Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized

Battle For Baghdad Us Troops Clashed

Juan Cole 08/07/2006

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

Battle for Baghdad

US troops clashed with the Mahdi Army of clerical nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr in Sadr City Monday morning.

A car bombing of a large hall being used for a mourning gathering killed at least 15 and wounded at least 30 in Tikrit, a Sunni Arab city north of Baghdad. Saddam Hussein and his clan hail from this city.

In the capital, the US military and Iraqi soldiers of the elected government launched a big security operation. Some 3500 US troops had been brought down from Mosul (where security promptly collapsed, according to al-Zaman).

It turns out that the Sunni Arab guerrilla strategy had been gradually to ethnically cleanse southern districts of the capital [Ar.], so as to cut it off from the Shiite south. One observer in Baghdad told a friend of mine that this operation is make or break. If the US cannot stop the deterioration of security in Baghdad at this point, then the capital is lost, and with it the country.

Ironically, after intensively covering Iraq for over three years, the US mass media are largely missing this story, the pivotal one for the endgame.

Despite the big military operation, guerrillas ambushed an Iraqi checkpoint on Sunday, killing 5 Iraqi policemen. And there were two bombings (details not known). And 20 bodies were found in the streets, victims of faith-based hatred. Four bodies were found in the Tigris near Suwayra.

Some 10,000 ex-Baathists who had been fired from government jobs after the war have now been reinstated.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....