surely we can risk some discomfort or an easy for. the rivalry between the u.s. and iran nice threatening to tear iraq apart can the war torn country manage to pressure from both sides to talk about this i'm joined by dr ali allawi iraq's former minister of trade and finance. emerging from a life or death struggle against isis iraq is managing to hold itself together while hoping that the new faces in the capital will steer it forward safe and sound but with iran and the united states using iraq as

a competitive arena can baghdad stay out of the turnaround washington cold war forever does the new government risk being torn apart by the foreign players rivalry over is the profit to be made from trying to play both sides. dr allawi rocks were minister of trade stefansson finance welcome to the show it's really great to have you with us today dr levy the spokesman for the u.s. led coalition in iraq has said that american forces will remain in the country as long as there are need it there earlier the pentagon said that u.s. troops would withdraw when diaster is decide it do you think that will happen. really is no need for the military. resurgence of the. activity there seems to be some. incidents. from two which seems to indicate that there is the post. very grouping in that area

so unless and until that threat is removed i think united states will find a reason to prolong its presence in iraq and also there are those small pockets of isis in kirkuk and on bar provinces and given iraqi army's considerable success in fighting the ash candy eliminate they remain in jihadists without america's help. i think so yes i mean as you said rightly that is not fragmented they're trying to regroup but i doubt if they will get to the same scale and scope of activities that they had before so there will be pockets of insurgency activity some perhaps intense and i think all of that is or is within the capabilities of the iraqi security forces the united states really provides primarily support and sometimes intelligence on the ground but that was in the early years of the of the war against the irish now i think both of these capabilities are well in hand by the

iraqi security forces but why do you think it's taken so long to finally eliminate them from iraq i mean it's been a long time since diana has been reduced to this couple of small pockets in the countryside well i mean the insurgency or the whatever you want to call it didn't come out of a vacuum there's a certain organic connection between it and the insurgency that opted after the american invasion occupation of two thousand and three twenty dollar meant during the period say between twenty ten and twenty fourteen but it was fed by the civil war in syria and then. a much more dangerous and formidable way in iraq the point i'm trying to make here is that on this the on the lying circumstances that allowed for the emergence of this very very violence. i think that we may get the sons and even grandsons of diet at some point in the future it's

primarily a political issue in iraq that has taken on military. and in the final analysis once you contain the terrorist aspect of it and the insurgency aspect of it you have to tackle the problem politically so are you are you saying they're going to stay there for another fifteen years. no i'm not saying they're going to be there but they will there will be a form of violent resistance to the changes that have taken place in iraq since two thousand and three it will wax and wane and until you get a stable political order the start is to reach the bulk of the population subscribes to i think the underlying circumstances might not be. you know necessarily conducive to long term peace so you have to undertake really serious reconstruction serious economic development serious integration of the destroyed areas into the national weave them back into the national fabric once this is done

i think this is a multi-year multi a program it's on likely to eliminate the. found the wellsprings of this violent resistance so another big thing is united states withdrawal from the iran nuclear deal and united states imposing sanctions against everyone wanting to continue trading with iran that the new prime minister of iraq will be ruled by its own interests before falling in line was u.s. policy is against tehran can baghdad really confront washington on this while it still depends on it militarily. i don't think it kind of to a point obviously but if it if it goes if it breaks flagrantly the american unilateral sanctions on iran it has to be prepared to pay the consequences and the consequence is that the united states controls most of the international agencies on which iraq is one way or another dependent especially the financial agencies in

washington and as much as they can influence the disposition of the resources the financial resources available in our excess to two international markets and obviously they can affect the extent to which the. government can. declare an independent course of action music be it on. time i think that actually government does have a very cogent argument that it's interest with iran so intertwined at the economic and commercial level that it would be. in everyone's interests including that of united states not to see this disrupted to the detriment of the arche economy so they have an entry point but if the trump administration insists on implementing the sanctions to the finest points possible they have very powerful sources of leverage on the ark especially on the banking and financial side well because right

