Word: anbar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...today Mansour is boxed in by bloodshed. To the north and south, the Shi'ite death squads of the Jaish al-Mahdi have pushed in block by block over the past year, warning Sunni families to move or be killed. In response, Sunni insurgents have poured in from Anbar province, bringing with them weapons, explosives and suicide bombers. The warring forces have made my old neighborhood one of the most dangerous areas in Baghdad...
Asked in Red Oak how she would disengage from Iraq, she gave a precise, nuanced and up-to-the-minute answer: Withdraw the troops from the areas of sectarian conflict like Baghdad, keep a small force fighting al-Qaeda in al-Anbar province, move some troops to the Turkish border, protect the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and other civilian facilities, maintain a special-operations capability. And then, instead of the usual lip service to training Iraqi forces, she said, "We may also leave some forces to help train the Iraqis if there seems a chance this Iraqi government will...
...Iraqi politicians the more dramatic news might be where the country's unexpected reserves lie, rather than their size. The report says about 100 billion barrels of oil and a large amount of gas lie in the Sunni-dominated Al-Anbar province. Until now, Sunni politicians have feared economic devastation if Iraq divided into a federation or imploded into disparate ethnic states, since the territory dominated by their ethnic group was thought to be the only one without large reserves of oil. (Both the Shi'ite south and Kurdish north have productive fields.) "The Western desert has lain dormant," says...
...before large-scale production begins. These days, Iraq produces about 2 million barrels of oil a day, down from about 3 million before the war. It's lethally dangerous for oil workers, and virtually no international company dares operate outside Kurdistan. For all its promise, the Sunni-dominated al-Anbar province is where insurgents have waged a vicious fight against American and Iraqi forces. Until now it has seen almost no energy production at all. Decades of war and sanctions have left oil wells in serious disrepair, and Iraqi officials say they will need about $20 billion in repairs...
Though more tribal violence seems an odd solution for war-torn Iraq, the U.S. is hopeful that Iraqis will finally rise up against al-Qaeda outsiders. In Anbar province, a U.S.-backed council of Sunni sheiks has made it its mission to force al-Qaeda out of the area. On April 6, the council announced it had killed four al-Qaeda operatives. "Our work," read a statement from the sheik heading the council, "continues until we finish them...