There was once a swagger to the scotch-swilling, insurgent-fighting Raed Sabah. He was known as Sheik Raed to his sycophants. Tribesmen who relied on his largess called him the same. So did his fighters, who joined the Americans and helped crush the insurgency in Anbar province.
Sabah still likes his scotch -- Johnnie Walker Black, with Red Bull on the rocks -- but these days, as the Americans withdraw from western Iraq, he has lost his swagger. His neighbors now deride him as an American stooge; they have nicknamed his alley "The Street of the Lackeys."
These guys are pawns in the Great Game. Look what happened to the Shia, after the West abandoned support for their uprising at the end of the 1st Gulf War. It's about tactics and Divide and Rule - abandonment should not come as a surprise to anyone.
1 "In Iraq's Anbar, a deep sense of abandonment" - MSNBC
No comments:
Post a Comment