Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi blasted the Shiite militias in his country and compared them to ISIS. "Did we fight the bloody Baathist regime only to be ruled by gangs?" he said in a TEDxBaghdad speech. Abadi warned the Shiite militias not to try to "fool" him by reminding him that they belong to the same sect as him. This is what ISIS said to the Sunnis, Abadi explained, before it killed them, burned their cities, and banished them. The comments were made on May 20 and posted on YouTube.

Haider Al-Abadi: Without unity, we cannot offer anything to society or to the world. In an atmosphere of disputes, conflicts, protectionism, nepotism, and corruption, there is not much we can offer, because all the good we do will be devoured by the evil. When I talk about unity, I mean unity that is based on truth and justice, not on falsehood. There are many gangs that work together for falsehood, in order to break society, and in order to plunder the public funds. This is not the unity I am talking about. That is cooperation for the sake of evil, not for the sake of the public good and development.

[…]

They want to make the state and society as weak as possible in order to control them. They want their gangs to become stronger than the state and society, so they can control the resources of the people by force, by threat of weapons. If you raise your voice against them, they will kidnap you. Did we fight the bloody Baathist regime only to be ruled by gangs? Is this even conceivable? No, we fought it to live as free people. We will never let anybody - no matter who it is - rule us. Don't try to fool us by saying that we belong to the same sect. Didn't ISIS say that they were protecting the Sunnis? Wasn't this their method? Weren't these their lies? But then they killed the Sunnis, destroyed their cities, and banished them. They are all liars.

[…]