AQI suicide bomber attacks 1920 Revolution Brigades HQ in Muqdadiyah, north of Baghdad.
Islamic Army in Iraq battles AQI in Salahuddin Province, 16 killed.
If anything will eventually end the Sunni insurgency, this is it.
One wonders, however, if there will really be anything left of Iraq once it’s over. We have already seen massive social change since 2003, equivalent to one or more “revolutions” from the old Iraq:
- Rise of the Shi’i religious parties in the south and center - SCIRI/ISCI/SIIC, the Sadrist Current, regional parties like Fadhila in Basra
- Fall of the old Ba’athist order and fragmentation in the Sunni areas
- Sectarian cleansing of Baghdad and the flight of the middle class
- Kurdish near-independence
However things end for the United States, these broad social changes will continue to play out to unknown ends in Iraq for years to come.
A check of my fearless predictions from May shows that my all-seeing eye wasn’t too cockeyed. Fadhila is still holding on by its fingernails in Basra, though.
