Iraqi violence down

[ZenGum]

I just found a very interesting article analyzing the causes of the decrease in violence.
It has plenty of links including an interactive map by the New York Times of Bagdad neighborhoods analyzed individually.

The article is a better researched expression of what I posted above. Here are a few teasers:

Clearly, U.S. security operations are having an effect in Baghdad and beyond.... [but a]s a general rule, where Sunnis, Shiites, or Kurds live in close proximity and we have too few American troops on the ground, violence persists....

Political reconciliation efforts have produced qualified successes in Anbar, Baghdad, and Diyala... ... but we should be careful about claiming credit, and we should not consider these arrangements to be permanent.

However, the most persuasive explanation for the good news is that the Shiites have won the battle for Baghdad. Shiite militias and partisans have killed or expelled tens of thousands of Sunnis, changing the ethnographic map of the ancient city.