Al-Qaeda Desert Base Looks Abandoned, But Is It? -- Middle East TimesAL-UDAIM DESERT, Iraq (AFP) Wrecks of old vehicles. Passing Bedouins herding emaciated goats. And as far as the eye can see, a dusty, beige, lunar landscape.
The Al-Udaim desert is one of the last refuges in Iraq of Al-Qaeda fighters, who the US army and Iraqi authorities say are increasingly on the defensive.
Around 60 kilometres (35 miles) north of Baghdad, this immense stretch of arid earth blasted by scorching winds is strategic territory for Al-Qaeda, the group the United States blames for the majority of the brutal violence in Iraq.
The desert links the two main jihadist battlegrounds in Iraq -- the troubled province of Diyala in the east and the Sunni stronghold of Dhuluiyah in the west, on the way to the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.
"They are finished, period. The ones who haven't been killed are in disarray. The last ones are wandering hungry in the desert," Colonel Mohammed Khaled Abdelhamid, chief of police in Dhuluiyah, told AFP.
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My Comment: Al Qaeda will be in Iraq for a very long time .... but fortunately nowhere near the numbers and force support that it had two years ago.
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