Iraqis Demand a US Withdrawal

David Enders Thu Sep 15
....What Iraq will look like in the wake of a US withdrawal is uncertain. Already, Shiite political parties in the south, which is relatively stable in terms of violence against occupying forces and the government, have begun fighting one another for power, while police have turned a blind eye to extrajudicial killings and allegedly carried out some of their own. In the central region a low-level civil war is already taking place despite the presence of the US military, which has also failed to stop Kurds in the north from displacing Arabs and Turkmen in a bid to win a referendum on whether the oil city of Kirkuk should come under the administration of the autonomous Kurdish authority, which already runs three majority-Kurdish governorates in the north. The Iraqi army units trained and deployed by the United States in hostile cities like Falluja are made up of soldiers from other parts of the country, whom the locals accuse of oppressive tactics and random arrests. What is certain, say many Assembly members, is that the occupation has failed. .....