The Brits quite understandably pulled out of most combat operations Basra, and by extension most of their military commitment to Iraq a while ago, and now we see what happens. This is a good example (on a smaller scale due to the more homogeneous religious make-up of Basra) of what will happen to Baghdad when the Americans finally pull out.
BAGHDAD — Shiite militias in Basra openly controlled wide swaths of the city on Saturday and staged increasingly bold raids on Iraqi government forces sent in five days ago to wrest control from the gunmen, witnesses said, as Iraqi political leaders grew increasingly critical of the stalled assault.
Violence Flares Across the South
Witnesses in Basra said that members of the most powerful militia in the city, the Mahdi Army, were setting up checkpoints and controlling traffic in many places ringing the central district controlled by some of the 30,000 Iraqi Army and police forces involved in the assault. Fighters were regularly attacking the government forces, then quickly retreating.
I am no supporter of the débâcle in Iraq, and I do hope that McCain's noises about being less ready to invade places marks a more realistic American foreign policy. That said, more chaos surely follows any major pull-out of American forces from Iraq in the near future, so I imagine they'll continue to put good money (blood and treasure) after bad for a while yet. What price democracy in the (Arab) middle east? More I suspect than even the USA can afford...
Closer to home, I don't feel that things would go quite like this were Canada to pull out of Afghanistan, but Iraq and Afghanistan are apples and oranges. If NATO gave up, Afghanistan would likely be split into north and south, much as it was before we showed up, albeit the North would be able to stand on its' own (with help). Welcome to Talibanistan, free-fire zone...
We'll be in the 'Stan for some time yet, so hopefully NATO steps up and sends more troops where we need them to move things along a bit. I don't want to see any repeats of Basra in OUR sandbox...
2 comments:
Uniquely interesting blog; a good read.
Thanks atyp; you're to the best of my knowledge both my first American reader and the only non friend or friend-of-a-friend to read this. I'd like a bigger audience (wouldn't we all?) but it's mainly an outlet.
Good luck with your business, and I hope I can continue to be interesting.
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