Situation in Iraq
December 13th, 2006 by ashish
The situation in Iraq is getting worse. Sectarian violence is wide-spread; with the Iraqi government unwilling to control the death squads, and the American military unable to take them head-on to the extent that a feasible Iraqi army and police gets setup.
The Iraqi study group has come out with some recommendations, primarily recommending speaking to some states that the Bush administration regards as rogue states or states supporting terrorism (Iran and Syria). In addition, the US military needs to more intensively train the Iraqi units to make them more capable of combating terrorism and enable the US to leave the region.
This however is not easy as it sounds; if the US policy leads to a concept whereby the Sunnis appear to be losing out, then Saudi Arabia and other sunni dominant states will intervene to prevent the sunnis from losing out. In addition, no one actually wants a Shia dominated Iran influenced government in Iraq. Such a happening would make the Iranians very very dominant in the region, and make it much more difficult to control their nuclear ambitions.
The only sensible way forward is to temporarily devote more troops to the region, and use these troops for the purpose of training. This training should include a lot of stuff about driving home the point that the army and police have to remain unbiased if the Iraqi nation has to exist as an entity. In addition, the current army should go after the Shia death squads, whether they be in the Government of belonging to Muqtada al-Sadr.
