More US forces in Iraq
January 11th, 2007 by ashish
So President Bush is pushing more troops to Iraq. Last I heard, this involved upto an additional 20,000 troops, a fair number of which are destined to try and prevent the bloodshed that is happening in Baghdad.
Baghdad is indeed the fair center of the major forces threatening to tear Iraq apart. It is a mixed city with people from all sects, the political center of the country. It is also the place where a large number of Iraqis have dead, earlier due to bombings, and later due to individual attention from death squads. Both cases have been sectarian, threatening to split the 2 main communities apart.
Baghdad has also suffered from some amount of over-US optimism and some bad planning. What was needed was an effort to introduce all out development, crush the Sunni insurgency and certainly not allow the Shia death squads. This would have had the effect of gaining the support of the local population. Over a period of time, the security situation went from bad to worse, and that in turn is derailing development efforts. People are not able to see any clear benefit from American efforts, and in extreme cases are wishing for the stability that was available under Saddam’s rule.
Even now the situation is retrievable; what is required is intensive training of the police and army to make them a usable instrument to improve the security situation; and to put an incredible amount of pressure on the Iraqi government so as to get them to think about the country and not try to bring in a rule of the Shias.
