A U.S. soldier secures a street in the Abu Sheer neighborhood in southern BaghdadAhmad Al-Rubaye / AFP / Getty
From Time Magazine:
There is an old Arabic proverb: "My brother and I against my cousin, but my cousin and I against the stranger." It didn't hold true in Iraq for long. Three years after the 2003 U.S. invasion, Sunni brothers and their Shi'ite cousins were slaughtering one another while also fighting against the American stranger. The U.S. is now winding down its mission and preparing to withdraw, but has Iraq's family feud been settled?
While lingering violence in Mosul and Diyala province remains a challenge, the real battle — the one that will define what kind of Iraq emerges as the U.S. withdraws its troops in the next two years — has barely begun. The fundamental problems are many; they are intrasectarian, regional and local, Arab vs. Kurd. On the sixth anniversary of the invasion, Iraq seems to have moved away from all-out war into a more complicated set of realities — where both politics and violence are part of the equation, where the answers to the many what-ifs of its future hold both promise and peril.
Read more ....
My Comment: Bombs will be going off in Iraq for next ten years .... but the crucial question is .....what will be the frequency of these bomb attacks. Once a month. Once a week. Once a day. .... these are the crucial questions.