Saturday, October 15, 2005

This is what we are training.

From Editor & Publisher comes the details of the Knight-Ridders correspondent time embedded with US trained Iraqi troops. It ain't pretty.
Lasseter writes that "a week spent eating, sleeping and going on patrol with a crack unit of the Iraqi army" (the 4,500-member 1st Brigade of the 6th Iraqi Division) suggests that the Bush exit strategy of turning over military control to the Iraqis "is in serious trouble. Instead of rising above the ethnic tension that's tearing their nation apart, the mostly Shiite troops are preparing for, if not already fighting, a civil war against the minority Sunni population."

Indeed, the soldiers he traveled with are "seeking revenge against the Sunnis who oppressed them during Saddam Hussein's rule."

American commanders often refer to the 1st Brigade as a template for the future of Iraq's military, and sometimes they operate on their own, other times with American firepower taking the lead. But Lasseter notes that increasingly "they look and operate less like an Iraqi national army unit and more like a Shiite militia."
We often forget that, for all its modern trappings, Iraq was always a tribal state. Whether is was external conquerors or internal strongmen, it was the heavy hand of the ruler that kept it together. And we took that all away and put nothing in its place. A great many people are going to die while the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds sort it out. As one Iraqi sergeant puts it, "Your country had to have a civil war. It will be the same here. Everything in this world has its price. In Iraq the price for peace will be blood."

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