This monograph describes one facet of the Battle for Baghdad during the period January through November 2006. The story is based on the recollections, notes, and reports of the author, who served with the Multi-National Division, Baghdad (MND‑B) as the G9—the principal staff officer responsible for civic action, Special Operations Forces integration, and counterinsurgency training. In this timeframe MND-B treated civic action as a maneuver function inherent to its operations, and it employed task-organized combat forces to conduct Phase IV (Stability Operations) and Phase V (Enable the Civil Authority) in order to achieve U.S. and Iraqi military objectives.
The sources for this report have since been declassified by the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. This division assumed command of the MND-B from the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division on 7 January 2006. The 3rd Infantry Division had just completed a historic year in Baghdad ushering in the elections for the national government to establish democracy in Iraq.
For the MND-B, the mission at hand was to secure Baghdad and provide the opportunity for the newly elected government to establish self-rule over the sovereign state of Iraq. To do so, the MND-B counterinsurgency operation assumed two components, security operations and civic action. The civic-action program was centrally planned with decentralized execution to accommodate the variances in the operational environment throughout the MND-B area of responsibility. This report gives a sense of the extensive efforts made by the MND-B troops to assist the local population in Baghdad while supporting command objectives. The kinds of accomplishments and the methods employed provide valuable insight for others who must conduct operations in similar circumstances.
On 15 November, the 4th Infantry Division transitioned command and control of MND-B to the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division. Joint Special Operations University is pleased to provide LTC Adrian T. Bogart’s experiences in the Battle for Baghdad.
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