Searching for a phoenix in Basra

摘要

"Security has dramatically im-proved in the past year" versus "We don't know what'll happen when the foreign troops leave" are the competing mantras of Basra, Iraq's battered second city. Almost everyone agrees that the first claim is true. But no one is at all certain that harmony will persist when most of the Americans, who have recently taken over the leading foreign role in Basra from the British, themselves withdraw from Iraq in little over a year, if Barack Obama sticks to his proposed schedule. By the end of June combat troops are supposed to have withdrawn from all the towns.