Iraq Archive

WASHINGTON — Recent changes in the leadership of two of the closest allies of the United States are altering the dynamic of the trans-Atlantic relationship in ways that would have seemed highly improbable a year ago. The election in early May of the pro-American Nicolas Sarkozy as president of the French Republic has rekindled relations between Paris and Washington, previously soured by differences over Iraq. At the same time, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who succeeded Tony Blair in late June, used a U.S. trip to put new distance between his government and the Bush administration. The traditional close ties between […]

Three months ago, the city of Ramadi was dark. The city of 400,000 in western Iraq was completely severed from the country’s delicate electrical grid; those who had power got it strictly from generators that hummed all day and night. But then came the much-heralded “Anbar awakening” — a banding-together of Sunni sheiks and their militias into a loose alliance that fought alongside U.S. and federal Iraqi forces to all but eradicate terrorist cells in Ramadi and other large western towns. As security improved in Anbar province, U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) — some military-led, some commanded by State Department […]