Sorry I didn't blog yesterday; I ended up getting back from a patrol at about one in the morning and didn't feel like wrestling with the BGAN.

Franco and I are back at the Time house.  It was a very short embed.  It's not possible to say anything with certainty after two patrols and a few discussions with American officers and enlisted men.  We were out in Amariyah in the afternoon and then Jihad and Farat (the site of last Sunday's massacre) last night.  It wasn't possible to get a sense of the street life in these neighborhoods, because both of our patrols were during curfews.  But it says something about the overall situation that there was a curfew in effect in the middle of Friday afternoon.  It lasts from 11 am until 3 pm, and is designed to prevent violence and attacks on mosques during Friday prayers.

Obviously this isn't good.  On the other hand, from what little I saw the curfew is being enforced (more or less—there was a trickle of drivers trying to get through an Iraqi Police checkpoint and being turned away by the Iraqis with shouting and the occasional warning shot).  If the US and the Iraqi government security forces can enforce a curfew in Amariyah (and in Jihad, where we went after curfew last night) then it's probably premature to say the situation is totally chaotic or that a civil war has begun in earnest.  Whenever the violence flares up as it has in the past week people speculate about whether a civil war has begun.  That label is beside the point.  If civil war means the total collapse of the government and sustained sectarian street fighting I don't think we're close to that.  Others here disagree, and I could be wrong.

But, obviously, the Shiite militias and the Sunni insurgent groups in Baghdad are attacking each others' civilian populations.  Part of that is just the way they've chosen to fight (they could attack each other, but it's easier to go after people who can't defend themselves).  Part of it is probably an attempt to create homogenous neighborhoods.  And some of the mosques that get hit are hit for the same reason insurgents plant car bombs at the entrance to the Green Zone:  a lot of mosques are often well-known as fronts for various insurgent groups or militias.  If you can't get at the leadership, you can kill the folks who happen to be walking out the door that afternoon.

I'm beyond making bold predictions about what's going to happen in Iraq.  I'll just offer a guess, which is that this wave of violence will subside before it becomes what everyone would recognize as a civil war.  But I don't see things truly getting better, either.  One of the guys the patrol spoke with said the heavily-Shiite security forces in his neighborhood drive around swearing at civilians and yelling at them to get off the streets.  It's no secret to anyone on the American side that the security forces often serve militias and not "the country" (assuming that's more than a theoretical concept at this point).  One of the American officers I was with yesterday said that when a new Iraqi unit moves into his area he contacts their US advisers to gauge if, and to what extent, the unit is infiltrated by militants.  None of this is a knock on the soldiers I was with the past couple days.  They're carrying out their mission the best they can at considerable personal risk.  But their mission includes handing over responsibility for security to capable, loyal and non-corrupt Iraqi units.  If such units don't exist, and if there's no real "Iraq" to which people can be loyal, then that mission is impossible.

Yesterday in Amariyah we drove around neighborhoods that have turned maze-like as residents set up make-shift road blocks to keep outsiders away.  Palm tree logs, old barrels and chunks of stone are all some people have to protect themselves against the violent and faceless men who stalk this city.  One man, standing in front of his home with two young children and his wife looking on, said his neighborhood started blocking itself off after a young man was shot and paralyzed down the street.

His wife spoke a little English; she chatted me up after she heard me trying out my abominable Arabic on her children.  She seemed genuinely delighted by how much Arabic I knew, probably because I wasn't around long enough for her to figure out that I used 95 percent of my vocabulary within 60 seconds of meeting her.  She asked me how she could learn more English, which stumped me.  My first two thoughts—sign up for a class or buy some language tapes—obviously aren't great options here.  I suggested getting a book, or finding some tapes.  She told me the situation in the neighborhood is very bad.  I asked why, and she said because so many people are being killed.  I was going to ask who she thinks is killing them, but before I could it was time for my convoy to roll out.