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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (113897)	9/4/2003 2:33:11 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 281500

<...Chalabi doesn't seem to have been able to round up any significant support on the ground post-war...> The players who will dominate Iraq post-Saddam (and post-U.S. occupation) are emerging. In the absence of elections, and the near-absence of polls, the best way to judge is: 1) the size of demonstrations 2) who is able to organize armies to hold territory as the U.S. retreats. The Shia clerics are regularly able to hold demonstrations over 10,000, and sometimes over 100,000. These numbers are far larger than any other faction can muster. The Kurdish armies, SCIRI's Badr Brigade, and Muqtader al-Sadr's "Mahdi's Army" are establishing zones of control. Probably the Baathists and Wahabi Islamists will form an alliance and create a Sunni militia (headed by Saddam, who seems to have the survival skills of Arafat and Bin Laden).