Sabah Mokhtar, President of the Arab Lawyers Association in the United Kingdom, said about al-Qaeda in Iraq: “Al-Qaeda is used as a tool, a tool that Assad & Maliki are using. As a result, Western powers, Russia, the US, Europe, everyone immediately jump on this bandwagon as if they want to fight al-Qaeda… When you look at the situation in Iraq during the past year, you see a year of civil disobedience and continuing demonstrations. No one is talking about al-Qaeda or terrorist organizations. However, when Maliki decided to uproot these protests he immediately started using the term al-Qaeda.”