Securing Baghdad: Al Doura
“Security in Baghdad is the top priority,” said Col. Robert Scurlock, commander of the 1st Armor Division’s 2nd Brigade. “We continue to work very closely with Iraqi security forces to clear this area of terrorists and death squads.”
Initial results of joint American-Iraqi operations to clear Baghdad of criminal gangs, party militias, sectarian posses, and jihadi terrorists have been encouraging.
The crisis is easy to define: Iraq’s elected government has not monopolized, or even dominated, the use of force in the capital. Into the security breach, competing armed groups have swarmed. Some of these groups – the jihadists, the Ba’athist recidivists – seek to increase the mayhem for political ends. Others – the sectarian gangs, neighborhood watches, and partisan militias – seek to enforce security for a particular group or area – often at the expense of others.
The competing agendas of these various factions have turned Baghdad into a rogues’ paradise. Criminals accept hire by those who want to perpetuate violence, and by those who want to punish those who do so. They sell their services – kidnapping, extortion, assassination, the construction and detonation of explosive devices – to whomever will pay.
The Iraqi government, having finally decided to confront this situation, has many resources of its own. These include: an increasingly efficient and well-equipped professional army that can overpower anything that the jihadis, thugs, and rogue militias can throw at them; the good will of the Iraqi people, who are sick of the violence; and the support of the American-led coalition in planning and executing tactical operations.
Baghdad is a huge, sprawling metropolis of roughly 6,000,000 souls. The violence in Baghdad – roughly 50 deaths per day – is not (contrary to what you read) universal.
Rather, violence is concentrated in two types of mahalas (neighborhoods): mixed Shi’ite/Sunni areas, where tit-for-tat sectarian violence has destroyed ordinary life, and Shi’ite slums, where the Sunni jihadist groups ply their ghoulish trade of killing the feeble and disarmed, in the hope of stimulating counterstrikes against their own – and thus radicalizing the Sunni population.
Al-Doura, a mixed Sunni-Shiite area of 135,000, has been the worst of the mahalas, accounting for a dozen or two major crimes daily – assassinations, revenge killings, kidnappings, and extortions. As such, al-Doura was among the first neighborhoods targeted for joint Iraqi-coalition reclamation.
Operation “Forward Together”, as the PC dolts have named it, has both military and political components.
The military operations work this way:
- The neighborhood is cordoned off;
- Makeshift barricades, erected by local militias, are dismantled;
- House to house searches are conducted, aided by intelligence from locals, aimed at confiscating weapons and explosives, and at arresting or killing known criminals and terrorists;
- To hold the area that has been cleared, Iraqi police and a small number of coalition advisors remain in-district, to monitor against a return of violence.
The lead forces in the military operations are Iraqi: soldiers of the 1st and 5ths Brigades of the 6th Iraqi Army Division, as well as Iraqi cops from the 2nd Iraqi National Police Division. These forces are supplemented by the MNF-Iraq: — Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division; and 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team. These coalition troops give the Iraqi government forces extra speed and fire-power.
The military operation is accompanied by intense political efforts. The government forces work in close co-ordination with the imams of the competing sects, and with the neighborhood advisory councils, to fashion truces, and to open lines of communication between leaders of the factions. Particular attention is directed to the restoration of services disrupted by the violence: trash removal, and utilities (clean water & electricity).
“As to the political part,” said Brig. Gen. Obd al-Karim, commander of the 6th Brigade, 2nd Iraqi National Police Division, “we went out of our way to actually meet with the imams and religious leaders. We also met with the district advisory council of the Rasheed district. Our main goal is to re-establish security in this (Al-Doura) area. The second goal is to provide essential services to the residents. The third goal is to stop migration of residents and bring back those who have been forced out of their homes.”
In its first several days, the Al Doura operation netted 38 arrests, including three non-Iraqi terrorists, plus the neutralization of numerous weapons caches and bomb-making materials.
But the best news, according to Army Maj. Gen. James Thurman, was the lives that were saved. “We’ve dropped the violence down to near nothing,” he said. “We’ve got a positive trend happening, but it’s the will of the Iraqi people that we need to encourage.”