Word: itely
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...York Times in the days before the summit. First there was the report that Hizballah was training members of al-Sadr's militia. This placed in one bull's-eye almost all Bush's favorite evildoers-Hizballah; Iran and Syria (which support Hizballah); and al-Sadr, whose Shi'ite organization has been responsible for much of the recent violence against Sunnis in Iraq. The slap-Sadr scenario had some powerful covert supporters, especially among Sunni governments. The Saudis had summoned Dick Cheney to Riyadh on Nov. 25 in order to convey, among other things, their distress with the rise...
...Iraq Study Group? The group's underlying assumption is that Iraqi forces will be ready to take over from the U.S. military by early 2008. To test that thesis, it is instructive to look at parts of southern Iraq from which coalition forces have already been withdrawn. There Shi'ite militias backed by Iran have taken control, intimidating government forces into submission and terrorizing Sunnis. On several occasions Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, has had to plead with radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to restrain his fighters from killing soldiers and police--with limited results...
...killing today when it is able to call on the world's most powerful military, it can hardly be expected to do so once the Americans have left. The more likely outcome is an escalation of the civil war, with elements of the security forces taking sides. The Shi'ite militias will enjoy numerical superiority and the continued surreptitious backing of Shi'ite Iran. But what the Sunni insurgents lack in numbers, they make up for in greater killing experience. Their suicide bombers, fighters and improvised explosive devices are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the 2,800-plus...
With the U.S. gone, the intensified fighting would probably be internecine as well as sectarian. Shi'ite militias in the south have shown a propensity to fight one another, as have Sunni groups in the volatile Anbar province. Iraq could look very much like Afghanistan after the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet troops--sectarian or ethnic warlords battling for territory, with the backing of sponsors from neighboring countries. An Afghanistan-style civil war would provide international terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and Hizballah with fertile ground in which to recruit, train and battle-test a new generation of global jihadis...
...Iraqis would be targeted by all sides: the tens of thousands who have worked closely with the Americans--as translators, fixers, drivers, cooks, clerks, cleaners and managers. Both Sunni and Shi'ite extremists have repeatedly warned Iraqis that collaborating with the occupiers is punishable by execution, and many have already been killed merely because they were suspected of working with the Americans...