gaining strength, no surprise to anyone watching iraq, but the president long claimed that al qaeda is on the run and decimated. do you think the u.s. has been focused on the wrong guys? well, there s old al qaeda and new al qaeda. old al qaeda has been decimated. and really a lot of the key elements of that organization were dismantled and are the run. what we ve seen is a sort of the franchises that have self-initiated. we re seeing it in live action. it doesn t depend on ayman zarqawi. al qaeda formally doesn t like isis. it sort of sees isis as out of control, killing many muslims. that s a tenet that the old al qaeda wasn t accepting. steven, richard engel made a very interesting point this morning about all the players that are now on the government side. op the ground you have the iraqi army, the shia militia, sunni
anybody s standards but in the context of baghdad, that has been the practice now over many months and clearly about the of the bombings is the intent of the bombings is to strike sectarianor and that s what people are most fearful of. how tight is security? how many of these roadblocks are there and what is the sense of things along those lines. well, the city is there is a lot of roadblocks. they re also a great deal of traffic that is normal, and the reason for that in sunni areas is the people are staying off the streets, particularly young men, because their vehicles are being picked up by the shia dominated security structures and jails for no reason and without charge. so they re staying at home, especially young men, and at it s the world cup so they re watching that. but at the same time the city has got double the number of security personnel in a city
that is already awash in it. every street corner has soldiers and police. averagored armored personnel carriers and you have this mass recruitment of shia militia, and seems to be the shia mill lilt ya is what the government seems to be relying on to reinforce the army. that completely folded up over the last ten days. does seem to be now holing the line 100 miles north on three different entries for the city, 150 miles. the isis are insurgent so they re not going to fight formal front lines. their tactic will be to come around the back of the formal, structured military and strike at their rear and their reinforcements and there have been a number of ambushes along those lines. sam kiley of sky news.
for its troops on the ground from united states air power. that inevitably on a tactical level will mean the deployment, albeit covertly, of american special forces to call that power in. they could ultimately find themselves working alongside not only shia militia, but shia militia augmented by the guard sent in by tray reheran. that s going to be very difficult for the obama administration to control in terms of the republican and democrat response to a long standing third party. but nonetheless, i think the tactical threat of air strikes coming from the united states could at this stage start to drive back the sunni insurgency. the important thing is and this is a critical matter for the central government, there isn t a lot of time for them. their calculation is that they need to be able to start pushing back this insurgency, pushing
army, as we have seen. they have not been terribly motivated often where as the shia militia they appear to be much more motivated. and, of course, shia militia, at least from my perspective, is code for iran. so that means iran s influence at least is they have a bigger footprint at least tonight or they are trying to establish a bigger footprint in iraq. is that a fair description? that s exactly right. many of these shia militia are, indeed, backed by iran. they have iranian advisors with them there at the moment on the ground. and many believe that s where their orders are coming from. is there any doubt that isis is expanding and showing greater strength in iraq? well, i mean, there is a debate over whether or not this is a tactical victory or strategic victory. meaning, you know, some bigger program. at the moment it certainly looks like they are on the offensive. cam bell, thank you very