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26 Mar 2008 09:18 am
War In Baghdad And Basra
It is very hard to know what to make right now of the clashes in Basra and Baghdad between US and Maliki government forces and various Shiite militias. It is not hard to figure out that this is an extremely significant development:
Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood that is the center of the Mahdi
Army’s power, was sealed off by a cordon of Iraqi troops and what
appeared to be several American units. A New York Times photographer
who was able to get through the cordon found more layers of
checkpoints, each one run by about two dozen heavily armed Mahdi Army
fighters clad in tracksuits and T-shirts. Tires burned in the city
center, gunfire echoed against shuttered stores, and teams of fighters
in pickup trucks moved about brandishing machine guns, sniper rifles
and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
The great question these past few months has been how long the Shiite calm would last. I guess we're beginning to find out.
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