a lot of friction and divisions within even the prime minister former alliance in the last elections as well. All these people, they do not have a united stand on terrorism. Even when they condemn terrorism they are hoping actually that these terrorist activities is playing in their hand, undermining the prime minister as well.

So it is going to be difficult few weeks in Iraq toward the end of this month and even after the result is known, we might still have a very difficult period when there is a lot of struggle to see who is going to be finally appointed prime minister in Iraq.