A Soldiers Blog

A monograph recently published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College lays out in comprehensive detail the many obstacles that will confront coalition forces after presumed military victory in Iraq. Written by Conrad C. Crane, the director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, and W. Andrew Terrill, the SSI's Middle East specialist, the report points out that U.S. forces will have to prevent Sunnis from fighting Shiites, secular Iraqis from fighting religious ones, returned Iraqi exiles from fighting non-exiles, Kurds from fighting Turkomans or establishing an independent state, tribes within all these groups from fighting one another, Turkey from invading from the north, Iran from invading from the east, and the defeated Iraqi army?which may be the only national institution that can keep the country from being ripped apart?from dissolving. All that (the easy part) is merely a prelude to the hard work of nation-building...
... The report includes, as an appendix, a "mission matrix for Iraq": a list of 135 tasks that must be accomplished, including securing weapons of mass destruction, training a new Iraqi army, stabilizing the currency, training indigenous lawyers to work in new courts, and operating orphanages.

. . . in 1950, the Iraqi parliament stripped Jews of their citizenship if they registered to leave the country. And later legislation effectively confiscated the property of those who had declared their intention to leave. ?Detailed regulations limited the items which emigrating Jews were permitted to take with them. Even the permitted number of pairs of shoes and sets of underwear was set out in the law,? she said. ?As a result of these legislative confiscations, an estimated $150 million to $200 million worth of Jewish property was left behind in Iraq.?