Sectarianism began with US-picked Council, Makiya says

" 'There were failures at the level of leadership, and they’re overwhelmingly Iraqi failures,' he [Iraqi intellectual Kanan Makiya] said. Chief among the culprits, he added, were the Iraqis picked by the Americans in 2003 to sit on the Iraqi Governing Council, many of them exiles who tried to create popular bases for themselves by emphasizing sectarian and ethnic differences.
'Sectarianism began there,' he said.
Mr. Makiya said he preferred not to name names. But it is well known that he had a falling out with Mr. [Ahmad] Chalabi after Mr. Chalabi began courting Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, in order to win support in Iraq’s first national elections. For years before the war, Mr. Makiya had toiled with Mr. Chalabi to organize the Iraqi exiles who, despite disparate ideologies, stood united in their hatred of Mr. Hussein.
Then there is the small issue of American policy. 'Everything they could do wrong, they did wrong,' Mr. Makiya said. 'The first and the biggest American error was the idea of going for an occupation.' "

source
Wong, Edward. (The New York Times). Critic of Hussein Grapples With Horrors of Post-Invasion Iraq. March 24, 2007.

posted: monday, march 26, 2007, 9:34 PM ET

tags: iraq kanan makiya moktada al-sadr ahmed chalabi