A surge in opitimism in Baghdad

Sunday Times:

OUR walk down the dusty road in Baghdad al-Jadida, a district in the southeast of the city, was slow. The American soldiers moving cautiously forward between the high walls of the houses turned repeatedly and scanned the street behind us for threats.

The men were in camouflage uniforms and full battle gear, their M16s half-lifted and ready to fire should the enemy attack as we edged towards the mosque of a militant sheikh.

Until a few weeks ago, gunfire, bombs and rockets were a daily menace to the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment. They had been propelled into the heart of this hardline Shi’ite district by President George W Bush’s “troop surge” with orders to clear and hold it in the face of an onslaught by the Mahdi Army.

Yet the first Iraqis they encountered in the 117F heat last Friday were a little girl and her parents standing at the open gate to their courtyard, who exchanged salaam alaikums (hellos) with a soldier.

When the surge in this part of Baghdad began last March, the area was controlled by Mahdi Army followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric, who ambushed and killed coalition soldiers seemingly at will. The locals complied with their demands for money or out of fear.

The second battalion soldiers who moved in were the first to base themselves in the area since 2003, the year of the invasion. They set themselves up in Base Rustamiyah, an old Iraqi army school, and implanted small companies of men in the worst neighbourhoods. By June they were engulfed in all-out war.

Mortars and rockets pounded the base and its small outposts relentlessly. Soldiers were killed and wounded by snipers and roadside bombs. “It was more war than I ever want to see again,” said Major Brent Cummings, the second-in-command.

Then the rain of mortars relented and during the past two weeks the roadside bombs, their enemy’s most potent weapon, have almost disappeared.

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The battalion’s statistics tell a stark story. In June, at the height of the fighting, 80 roadside bombs were detonated against its patrols. In August it was 19. There were 32 mortar or rocket attacks in June, but only 11 last month.

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The colonel believes his men inflicted their most significant casualties at the peak of the fighting in June and July. “We killed a lot of their first rank,” he said. His men are now facing second and third-level fighters from the Mahdi Army, although that does not mean the threat is over: Mahdi leaders have resorted to hiding improvised explosive devices (IEDs) inside dead water buffaloes.

Further tactical changes during the summer included instructions to ensure that at least two members of any foot patrol are wearing see-through protective glasses rather than dark shades so that they can make eye contact with local residents.

The battalion has started arresting anyone with weapons in their home, making it harder for the Mahdi Army to find hiding places for guns, and local people are starting to help with intelligence. “They may not love us but they realise we are going to stick around and they may as well work with us,” said the colonel.

He even came to an arrangement with a senior Mahdi Army officer who was thrown into prison, offered release if he helped the Americans and is now involved in running a $30m sewerage programme.

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One of the interesting aspects of this story is it is showing the success of the surge in a Shia area dominated by Sadr's militia. Most of the other success stories on the surge have been in Sunni neighborhoods. This is a very positive development that demonstrates the surge is working across sectarian lines and is not just a rebellion by the Sunnis against al Qaeda. However, the tactics are the same. We are staying in the neighborhoods and protecting the people and putting the force to space ratios on the street to dominate them and keep the enemy away. I have been preaching force to space ratios for years now, it is surprising how few critics of the current strategy get their importance along with the direct work with the people we are doing.

Many of the critics still want us to return to forward operating bases and sally forth to fight al Qaeda which is basically what we were doing before the surge. The same people who said that was a failure now want us to return to it. It at least shows their determination and desperation for failure in Iraq.

This Michael Gordon piece in the NY Times gives a good description of how the new strategy is working with the Sunni tribes and their former fighters.