The Tide Turns In Baghdad

The Strategypage reveals that terrorists are slowly being driven out of Baghdad by the eighteen new Iraqi battalions trained by America. Seven of those battalions can operate on their own, able to move their troops quickly to make raids and fend off ambushes. Iraqi soldiers respond to the one or two dozen terrorist attacks made each day, and do so with increasing effectiveness. Each Iraqi battalion has ten American advisors who fine tune operations and help the Iraqi commanders promote and cull the leadership in the middle ranks.

Terrorists are finding easier pickings outside Baghdad in less well-defended towns. Yet, the tide is turning against them there, too.

There are now 120 total Iraqi army and police battalions sufficiently well-led to commit to combat in Iraq. That's 207,000 Iraqi soldiers and police. Three dozen are sufficiently well-led to fight without American supervision. As the Iraqi military leaders mature, the Iraqi divisions will roll out over the countryside of Iraq, defeating the insurgents. And those new Iraqi military leaders are mostly Kurds and Shia Arabs, not the Sunni Arabs who officered Saddam's army. That's bad news for the Sunnis, who may be realizing that the days of Iraq as a Sunni empire are gone and never to return.

It's bad news for the insurgents, especially the hated foreign jihadis. As Iraqi battalions establish their presence throughout the country, the locals will feel more confident to provide the intelligence to extirpate the armed resistance to the new Iraqi democracy.