A strategy in Baghdad that is working

BAGHDAD, Feb. 28 -- American soldiers are leaving their sprawling fortress-cities and establishing many small outposts in the capital's most violent neighborhoods in a major tactical shift under the two-week-old Baghdad security plan.Informed by counterinsurgency theory that calls for placing units full-time among the people they want to sway, U.S. troops are using their new bases to work with their Iraqi counterparts, uncover more battlefield intelligence and reinforce, by their sustained presence, the message that they will not allow militants unfettered freedom of movement. A new U.S.-Iraqi base in the Jamiyah neighborhood of western Baghdad, a platoon of American soldiers guards the front gate and watches from the rooftop."These little combat outposts, they are more exposed: Your routes in here are very limited, and they're definitely watching us," Staff Sgt. Marcel Weaver, 35, said of the insurgents operating in the neighborhood around the base. A grenade "attack is coming, I can guarantee that."U.S. soldiers have opened 15 of about 30 planned "joint security stations" in the capital. They have also set up an unspecified number of smaller "combat outposts." U.S. military spokesmen did not respond to requests for information about how many such outposts are operating in Baghdad or how many times they have been attacked.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/28/AR2007022802217.html


Since the start of this new offensive the death toll in Baghdad has dropped 50 %! The main success of this is because the political situation is getting better, we don't have to worry about political pressure not to enter the Shiite neigborhoods. Another great idea is the joint security station plan, since Iraqi and US troops are living and patrolling together they don't have to worry about Iraqi soldiers not intervening in mass kidnaps because of secretatian ties. This gives the Iraqi soldiers and the civilians time to get to kno and trust each other. It also means their is less chance of secretian violence in the form of kidnappings and killings because Iraqi and US forces are patrolling in the neighborhoods constantly. In my opinin Joint Security stations should be established in Diyala and we should deploy a force of about 10,000 extra troops to counter the flow of Shiite Death sqauds and insurgents from Baghdad coming into Diyala.