An American soldier looks out toward the border between Iraq and Iran. Photo from The BBCIn Diyala, Dangerous Omens for an Iraq Without U.S. Troops -- Time Magazine
For a glimmer of what Iraq might look like without Americans, take a drive east of Baghdad to Diyala province, whose mixed Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish population is the country in microcosm. U.S. soldiers now rarely leave their bases outside Iraq's cities and towns, leaving security on the road to Diyala largely in the hands of the Iraqi security forces. The soldiers and police who man the many checkpoints wear the latest fashion in pattern-disrupting camouflage uniforms and patches that say "Special Forces" or "SWAT." But they still rely on controversial antenna-rod bomb detectors that may in fact be useless. Their transport consists primarily of high-performance Ford trucks that break down without clean high-octane gasoline that's hard to find in Iraq. And such is the capacity of their resupply operation that they beg for water from passing foreign convoys. "They'd die out here in summer if it wasn't for us," says one American security contractor.
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