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Thread: The Battle of Baghdad

  1. #41
    Council Member tequila's Avatar
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    Default Baghdad Neighborhoods Walled Off

    A few articles focusing on the walling off of primarily Sunni communities in Baghdad as part of the new security plan:

    Iraq Getting "Gated Communities"

    The U.S. military is walling off at least 10 of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods and using biometric technology to track some of their residents, creating what officers call "gated communities" in an attempt to carve out oases of safety in this war-ravaged city.

    The plan drew widespread condemnation in Iraq this past week. On Sunday night, Prime Minister Nouri-al Maliki told news services that he would work to halt construction of a wall around the Sunni district of Adhamiyah, which residents said would aggravate sectarian tensions by segregating them from Shiite neighbors. The U.S. military says the walls are meant to protect people, not further divide them in a city that is increasingly a patchwork of sectarian enclaves.
    U.S. Walls Off Baghdad Neighborhoods

    The United States military has begun sealing off Baghdad neighborhoods with concrete walls in a controversial new strategy intended to calm Baghdad's sectarian flashpoints, but residents fear the barriers could deepen divisions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.


    Seven so-called "gated communities" have been or are being built, according to military officials, and more may be coming under the wide-ranging Baghdad security crackdown launched nine weeks ago.


    Officials said the walls would help create islands of security by controlling the flow of people and vehicles in some of the city's most violent neighborhoods, and by keeping armed groups from using the areas as launching pads or targets for attacks.


    But residents say the barriers actually increase their feelings of isolation and make them feel like targets.


    "Don't they realize that when the Baghdad neighborhoods become either Sunni or Shiite, they will become even more vulnerable?" said Yassir Ismail, a 34-year-old Sunni resident of Adhamiyah, one of the areas where the U.S. is putting up barriers. "Extremists from both sides - or mercenaries - will have no more qualms. . . . They will bomb each other to kingdom come."


    U.S. officials acknowledged that the gated communities would wall sects off from one another, but they said they were a temporary measure. They're being built in consultation with Iraqi security forces and community leaders, officials said.

  2. #42
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    CSIS, 20 Apr 07: Securing Baghdad with Gated Communities
    ...Baghdad is a vast, sprawling city. Various sources estimate it at 5 to 7.5 million people, with much depending on whether the estimate covers the city limits or greater Baghdad area. It is divided by a relatively few main roads relative to current traffic demands, has significant river barriers and divisions, and further security barriers like the Green Zone.

    Securing the entire city is virtually impossible. Baghdad is too important to the Iraqi economy to search every vehicle or control every access point, and the same applies to internal traffic. The city can only function with relatively constant flows of traffic between Sunni, Shi'ite, and mixed areas.

    Gated communities may, therefore, be the only way to ensure relative physical security to given parts of the city without paralyzing it, or creating security systems that cannot function. They also allow some economy of force. Focusing on security in the most troubled areas still may involve more manpower than the US and ISF can deploy, but is far more practical than trying to both secure the entire perimeter and then secure the entire inner structure of the city....

  3. #43
    Council Member tequila's Avatar
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    In defense of Baghdad's 'walls' - by LTGEN Ray Odierno.

    MountainRunner's negative reaction to the wall policy.

  4. #44
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    Anthony Cordesman on the wall policy.

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    JSOU, Nov 07: Block by Block: Civic Action in the Battle of Baghdad January-November 2006
    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.
    Complete 118 page paper at the link.

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