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 5/10 Good --- thecurrent.theatlantic.com http://feeds.feedburner.com/theatlantic/TZRn
Tuesday, May 13, 2008 --- 73 days ago http://thecurrent.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/malikis-southern-strategy.php
| Iraqi Security Forces have succeeded in temporarily pacifying Basra. Even the most diehard Iraq hawks want to reduce the U.S. military footprint in Iraq and lean more heavily on Iraqi Security Forces to do the hard work of defeating insurgents and sectarian militias. Which is why recent developments in Basra have been so encouraging . At first, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's decision to confront Moqtada al-Sadr's Iranian-backed militas looked like a major strategic misstep. Now it appears to have transformed Iraqi politics, potentially paving the way for real reconciliation between Sunni and Shia.
Maliki had long depended on Sadr's support, on the street and in Iraq's parliament, where 32 Sadrists form a crucial bloc. And, so, understandably, Sadr's Sunni opponents -- who see him, rightly, as a power-mad half-literate street tough with delusions of grandeur -- were reluctant to trust Maliki. The same was true of Sadr's Shia rivals.
These factions recognized what too many American observers miss, which is Sadr's uniquely pernicious role in Iraqi politics -- both as an agent of instability and as a stalking horse for Iran. Virtually all of Iraq's political factions have been at one time or another beneficiaries of Iranian largesse, but the Sadrist relationship with Iran is of a different kind. Sadr first came to prominence as the authentic voice of Iraq's Shia masses, those who endured Saddam's misrule and never ... |
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