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Iraq's internal situation is deteriorating to a point at which it can't be stopped. The armed struggle of young anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who leads a minority extremist faction of the Shia who make up two-thirds of Iraq's total population of 24 million, looks like it is being done in cooperation with moderate Shia and even the Sunni. It's at the point where people are wondering if this conflict isn't a second Vietnam.
U.S. military authorities recently shut down a paper published by al-Sadr and arrested one of his close aides in connection with the April 2003 assassination of Shia leader Sayyed Abdul Majeed al-Khoei, and with this recent discord, anti-Americanism is rapidly spreading regardless of religious denomination. Armed clashes occurred in six provinces. The situation is unfolding in a way quite unlike that described by the Americans, who claim that those anti-American extremists loyal to al-Sadr make up only 10 to 15 percent of the Shia community. As they watch battles with the Americans take place and civilians killed and homes destroyed right before their eyes, moderate Shia civilians are coming together to form anti-American ranks out of feelings of Islamic solidarity. Reports from the field have Iraqis predicting a "new form of urban warfare" and a war in which everyone from 8-year-old boys to 80-year-old men will participate.
The problem is that while the despotic regime of Saddam Hussein has been replaced, in the power vacuum that followed the failure to replace that regime with a powerful authority that could preserve order, the reality is that neither the hard-pressed U.S. military authority's post-war reconstruction, the Iraqi provisional government's incompetent leaders, nor the basic law or U.S. military authority policies that struggles to bring all of Iraq's political and religious factions together in democratic coexistence completely satisfy anyone. Because of Iraq's religious and tribal diversity, internal strife and tensions are likely to become even more complicated in the future.
The Kurdish autonomous regions to which the Korean military will be dispatched have yet to be caught up in the winds of anti-Americanism, but nobody knows whether an outbreak that could change that situation might occur. As the last nation in the world to send troops to Iraq, the government must constantly keep its eye on the rapidly changing situation in Iraq and make response polices ahead of time.
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