An Iraqi Army Soldier from the 4th Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 5th Division, questions the local population about insurgent activity during a foot patrol in Buhriz, Iraq, on Feb. 17. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Stacy L. Pearsall.
Posted on 03/18/2007 10:33:38 AM PDT by SandRat
The 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division has seen a significant drop in violence over the past few months in the province of Shula and Kadtimiya, said Col. J.B. Burton, the unit’s commander.
Murders are down, from 141 in January to 63 in February to only 16 so far in March, he said. However the area has seen an increase in car bombs targeting Shiite gathering places, Burton said.
About one million people live in the area patrolled by Burton’s troops. It is principally Shiite-occupied in the northeast, Sunni in the west and southwest, and mixed in the southeast. Sectarian fault lines define the areas, and both Sunni and Shiia extremists fight for control over portions of the city and its citizens, said Burton.
Burton stated that the decline in violence was directly attributed to his Soldiers living in the neighborhoods and working side by side with the Iraqi security forces.
Originally, the combat outposts were designed solely to create and keep a troop presence in the community. However, they have transformed the outposts into combined command posts, or joint security stations, with Iraqi forces working in cooperation with Coalition forces. This allowed for better and faster information sharing and easier operations planning, Burton said.
“Every day I go out and visit these joint security stations, I see better interoperability, increased command and control processes and increased sharing of information,” Burton said. “What we started out with as a means to get Coalition forces out into the battlefield has grown into a very promising effort to execute combined operations across western Baghdad.”
But, while violence has decreased since implementing the Fardh Al-Qanoon, Burton was quick to add that it is still too early to say how long the downturn will last.
“Make no mistake, we are not proclaiming victory yet. There's a lot of tough work ahead, but we are very optimistic,” Burton said.
(By Fred W. Baker III American Forces Press Service)
In other developments throughout Iraq:
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