now we are getting reports that iraq will stop trucking crude trauma care cooking oil filter iran and will export it to turkey to avoid u.s. sanctions but what do you think that means does it mean that baghdad is already dancing to washington student yes i mean this is probably a much more easy and much more visible way of acting out the american sanctions and the more difficult and complicated issue especially the supply of gas from iran into iraq which really fires a lot of the electricity. stations and until we find alternative source of gods there's no way that all of this stuff is from serious actress the problems. unilaterally despond this relationship there's also a very strong relationship at the level of tourism is religious tourism and there are because a very important market for any and goods some of these goods can be substituted

for but not all of them so implementing the american sanctions to the utmost degrees going to have a very profound deteriorates effect on the ark economy there are a few governments will try to meet some of the more visible aspects of of the sanctions but otherwise there would have to rethink that and i don't think anyone's doubting whether fact that iran iraq are very intertwined on many levels iraq's foreign ministry spokesman ahmed majuba said that baghdad may be asking washington to exclude the country from the sanctions which may hit iraq because of its extensive cooperation with iran does baghdad believe this is possible i mean we have john bolton and don trump running the show in america yes i mean again you have to second guess what's taking place in washington and what's really drives american policy towards not only towards iran but towards entire middle east situation it is partly that. sort of unilateral nationalism

together with a much more ideologically driven position taken by the new neo cons the post neo cons they may be able to affect the overall direction of policy and if that policy becomes in fact the way the united states is going to engage and interact with iraq is going to have very serious repercussions not only domestically but the region as a whole you know also a part for military assistance washington can really help bug out put economic reforms in place and fight rampant corruption. what does tehran have to offer iraq that could beat what washington is offering well we must we must accept that iran played a very powerful part to organizing the resistance to. not show up on the scene until one or two months after the. fall of the fall of. iran jump to the jumped into the into the fray very played

a very important part in mobilizing the resistance and the the fight back after the collapse of the iraqi army so iran has. a stabilizing role to play when it comes to these these larger issues and it's not easy for us to find an alternative to the to the kind of on the ground support that we have in the early days of the of the of the dice crisis when dice was nearly few miles from the center of baghdad and there's really nothing to stop it apart from the popular forces that came into being primarily as a result of the. society but organized on the grown but by. the officers opinion pieces in american press are urging the u.s. government to get involved in supporting the new iraqi government saying that it will provide an antidote to they ran an influence in

a country whose influence on iraq is stronger and more influential right now iranian or american well i mean loans influences searches quite deep inside especially in the center and south of the country and i think also these as it has increasingly strong effect on the. the political class is coming from the north and the west of the country so and also in kurdistan and so the range of a matter of iranian influence and connection is really quite quite wide and in some cases quite deep they also have a direct effect on the. disposition of the popular mobilization forces a. number of very senior people in the high should never connected with iran so the range and extent of the range of influence is wider and deeper than that of the united states united states influence is primarily available what i'll call the elites the political there's no sort of america party

and inside iraq there are no large groups of populations that instinctively support the united states perhaps accords the united states is reasonably popular but apart from that i don't think there's much reservoir of goodwill popular at the popular vote to have states there's also that there isn't that point because of all of goodwill it crosses cuts across. boundaries cuts across. cities and costs across classes and so it is it is much more woven into the domestic fabric of. politics in the united states united states operates of the level of individuals elites and the institutions of the government all right we're going to take a short break right now when we're back we'll continue talking to dr ali allawi iraq's foreign minister of trait defense and finance discussing the situation in a war torn country stay with us.

