Sadr City's Amazing "Pooch-worthy" Turnaround

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Sadr City, the South Bronx of Baghdad, has always been a rough neighborhood. Needless to say, carrying a gun here is considered a legal, moral right. Today, American and Iraqi troops are trying to do the once-unthinkable, and take Sadr City's weapons away.

It's an amazing turnaround for a place that, just over half a year ago, was pretty much a no-go zone for U.S. and Iraqi government forces. I recently accompanied soldiers of Task Force 1-6 Infantry on a foot patrol around several blocks of Sadr City. This area saw intense fighting this spring after elements of the Jaish al-Mahdi militia (the so-called "special groups") used the area as a launching pad for rocket attacks against the International Zone(a.k.a. the "Green Zone.") U.S. and Iraqi forces launched an offensive to stop the attacks; as street battles raged, U.S. engineers walled off the southern quadrant of Sadr City to push insurgent rocket teams beyond the range of the IZ.

A truce was concluded in May. Iraqi troops took up checkpoints north of the wall, and U.S. Army task force patrols the southern quadrant of Sadr City.

This was a joint U.S.-Iraqi "cordon and knock" search for illegal weapons. In this part of Baghdad, the government of Nuri al-Maliki has rescinded the old "one AK-47 per household" rule; unless a weapon is registered - or belongs to a member of the security forces - it will be confiscated. The patrol yielded a haul of 16 illegal weapons - mostly AK-47s, a few SKS rifles, even a nicely preserved.303 Lee-Enfield, perhaps a relic of the British occupation in the 1920s.

The patrol was also a test of the ability of Iraqi and U.S. forces to work together. When a new security pact takes effect next year, U.S. troops will no longer be allowed to conduct unilateral operations. For Capt. Andrew Slack, a company commander with Task Force 1-6 Infantry, the big question is whether they will be able to patrol as aggressively. "Everything is a big question mark on January 1," he told me. "We are wondering if the tempo is going to change. I think we will still keep trying to do things as we have been. But the difficulty will be with coordination: everything has to have an Iraqi counterpart. Especially when it comes to patrolling -- often we do patrols unilaterally because they are not as robust, personnel-wise. They have training duties, and they don't have the manpower and organization to do as much as we'd like."

Slack said his unit had been readying for a gradual shift to "warrant-based targeting" - which will require U.S. troops to work with the Iraqi courts system to obtain warrants. "We've been doing it [transition] over the past few months to spread out the pain - so it's not just flipping a switch on January 1," he said.

I went on a similar mission in another neighborhood of Baghdad, with soldiers of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division; they were paired with Iraqi National Police. Staff Sgt. Zachary Walker said his soldiers were there to provide the overwatch -- letting the Iraqis do the house-to-house search.

That was fairly uneventful -- except for one woman, who complained that her husband was planning to sell their assault rifle to put food on the table.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/earlier-this-we.html