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I once saw an After Action Report that used an aerial shot of Fallujah superimposed with colored dots to show various contact with the enemy (e.g. red for IEDs, green for snipers, etc.). Does anyone know if a similar thing exists for Baghdad that covers the recent sectarian violence?
Basically, I'm curious where the violence is happening. Is it throughout the city? Or is it confined to specific areas such as Sadr city? The media makes it sound like the entire city is in flames.
I served in east Baghdad and I can tell you that there was some violence, but not to the degree that it was in other places.
First, one problem is the definition of "Baghdad". When you say that, you're talking about a metropolis on the scale of LA. So, when you say, 100 people were killed in LA, you're probably talking about 90 of those being in Compton (or some other ghetto area) and not Hollywood. Same with Baghdad. It's HUGE...
The other problem is the definition of Sadr City. In some media reports, they will say an incident happened in Sadr City when, in fact, it was outside of it. If something happens within the City itself, it will usually be pretty spectacular, because the Madhi Army keeps a pretty tight perimeter on the place and if the Sunnis are going to sneak anything in, they're going to make it worth their while. Hell, not even the IA or IP go into there and most of them are Shi'ia.
Adamiyah is a pretty nasty place. It's west of where I was at, located roughly in the north-central part of Baghdad. The Sha'ab is also near there, located on the west side of Sadr City. Also bad.
Northeast Baghdad (Baqouba) is pretty bad.
South Baghdad is not great either. That's where, if you recall, those two guys from the 101st were taken captive and executed a few months back.
Hell, that's about all I remember from two months ago.
The reference to South Baghdad and the soldiers from the 101st is yet another misnomer. That area is actually North Babil Province, but is more commonly referred to as South Baghdad because of its close association to the city proper as well as Sunni ties. The soldiers were actually taken in the Yusufiyah area near the power plant that was under construction by the Russians prior to OIF I. It is a Salafist Wahabi area that fuels support to many of the attacks in
Baghdad proper. The Mahmudiyah, Yusufiyah and Lutafiyah areas of South Baghdad were resident to two ASPs and the Qadacia Rocket manufacturing plant. As a result, it is ripe with ordnance and explosives. We removed over 200 caches from the AO in a seven month rotation. They were of all sizes: tactical, operational and strategic. Basically, it was a military industrial complex for the Regime. It is located on a Sunni/Shia fault line that we were able to exploit against the mostly SAR/FRE based insurgency that we faced.
Go to the MNFI website. In the right side of the page is a text block and near the bottom is a link to the transcript and slides of Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV's press briefings. The slides have much of the detail that LawVol was asking about. The slides are also in the transcript and I think it makes them easier to understand.