The Americans will go to their bases

In 2007, a Russian photographer died in Iraq

At the end of the outgoing year, on December 26, George Bush signed, despite the objections of the opposition in Congress , a 555 billion budget for the next fiscal year. To the satisfaction of the US President, there is a line about the allocation of $70 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Previously, the House of Representatives and the Senate tried to link the allocation of these funds with the need to withdraw US troops from Iraq as early as 2008. However, on the eve of the autumn presidential elections in the United States, the topic of leaving the warring country, which the Americans invaded in the spring of 2003 , will again become the subject of heated debate.

“Of course, we will not see a complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq next year. However, there will be some reductions and partial redeployment of the military to bases,” Vitaly Naumkin, president of the Center for Strategic and Political Studies, told Vremya Novostei yesterday. In his opinion, “instability in Iraq will continue,” but not everything is so bad: “The Americans managed to come to an agreement with the sheikhs of many influential tribes, who in turn can influence resistance activists. The role of neighboring Iran in Iraq, which has influence on Iraqi Shiite Muslims, also became more positive in 2007.”

In 2007, executions of leaders of the overthrown regime of Saddam Hussein continued in Baghdad. He himself was hanged on December 30, 2006 . Two more of his associates - in mid-January this year, and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan - on March 20 . More death sentences and new trials are in the pipeline, for example, against former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

From March 2003 until now, according to the latest estimates, more than 3,900 American soldiers, 174 British, and 134 other countries have died in Iraq. The exact number of dead Iraqis, most of whom were civilians, is unknown, but according to the most minimal data, it is at least 80 thousand people. According to other sources, there were dozens of times more killed.

In 2007, in Iraq, where Russian diplomats and businessmen had already died, a Russian was also killed - 27-year-old photographer Dmitry Chebotaev . On May 6, he was in an American armored vehicle that was blown up by a landmine. Another Russian citizen among the crew members died near Baghdad in January, when a Moldovan transport plane flying from Turkey crashed due to fog and technical problems.

Elena SUPONINA