News From Afghanistan

A Friday tradition.

Open Post

Target: Baghdad

Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq, sets a bold course. He declares several goals - security, reconstruction, incorporation of militias into the national security services - and declares Baghdad the focus of the counter-terror campaign:

Baghdad is home to a quarter of Iraq's population and is its financial and political center. This government of national unity will launch an initiative to secure the capital and confront the ethnic cleansing that is taking place in many areas around it. We will meet head-on the armed gangs and terrorists who we believe constitute the main threat to security. Furthermore, we will develop and strengthen the country's intelligence services, which represent the best form of defense against terrorist bombings.

We believe we will soon reach a tipping point in our battle against the terrorists as Iraqi security services increase in size and capacity, taking more and more responsibility away from the multinational forces.

While Anbar experiences more attacks per capita, Baghdad is now the most violent location in Iraq. Note, however, Major General Caldwell's comment from today's press briefing:

Q Sir, where is that raid, please?

GEN. CALDWELL: I'll have to get that location for you. It's in and around the Baghdad area. I looked at the 17 sites today. All of them either inside Baghdad or within about a 15-mile radius right around Baghdad, but centered -- all 17 around the Baghdad area.

It appears increasingly likely that coalition operations in Anbar province, along with increased resentment by the population there, had indeed pushed al Qaeda in Iraq into an ever-constricting ring around Baghdad. While this is also evident from the death toll there, perhaps the peak has been reached.

That was the Week That Was

Last Friday's news from Iraq:

The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq urged Sunnis to confront Shiites and ignore calls for reconciliation in a new audiotape posted Friday on the Web, saying Shiite militias are killing and raping the Sunni Arab minority.

The tape was a four-hour sermon by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi against Shiites, denouncing their top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani as an "atheist," and saying the community had collaborated with invaders throughout Iraq's history.

Since then:

First division-level handover of territory to Iraqi troops in Anbar

Zarqawi meets his maker

Ministers of Defense and Interior named

Elsewhere,

An Islamic terror group busted up in Canada

An Islamic terror group busted up in Britain

In the background, an investigation by the DoD into charges against Marines in Haditha goes on - said investigation being another example of "doing the right thing", even as some demand its immediate conclusion.

And in a thousand other stories that few will ever hear, the yeoman's work of winning the war on terror continues.

In the department of irony, immediately prior to all this the LA Times noted:

TV Reporters Decry Drop In Iraq Coverage

The deaths of two CBS crew members have put the war back at the top of prime-time news, but journalists say they sense a growing apathy.

News of the bombing that felled a CBS news crew washed over Baghdad's tight-knit press corps like a tempest this week — evoking waves of anxiety, sadness, resolve and more than a little dismay.

American television journalists covering Iraq confronted the difficult reality that it took the deaths of a cameraman and soundman and critical injuries to correspondent Kimberly Dozier to help push Iraq back to the forefront of the nightly news back home.
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ABC correspondent John Berman in Baghdad wrote in his blog recently that he and his colleagues felt like the castaways on the network's prime-time drama "Lost" — "We have come to the conclusion that no one knows we are here."

Her life saved by "military medicine", Ms Dozier is now back in the States, and we wish her a speedy and full recovery.

The other side in this war had their moments too. It's Friday again. Expect more violence in Iraq, as those who've suffered so many defeats this week will have something to prove.