Obama's anti-IS envoy: Shiites saved Iraq
President Obama's envoy praises all sides in a bid to keep the coalition together.
Shiite militants helped save Iraq from the Islamic State, President Barack Obama's envoy to the anti-IS coalition told Congress at a Feb. 10 hearing.
Brett McGurk's blunt comments underscore the envoy's gargantuan task of juggling the competing interests of a broad array of forces that often seem more at war with each other than with their stated enemy. McGurk took turns praising Turkey, the Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis and the international community during the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, while urging all of them to put their differences aside and cooperate in Iraq and Syria.
Pressed by Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., as to whether he had deliberately excluded Iran-backed militias as a destabilizing force in his written testimony, McGurk responded by praising Iraqi Ayatollah Ali Sistani's June 2014 call to arms.
"It was a really critical moment," McGurk answered, "and had he not done that I think it would have been very hard to check what [IS] was doing, because they were on a rampage."
