Experts Warn Of Disastrous Consequences To Huge Iraqi Jail Break
The jailbreak, which came on the heels of a massive, coordinated assault, freed around 500 senior Al Qaeda leaders, most of whom were convicted and awaiting death sentences.
The ramifications could be disastrou, experts tell The Beast:
“The more we look at this jailbreak, the more catastrophic it appears to be,” said Doug Olivant, a senior vice president of Mantid International, an international consulting firm that does business in Iraq, and the National Security Council director for Iraq at the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of President Obama’s first term. “This will regenerate al Qaeda in Iraq networks at the mid- and senior levels. What this means for both its operations in Syria and its continuing campaign against Iraqi civilians we will see over the next year, but it will certainly be bad.”
Interpol, an international policing organization, has already called the jailbreak a threat to world security.
Members of the Iraqi parliament noted that many of the escapees were Al Qaeda In Iraq's (AQI) "top emirs" — who analysts expect to oversee retribution on those who aided their arrests, galvanize extremists in Syria, and organize another rise of AQI in western Iraq.
The jailbreak effectively erases gains made through an American partnership with local Sunni leaders to oust Al Qaeda from western Iraq in the last years of the war.
Max Fisher of the Washington Post writes:
For all the very real mistakes and setbacks of the U.S.-led Iraq War, one success was a program to kill or capture large numbers of Sunni extremist leaders, including officers and fighters with the once-powerful al-Qaeda affiliate there. These are very bad people who did terrible things to Americans and to Iraqis, often civilians.