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and we're back with dr allawi iraq's former minister of trade defense and finance talking about the tensions and post isis iraq. now you were the stone opponent of saddam hussein in your life but you say that the two thousand and three u.s. invasion was illegal and resulted in dire consequences for iraq and the whole middle east are you saying that the removing of the dictator wasn't worth it. not really and this is a loaded question you have to look at look back in the circumstances of two thousand and two two thousand and three that that led to the invasion and occupation i'm on the record as being against using military force overthrow saddam the fact of the matter that it took place. and overthrew a dictatorship that's obviously a positive but replacement which was chaos and anarchy and then on leash the whole . the whole episode one of the most violent episodes in modern middle eastern history is something that has to be connected and those responsible for launching

the war have to take responsibility for it. to me and it is not really the equation doesn't really hold whether it's it was worthwhile or a lot of cause getting good or addicted to ship is an important event but destroying the political framework of the country and up ending the entire middle east and all that without having any sustainable and stable replacement for it and unwilling to take the consequences of these drastic actions is something else entirely if you want to make it if you want to make an equation out of it you would say yes there are certain certain freedoms and rights that were denied in the past that are now available but in exchange for that you have a huge personal insecurity physical destruction dislocations and displacement of people and i think the invasion of iraq also on least the forces that ultimately led to the abortive out of spring and then the terrible war in syria so

these consequences were not taken into account i told. the the weight of overthrowing. an established sovereign albeit a terrible dictations to a sovereign state was not taken into account the consequences of which one will take into account and those who are responsible. for embarking on this adventure including a number of iraqis who participated willingly and have to take responsibility for the post-war kills that the new prime minister abdullah do not he has written some time ago that the job of leading iraq is too complicated to burdened by a special interest by corruption and that he won't have enough political strength to succeed fast word a few months and he's the prime minister do you think he was right when he was saying that he will fail i mean he idolizes correctly but you can also.

look at it as a kind of conditional manifesto for him to attend to attain the position of prime minister he set out the issues and the complexities and the negative aspects of it with the assumption that if these were removed then the circumstances would be acceptable for him to assume the post i can only assume that he feels no that the circumstances that drove him to write this memo of a few months ago have been removed and that he has a fair shot at the reforming the very dysfunctional political system that has misgoverned this country for so long but also their love didn't matter he is not an immensely popular politician at all you don't think that he would be treated as a compromise like a puppet to be manipulated by real political forces in iraq by militias political parties etc. concert he speak for that i mean he obviously is

a very very adept and competent competent political figure he knows the distribution of forces and well what finally gave him political power it's really up to him to decide whether he's going to make a stunt move towards genuine change and reform or he will he will not risk his hold on power by confronting the political factions that have played such a large part of destroying political integrity of the country it is really his choice i think i want to talk a bit about syria because you say that you can't solve the problems of syria without solving the problems of iraq what exact problem in iraq right now is affecting the situation in syria. well i think the more iraq becomes a stable unified country focused on development focused on improving human welfare

focused on the moving some of the bottom and off circles are forced into it in the past the more it can it's going to be able to play a part in creating. the necessary foundations for a regional economy which would necessarily include some kind of partnership with countries like syria with countries like iran with countries like turkey creating a new dispensation a new economic political dispensation in which post-war syria can fit in it is impossible i believe to resolve the problems of each of these countries individually without looking at them in the regional context for example the terrible water crisis that we have in iraq i mean our rivers originate elsewhere the euphrates that originates in turkey and process with syria it's impossible to have. a local or a purely a rocky water policy which is really important i mean large number of the population works in our great culture without working out the issues with both

turkey and syria so there is the issue for example of removing trade barriers of energy exchanges exchanges of the electricity grid and so on opening groups transport routes to the mediterranean all these require a very coordinated set of regional policies that buying these countries together in a framework that is different from what it was in the past which was an extremely negative form of competitive one upmanship frequently leading to plotting against your neighbor and trying to change the system of government after the civil war in syria after hopefully were able to stabilize iraq on a sustainable basis the next step must be to work toward some kind of regional and regional confederation of not only an economic level but hopefully the political level to. create the foundations of stupidity. so like you're saying more than two thirds of iraq's drinking water comes from outside so for instance whenever turkey

