Al-Maliki says ISIS emerged from the Anbar's 2014 protests with U.S. backing

Shafaq News/ Nouri al-Maliki, the head of the State of Law bloc in the Iraqi parliament, on Saturday said that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) emerged from the protests that erupted in western Iraq during his second tenure as a prime minister of the country.

In a speech at a memorial ceremony in Baghdad for Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in a US drone strike in January 2020, al-Maliki said that ISIS was concepted by the U.S. in the Anbar, a Sunni-majority province in western Iraq.

"We have all the details about how ISIS was formed and why it was formed," al-Maliki said.

Al-Maliki was Iraq's prime minister for two successive terms from 2006 until 2014, when he was forced to resign after ISIS seized control of large swathes of Iraq. ISIS was eventually defeated by Iraqi forces backed by a US-led coalition of international forces.

Al-Maliki also said that the Iraqi people would not accept the presence of foreign troops on their land.

"We have the capacity, the security forces, and the weapons to confront terrorism," he said. "We do not need foreign forces."

Al-Maliki praised the role of Soleimani and al-Muhandis in defeating ISIS.

"If it were not for the efforts of Soleimani, al-Muhandis, and the Iraqi people, we would not have been able to confront ISIS," he said.

He also criticized the United Nations Security Council for its inaction in the face of what he colled "foreign aggression".

"Where does the Security Council from the countries that are invading other countries?" he asked. "Where does the Security Council stand from the crime of killing the leaders of this victory?"