After rather peaceful elections in Iraq on Saturday, U.S. troops are finally starting to step back. In the days before the elections, people were able to drive safely from the Turkish border in the north to Baghdad and south to Basra without seeing an American convoy. In the Green Zone, the primary PX is set to close and Americans have returned to their embassy compound.
Most Iraqis are ready for Americans to leave. Many feel that they can handle problems on their own and that American involvement has only made some matters worse and more confusing. The American military is worried about security in the provinces of Nineveh and Diyala, where counterinsurgency operations are still going on, and where there are signs of activity by Sunni extremist groups. However, the military also sees this as a test of Iraq's political stability, to see whether Iraqis can handle and resolve their sectarian and ethnic tensions.
However, no matter how much the U.S. pulls back, Iraq and the U.S. will always be interdependent. The Iraqis still need U.S. troops to lessen terrorist activities, and protect them from their neighbors, Syria and Iran, while the U.S. still needs Iraq as "a strategic prize close to the Middle East flash points of Israel, Lebanon and Syria as well as Iran and the oil-rich Persian Gulf countries." The Iraqi Parliament and the U.S. settled a security agreement in November that sealed the date of departure: by the end of 2011.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
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3 comments:
I for one am very excited because the results show that the secular parties have done well. This means less sectarian politics, and more ideological politics (wow, I can't believe I'm hoping for a Democratic-Republican-like divide in another country)!
Well, this seems nice, but I don't think peace can last. After all, there are a lot of people who are upset with the US and imagine if an anti-US president came up. WHat would the US do? probably intervene in some way but anyway, i hope that they can keep everything under control because if they can't, well that would be most unpleasant
I'm just glad and satisfied that Obama is proving himself to be a promising man. Hopefully we will be able to retreat all of our troops before anything else may intervene. Overall Obama has been busy indeed.
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