needs to feel its reservoirs with water upstream iraq is failing it can water be used by iraq's neighbors to exert political pressure on it how can deal with this loner ability. well you know i'm of course that kind because as i said earlier something like seventy percent of iraq's population works and we're now going through very very critical time of water shortages as turkey feels is down and also iran iran a lot of these tributaries of the of the tigris flow from iraq but iran really accounts for something like twenty percent of the water flow into the iraqi water system eighty percent comes turkey and syria so turkey is much more important partner in this in this aspect we have to we have to have some kind of regional water water treaty a water. system that allows for the various demands of these various countries without destroying the the cultural viability of the down down the river countries

downstream countries in this case iraq these are i mean well established procedures and systems for creating bilateral and multilateral treaties riparian treaties that allow for the distribution of water and equitable way this has been ignored because of the crisis in iraq for the last forty years has not been a party to any of these agreements turkey went ahead and built its huge dam system without really much much consideration for is going to happen downstream same thing happened in syria with the building of a diamond the said lake and so on very little consideration was given to the effect on. iraq we can't allow these problems to be resolved the way that they have been classically years old which is through confrontation and conflict and wars and so on we have to do it in a peaceful mutually supportive mutually constructive method whereby needs.

and requirements and advocation is done with proper attention to the needs and requirements of each of these countries iraq has been the really the at the tail end of all of these. unilateral. water policies leaving us with an immense immense problem we have to meet in a few clothes and they know that street protests already erupted in basra before over water shortages and the harrowing examples of drought leading to dire consequences is just next door in syria how dangerous can this get. the community extremely dangerous i mean we're talking about the population of iraq over thirty forty million people here and as i said a lot of iraq is still in our good cultural society in spite of the fact that it appears to be a kind of it's also a major or an exporter but most of the people who work in agriculture if you get large scale displacement of populations rural urban migration flooding into the

cities and not enough jobs are available and the government being the employer of last resort you create this social. conditions that you had in syria that plays a very large part in creating the sense of dispossession and this and so oppression that faded into the into the narrative of the terrorists and said the same thing can happen easily can happen in iraq if people abandon their farms. people can get water for the for the cops or for their animals they will leave they have no choice and when they come into the cities and up and slums demanding jobs from the government the government is fiscally stressed so what will happen you have you have hundreds of thousands of people living in shanty towns prone to prone to all kinds of extreme ideologies and social extreme social movements. all right thank you very much for this interview and it's been great talking to you

were talking to dr ali allawi iraq's former minister of trade stefansson finance discussing the iraqi troubles and contacts a broader middle east that's it for this edition of. i go to a place called camp sundown to get for people that can't decide and they're like so vampires. this is like a safe house i guess they don't have to talk about what they go through with us because we understand her daughter katie was diagnosed with a very rare sun sensitive condition if i get sunburned i heal she doesn't feel

patients are going to have problems with the walk to talk to your son the brains of her actually shrinking inside the stove gets flicker in the brain still small. the pain is indescribable it's feels like a really really bad chemical burn but it goes through your skin in your muscle all the way down to the bone and there's no really. we're not to sure this is just. what is the next step for the saga known as breaks it also is a stage being said to finally end the syrian conflict and why is m i six scrambling to stop trump. when a loved one is murder it's natural to seek the death penalty for the murder i would

prefer it be to the death penalty just because i think that's the fair thing the right thing research shows that for every nine executions one convict is found innocent the idea that we were executing innocent people is terrifying lose just moon hasn't been that we're even many of the times families want the death penalty to be abolished the reason we have to keep the death penalty here is because that's what murder victims' families what that's going to give them peace that's going to give them justice and we come in and say. that class. we've been through this this isn't the way. i really want to say.

to me. leave them on that line you know said the reason he. was. really pissed off. the. ukraine's president has called on his country's parliament to consider declaring martial law in response to russian detaining three ukrainian naval ships on sunday off the coast of crimea. the deal we have agreed to. future for the u.k. . and u.k. prime minister to raise them against the e.u. seal of approval for brags that divorce terms though she now faces a tough.