White Gold

Went out to Abu Ghraib again today - a follow up to the visits the Governor made out here over the past few weeks. Abu Ghraib is a Sunni enclave about 35 minutes outside of downtown Baghdad. A little farther down the road and you're in Fallujah. Once a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency, the place has calmed down quite a bit. That leaves us an opening to try to rebuild local government out there. With the remnants of the highly centralized government of the former regime, that means we have to connect this Sunni suburb to the government agencies of the central - and now Shia dominated - government. Despite the success of the Governor's highly publicized visit, we have a lot of work to do to build these connections and make them work. The Sunni insurgency, driven by al-Qaeda and maintained by former Ba'athists and local criminal elements, has lost some momentum - but the creeping influence of Shia militia groups has become more pervasive, even out in this western suburb. Local Sunnis try to steer clear of the militias based out of the quickly growing Shia development built near the Abu Ghraib Dairy Farm - known as White Gold village.