While most attention paid to Iraq by the American media is centered on Baghdad (and, post-"surge," al-Anbar province), there are two developing situations which bear closely watching over the next few months. The first is at the northern edge of Iraq, where the Kurdish areas of both Iraq and Turkey overlap. The second is the south, especially the city of Basra and the surrounding oil fields.

I've written about the Turkish situation before. Turkey is determined not to let the Iraqi Kurds declare their own country ("Kurdistan"), because it believes a Kurdish section of Turkey would want to join them (and by doing so, secede from Turkey). There are Turkish Kurds ("rebels" or "terrorists," depending on who you talk to) already fighting a low-level guerrilla war against Turkey, and Turkey is inching closer to directly attacking their bases in Iraq.

From today's AP wire:

SIRNAK, Turkey -- The United States has urged Turkey to refrain from a cross-border military operation to chase separatist Kurdish rebels who operate from bases in northern Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Kurdish regional government's spokesman Jamal Abdullah pleaded with Turkey to show restraint after Tuesday's statement.

"We call upon the Turkish government to exercise self-restraint and not to turn the region into an unstable one," he said. "Such attacks will threaten the stability not only in Iraq but the whole region."

The irony is clear to anyone who has been following the debate about whether America should attack Iran -- using the exact same "hot pursuit" argument to attack training camps across the border in Iran. It would be hard to hold Turkey back if we started bombing Iran, since we'd both be using the same rationale. We also wouldn't be paying much attention to Turkey or the Kurds if we were busy bombing Iran.

However, if U.S. troops do come to the aid of Iraqi Kurds against Turkish fighters, we would have the nightmare scenario of two NATO members facing each other across a battlefield. Which is kind of what NATO is supposed to prevent in the first place.

Looking south to Basra, reports are mixed, contradictory, and incomplete. In other words, it's too soon to tell what is going to happen. I wrote an article titled "Watch Basra" a month ago (9/5/07), but the jury's still out on what Basra will evolve into.

Of course, the news on everyone's lips today is the British Prime Minister announcing he will pull out half his troops next spring (leaving 2,500). This is important because Basra (and the southern part of Iraq in general) has been under British control since the beginning. But while the troop withdrawal decision is being examined closely, the situation in Basra is being largely ignored by the American press. The British press are more attentive (of course) since their soldiers are responsible for Basra, making it a more important story for their audience. But domestic British politics are involved, so some British articles are a bit slanted, to put it mildly.

There is a booming Iraqi press in Basra, with a reported 60 newspapers in the city. Unfortunately, the Iraqi journalists have a brutal choice -- don't report on the militias or the political power plays happening in Basra, or receive death threats (and eventually assassins). Journalists have been leaving Basra because it's been getting too dangerous for them to do their job.

They're not the only ones. The city has reportedly largely been sectarianally-cleansed, with virtually no Sunnis left. This leaves rival Shi'ite militias in a power struggle for control of the city.

In such a chaotic place, it's hard to get a clear picture of what is going on. Even the larger questions are reported differently, depending on who is doing the reporting:

From a Newsday article titled "British pullout in Iraq leaves Basra in chaos":

The British troop pullout from Iraq announced yesterday leaves Basra, Iraq's second largest and most strategically important city, in near total chaos both politically and militarily.

It comes at a time when at least four Shia militias are fighting over the city, which is surrounded by most of the nation's tremendous oil reserves and provides Iraq's only gateway to the sea.

Equally vital for U.S. strategists, the city also controls the southern portion of the road from Kuwait to Baghdad, along which mostly all U.S. supplies are brought in.

But then from the Telegraph (U.K.):

...there has been an improvement in security since British troops vacated their final outpost at Basra Palace in late August, not least because they no longer present a sitting target for the legions of malcontents who remain determined to thwart any attempt by the US-led coalition or the Iraqi government to restore the city to something approaching normality.

Much of the credit for improvement must be given to the redoubtable General Mohan al-Furrazi, the 14th Division's commander, who has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards the murderous activities of Basra's insurgent groups.

According to the latest estimates, crime levels have fallen 70 per cent in the past month and the bombardment of the main British encampment at the air base, almost incessant last summer, has been reduced to a weekly occurrence.

But how long can it last?

The relative calm that has descended on Basra has been greatly helped by the recent decision by Moqtada al-Sadr, the leader of Iraq's most militant Shia militia, to call a ceasefire. Peace talks between the main Shia factions also appear to have made good progress at persuading the rejectionist groups to support the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

And, interestingly enough, Time magazine reports that the U.S. military is quietly giving up on the entire southern part of Iraq:

Last weekend Sadr and the leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, announced a truce. In a statement aired with much publicity, the two leaders pledged to cease violence. Whether the pact holds remains to be seen, especially in Basra. Tensions between the two factions there have lately been especially high following the British pullout to the airport outside the city. Regardless, U.S. forces are unlikely to play a meaningful role in shaping the outcome. With no evident plans to reenter southern areas, the U.S.-led coalition leaves the fate of some of Iraq's most important territory to others.

But the most intelligent commentary comes from the Guardian (also U.K.):

It is true that the numbers of trained [Iraqi] servicemen in southern Iraq has grown and violence has fallen. Violence against British troops has indeed dropped dramatically in Basra, although Iraqi civilians continue to bear the brunt of assassinations and kidnappings. But British troops have had little to do with the partial peace they leave behind. It has been created by political deals with Shia militias. A ceasefire of forces loyal to the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, secured by the release from prison of a number of his top militiamen, has been followed by an agreement between the cleric and his main Shia rival, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. This is not a repeat of Northern Ireland, where talks followed the bombs and bullets largely because the Provisional IRA realised it had more to gain from a political path than it had from a military one. Two Shia militias have called a halt to their military campaign, and Sunni forces in Anbar province have agreed to change sides - for now. But the tap of violence can be as swiftly turned on again. Peace depends on what each group gains politically.

Whether the news from Basra is good, bad, or unclear is important to the debate about how to end the U.S. involvement in the war. Because it's a test case for the country at large: what will happen when the coalition troops pull out (or, like the British are currently doing, pull back to the sidelines)? While many have offered answers to that question, few have done so without also injecting domestic American politics into the argument. But Basra isn't held by the Americans, but by the British. This should help us to take a more objective view of the aftermath of a coalition pullout.

Is Basra a lot better than when the British were holed up downtown? Or is it a lot worse? Or is it currently experiencing a lull in violence that will prove to be the calm before the storm of factional Shi'ite war? Or are the Iraqi militias actually working out their differences with agreements rather than bullets?

Of course, this is not Jeffersonian democracy at its finest. It's closer to warlordism than we'd care to admit as a nation. The process is going to be messy and unpleasant, no matter how it works out. And the lessons of Basra likely can't be applied to other parts of Iraq (due to different ethnic and sectarian populations).

But, as I said previously, Basra bears watching. Because there is a larger question to be asked here: If U.S. troops pull out, will Iraq become more or less stable when we're not around to shoot at anymore?

I don't know the answer to that question, I will fully admit. But I do wish more people were asking it.

-- Chris Weigant