Juan Cole: Forget the Surge -- Violence Is Down in Iraq Because Ethnic Cleansing Was Brutally Effective

As best I can piece it together, what actually seems to have happened was that the escalation troops began by disarming the Sunni Arabs in Baghdad. Once these Sunnis were left helpless, the Shiite militias came in at night and ethnically cleansed them. Rates of violence declined once the ethnic cleansing was far advanced because there were fewer mixed neighborhoods.
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