Continued Progress: Security Allows Opening of West Baqubah Road

Multi-National Force - Iraq ^ | Pfc. Alisha Nye, USA

[SandRat]

BAQUBAH — A ribbon cutting ceremony recently took place in a western Baqubah neighborhood to reopen a road that had been closed to the locals in the area for more than a year.

"This was in the workings since early May," said Capt. Kevin P. Ryan, the officer behind coordinating the opening. "My idea is to transition this area of operations (AO) back to the Iraqi people and to open the roads up, to give something back to the people."

To do that, though, he had to work with Iraqi security forces (ISF) to set up some conditions, which were to set up a series of checkpoints, Ryan said. There were three set up.

"The three of them lead into the west side of the AO," Ryan said. "From here, Iraqi security forces with their Sons of Iraq brothers can search the vehicles and allow the vehicles to come in. Traffic has not been allowed inside the western part of this AO in over a year, so today was a big day giving something back to the people."

Traffic had not been allowed in for so long due to security reasons, Ryan said.

"This was the foothold of al-Qaida in Iraq," Ryan said. "So, they banned all traffic due to clearing operations and never allowed traffic to come back in because the situation didn't allow it."

Transition of control of the AO from Coalition forces to Iraqi security forces is also being achieved.

"The biggest thing is that Western Baqubah is almost retained," Ryan said. "A few more things need to happen and we'll be fully in the retained phase."

Ryan said this means that ISF is definitely in the lead.

"For the most part, right now, ISF is in the lead and U.S. forces have been over-watching," Ryan said. "The Iraqi dependency on the U.S. is decreasing. That's the way we need to keep going. Today was one of the steps in the right direction…a big step."

[SandRat]

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