‘US still using ISIS as a mean for political ends’

American plans had to be modified to indicate a possible understanding that ISIS could not be used as a viable political tool for political ends, says Saad Al Mutalabi from the security council of Baghdad province.

The US Secretary of State John Kerry has accepted that there’s a need to cooperate with the Syrian Army in the fight against the Islamic State.

"I think we know that without the ability to find some ground forces that are prepared to take on Daesh, this will not be won completely from the air," he said Thursday. He later added that he meant Syrian and Arab ground forces.

RT: Why has it taken so long for the US to accept the need for a broad coalition in Syria?

Saad Al Mutalabi: I do believe that the US until today is still using ISIS as a political means for political ends. Within the past year we have been battling against ISIS and we see that the Americans were never serious in combating that enemy. We have complained a number of times on the delay of ammunition and armament that we have already paid for to the US and still have not been delivered. And those that were delivered - were delivered with conditions: these conditions would not allow us to use this military hardware in the liberating of the center of Iraq and West of Baghdad. So, it is very suspicious what is happening today. And I think with the introduction of a new important player in the Syrian scene, i.e. the Russian Federation, I think the American plans had to be modified in such a way that would indicate a possible understanding that ISIS could not be used as a viable political tool for political ends.  

RT: On Thursday we heard John Kerry reiterating that President Assad needs to go. So, judging by Kerry's words, can we assume America's own political agenda prevails the fight against ISIS?

SM: The simple way of thinking that Assad needs to be changed without the say of the Syrian people - it is a clear violation of every international regulation. The only entity in this world that is in charge of appointing or removing any leader of any member state of the UN  - in this case should be the Syrian people and should not be the US or Saudi Arabia, which are pumping money and armaments and suicide bombers into Syria and Iraq on the pretext that Assad should go. The Syrian people should decide who is to rule their country - and not Saudi Arabia and definitely not the US. And the same thing applies here in Iraq. We see thousands of Saudi suicide bombers who with their twisted mentality and twisted ideology come and explode themselves among our market places, our school buses and among the civilian targets. And then Saudi Arabia talks about finding a new political understanding for Iraq. Iraq and Syria both have a government through direct elections, and these elections and the people of these countries should be the only entities that should have the right to decide who rules and who doesn’t.

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters undergo training by British soldiers at a shooting range in Arbil, in Iraq's northern autonomous Kurdistan region November 5, 2014. © Azad Lashkari © Reuters

RT: The US has said it will pour more troops into Iraq to fight ISIS but we've heard from the Iraqi PM Haider Al-Abadi who does not support the move. Will American troops be deployed even against Iraq's will?

SM: They definitely deploy against the will of the parliament and the will of the Iraqi nation. The way they’ve gone around it is they are deploying these 200 Special Forces in the province of Kurdistan and not in the rest of Iraq, they will be in Erbil helping the Peshmerga Kurdish army into regaining of or the reemphasizing the grip on the Iraqi territories that KRG, that the Kurds took as a hostage with the incoming of ISIS.  So, there is a high-level collaboration between the US and between Masoud Barzani, the president of Kurdistan. But therefore, the presence of the US troops, Special Forces or otherwise in the rest of Iraq would be definitely not welcomed.  And as far as I understood these special troops are necessary for the US to pinpoint where the aircraft and the jet fighters would attack their targets. And that’s why they sometimes they claim that they cannot attack any targets South of Mosul or in the Arab side of Iraq because they don’t have spotters and they don’t have Special Forces to pinpoint the targets for the American planes…

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