Basra - Here's The Good News Story

Basra RAF Detachment

From Times Online:

The city is firmly under the grip of Iraq's new security forces, and normal life is returning.

There is an interesting piece of graffiti on a bridge near Basra. A fleeing militiaman has scrawled “We'll be back”; underneath an Iraqi soldier has scribbled in reply “And we'll be waiting for you”.

The Shia militias, the Jaish al- Mahdi, who controlled large parts of Basra until March this year, has now gone and instead the city is firmly under the grip of Iraq's new security forces, in whom the coalition has invested so much training. They re-established control in April, in an operation romantically named “The Charge of the Knights”, systematically clearing the city with British and American support, confiscating illegal weapons and arresting the violent gangs whose combination of criminality and vicious extremism was making life a misery for so many of Basra's people.

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My Comment: I personally feel that with time , political reconciliation in Iraq will be achieved. This new political status in turn will insure security and development in regions like Basra. This should be no surprise. When the Iraqis look at countries like Abu Dhabi .... and the incredible wealth that proper oil development can bring .... it is only natural that the priority will be to lay the ground work to have the same thing.