Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Swopa at Needlenose directs us to this Knight Ridder article, which suggests that it's a wee bit too early to declare the Iraqi civil war averted:

Sunni Muslims from across central Iraq, alarmed by how easily Shiite Muslim fighters had attacked their mosques during last week's clashes, said Monday that they were sending weapons to Baghdad and were preparing to dispatch their own fighters to the Iraqi capital in case of further violence....

"I will be the first to go to Baghdad ... and help defend the mosques," said Mustafa Adnan, 27, a graduate engineering student from Fallujah, west of Baghdad. "It will not happen again. If the Shiites want to do that again, it will be over our dead bodies."

Residents expressed similar sentiments In Diyala province, north of Baghdad. "There is tension all over Diyala," said Dawood Salman, a 38-year-old mechanic from Baqouba. "Once we hear of any attack in Baghdad, we will immediately take our weapons and head there to fight. Even if the Iraqi forces close the roads, we will find a way."...

Residents in Tikrit, Kirkuk, Fallujah and Baqouba, all predominantly Sunni cities, said they either were shipping weapons or preparing in other ways to protect Sunni mosques.

Several residents in Anbar province told Knight Ridder they were sneaking weapons into western Baghdad by back roads to avoid checkpoints. They asked not to be named....


This is going to get ugly again -- maybe not right away, but soon.

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