Iraq

Iraq awoke to a statement by the Multi National Forces that Al-Qaeda in Iraq is planning more and more suicide and car bombings, specifically stolen ambulances. The one district that is specifically mentioned is the Karakh district of Baghdad. The US military has announced that it has intelligence to this effect. This is the day after over 50 people were killed in a bombing at a funeral in the Diyala province, for two brothers who had turned against Al-Qaeda. The brothers were part of the Diyala Awakening group, the type that has spread across the country in the past year and has been said to be partly responsible for the decrease in violence along with Sadr’s ceasefire.

The US statement came on the heels of AQI’s latest communication with their followers: a tape by Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Fancying himself one of the myriad political commentators we have on 24-hour television here in the US, Zawahiri says that the Bush administration is leaving a ‘problem’ to his successors by ensuring that the troops remain in Iraq for the rest of his term. He also calls the Iraq war ‘a failure’, echoing a few American politicians.

The New York Times has a great piece on the dismissal of 1,300 soldiers and policemen in the wake of the Basra offensive. Stephen Farrell writes that there have been revelations “more than 1,000 members of the security forces had laid down their weapons during the fight“. There were a multitude of reasons behind the refusals to fight: basically, it is impossible to say that all of these policemen and soldiers were on the sympathetic to the Mehdi Army (although some invariably were). The highest rank dismissed was brigadier general, according to the report.

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley (a remarkably quiet NSA when compared with his predecessor) has joined the chorus of voices from the Bush administration condemning Iran’s influence in Iraq. According to Hadley, “I think that one of the interesting developments of Prime Minister Maliki’s offensive in Basra is that it has revealed to the Shia, particularly, in the Iraqi government, the level of Iranian malign influence in the south and on their economic heartline through Basra”. He was speaking on Fox News Sunday (a full transcript of the interview is available here).