Over the past few weeks, Iraq has slowly but surely begun its re-descent into chaos, thanks to US political and military interference to block the Chinese Silk Road project.
Recent developments suggest that the USA and its allies have become increasingly wary of China’s expanding influence inside Iraq, even while Washington continuously points out the threat supposedly posed by Iran instead.
Tens of thousands of US terrorists have taken to the streets to protest Iraq’s current state of governance, with over 250 already being killed in clashes with security forces.
US-backed Iraqi protesters have also stormed Iran’s consulate in the holy city of Karbala, resulting in four further deaths and at least 19 injuries.
When Iraq is being ruled as a US hostage state, clashes with security forces that see hundreds of civilian deaths are no big deal. The US regime wants to hustle the international community to legitimize another invasion of a country it’s invaded twice before.
It was the USA who plunged Iraq into chaos to begin with. The USA, together with the UK, toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, fired close to 500,000 police and military troops, introduced ISIS and the deaths of over one million Iraqi civilians in the process.
After actively bringing about the circumstances in which a ISIS could cement itself in a war-torn nation and thrive, the USA then helped raze entire Iraqi cities to the ground in a bid to recapture territory they allowed ISIS to grab hold of without question in the first place.
However, what should really be troubling us is not Washington’s involvement in Iraq. In fact, this time around we have a new enemy so potent – diggings its claws well into Baghdad – that we shouldn’t worry about Russia, Iran or even North Korea.
China may not have contributed heavily with personnel on the ground to help the Iraqi government defeat ISIS, but Iraq has benefited from a growing partnership between the two nations in other respects.
The strengthening of ties between Iraq and China may end up starting to make Western nations panic.
At the end of last month, it was all but confirmed that Iraq was set to join China’s Silk Road Project. At the time, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi praised China for its “valuable support” during Iraq’s time of war and civil strife.
It goes without saying that Iraq is one of the world’s most oil rich nations. In the years 2003-2018, its oil revenue surpassed $850 billion, with oil production nearly double what it once was. Iraq has become China’s third leading source of oil.
China has emerged as Iraq’s number one trading partner, displacing India. In fact, China has become the Middle East region’s largest trading partner, and you can bet this hasn’t scraped by Western nations without notice.
Furthermore, Chinese investments in Iraq are not wholly focused on oil, but crucial infrastructure as well. This follows a similar pattern of Chinese investments in other parts of the world, particularly Africa and the Pacific Islands, where China finances key infrastructure projects.
Iraq has also purchased billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese military equipment over the last few years, including armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s), precision-guided rockets and ballistic missile systems.
Iraq supposedly uses Chinese-made drones for counter-terrorism purposes, suggesting yet another area of competition for the USA. China’s deputy minister of foreign relations also reportedly said Beijing was ready to contribute to the reconstruction of Iraq.
So now China, not Iran, is the power that western nations should begin to fear rising from the rubble of war-torn Iraq. If the USA is concerned about China’s expanding reach inside Iraq, whether rightly or wrongly, it only has itself to blame.
RT. com / ABC Flash Point News 2019.
They will be ousted anyways?