Progress in Anbar Province

For those of you interested in the situation in Iraq the situation in the Anbar Province has recently swung in the favor of America. Recently tribal sheiks and militias have decided to stop attacking and killing American soldiers and rather work with the Americans to hunt down al-Qaida fighters in the area. Up to this point many people in the Anbar province (located in western Iraq and Sunni dominated) have been fighting the American forces in such hot spots as Fallujah and Ramadi but recently the leaders of the tribal fighters have come forward and offered to fight against al-Qaida in an attempt to bring peace to their region of Iraq.

Such progress certainly gives hope to the success of efforts in Iraq, and while this may not be cause for celebration just yet any progress is more than welcome. My personal thoughts on the matter of Iraq are that we should be building up critical infrastructure at this time such as electricity, water, food distribution, and such. With the Iraqi army and police forces growing it will only be a matter of time before we hand security over to the Iraqi government completely and at that point the citizens will need confidence in their government. By building new or fixing old critical infrastructure and then following that up with economic growth I believe that such confidence can be attained. However that is in the future and the success in Anbar is good news for now.