thedrifter
10-14-07, 05:40 PM
Progress on Haifa Street
Gaining local trust helped troops revitalize a Baghdad neighborhood. Matching that success elsewhere could be a tall order
By Sean D. Naylor - snaylor@militarytimes.com
Posted : October 22, 2007
Baghdad — Capt. John Gilliam’s last memories of Haifa Street here in this war-torn city were of insurgent bullets pinging against the Bradley in which two medics worked on the pumping artery in his leg that had been severed by shrapnel, then being rushed away in a Humvee from the trash- and rubble-strewn thoroughfare.
The commander of C Troop, 4th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, and two of his platoons had been “leapfrogging” through a maze of alleys in pursuit of militiamen when he heard the chilling sound of metal on pavement as a grenade flew from the shadows and bounced in front of him.
His radio operator, then-Pfc. Stephen Battisto, “saw the grenade hit, threw me on the ground and jumped on top of me,” Gilliam recalled. It exploded, destroying the radio on Battisto’s back but leaving him unscathed.
But Gilliam felt an electric shock in his left leg. He’d been hit. Under fire, medic Sgt. Ahmad Mohamad Astacio ran to Gilliam and, with Battisto, dragged him to the Bradley.
Astacio and another medic cut away Gilliam’s pants and applied dressings. Unaware that a small piece of shrapnel had severed the main artery in his calf, Gilliam soldiered on, following the battle and issuing orders over the radio.
“I wanted to see this thing through,” he said. “About 30, 45 minutes into it, I was like, ‘OK, now it is a big deal, I can’t feel my leg.’”
His men bundled him into a Humvee that sped away into the night. After six weeks battling to clear out foreign and Iraqi Sunni insurgents, Shiite militiamen and common thugs from the central Baghdad neighborhood, Gilliam’s luck ran out at 11 p.m. on Feb. 3.
Fast-forward to midday May 15. After spending three months recovering from his wounds in the U.S., Gilliam was back on Haifa Street. Col. Bryan Roberts, commander of 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, had invited Gilliam to join him and Brig. Gen. John Campbell, assistant commander of 1st Cav and Multi-National Division-Baghdad, for a stroll in the neighborhood just north of the Green Zone.
The scenes Gilliam encountered were a surreal contrast with his previous experiences. Streets he had known only as the setting for murderous combat were full of traffic. Tea houses were crammed with men playing dominoes. Blacksmiths and woodworkers labored in cramped storefronts on narrow side streets. Soldiers and civilians walked beneath tall apartment buildings that had previously sheltered insurgent machine-gun nests.
“In early January, as a troop commander, those high-rises were my worst nightmare,” Gilliam said later that day. “From what I saw today, Haifa Street could be a case study for how to effectively secure an area and take it back and revitalize a community.”
‘Security first’
Statistics suggest that the changes Gilliam perceived on Haifa Street — however fragile — are real. In January, the area saw 53 murders; in July, there was one, said Maj. David Shoupe, a spokesman for Roberts’ brigade. Attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces over the same period declined from more than 50 to about 10.
U.S. troops across Baghdad now follow basic counterinsurgency doctrine, which some officers here refer to as “clear, hold and build,” and others as “clear, control and retain.” On Haifa Street, the “clearing” is over, but it was an essential first step, Gilliam said.
“With any operation in any part of Iraq or Afghanistan ... you have to have security first, period,” he said.
Clearing and holding Haifa took much hard fighting, plus classic counterinsurgency techniques.
“The first step is just literally giving [the insurgents] a choice: Either you’re going to lay down your arms and get out of here, or you’re going to get captured or you’re going to die,” Gilliam said. “Some chose to stand and fight, and they paid the price.”
From late December to early February, U.S. and Iraqi troops fought pitched battles with Shiite militiamen, Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters, clearing Haifa Street block by bloody block. U.S. and Iraqi forces killed more than 100 enemy fighters of all stripes during that period at a cost of 14 Iraqi troops and at least one U.S. casualty, Shoupe said.
The process was just about complete when Gilliam was hit. “The last contact that anybody had on Haifa Street, period, was the night I got wounded,” he said.
A matter of trust
Round-the-clock operations were key to gaining the locals’ trust. “The people saw us out there 24 hours a day with the Iraqi forces; they saw that we weren’t leaving,” Gilliam said. “They immediately began saying [to us], ‘This person’s living here, he’s not from around here, I’ve seen him with weapons and he’s threatening me.’ It allowed us, with the Iraqi army, to start getting rid of those people.”
Identifying — and gaining the cooperation of — Haifa Street’s power brokers also paid off.
U.S. troops began escorting the movement of food and medical supplies that had been donated by mosques in other parts of Baghdad. “If you start handing out stuff, the people will pull you aside, tell you things,” Gilliam said.
A crucial step in “holding” Haifa Street — preventing insurgents from regaining a foothold — has been the establishment of a joint security station in a palace once owned by one of Saddam’s sons. The 31 JSSs that U.S. and Iraqi forces have created across Baghdad serve as sites where U.S. and Iraqi military and police units operating in the area share information.
The JSSs are a first step to turning over responsibility for security in Baghdad’s neighborhoods to Iraqi forces. Ultimately, Gilliam said, the goal is to have the military forces take a back seat to the local police.
The final part of “clear, hold, build” on Haifa Street is an ambitious plan to improve quality of life in the neighborhood.
The first phase of “The Haifa Street Project,” as it is known, is a 20-point plan for “visible signs of change,” from such simple steps as installing street lights and picking up trash to grander ideas to “improve small businesses [and] ... apartment dwellings,” according to a pamphlet about the project.
The second component is a focused effort to improve the area’s infrastructure, particularly sewer and water pump stations.
“Security operations” by Iraqi and U.S. forces constitute the third part of the project.
“The intent is to make Haifa Street a better place to live and work,” Roberts said.
To Gilliam, shows that the counterinsurgency methods being applied across the Iraqi capital can succeed.
The end result, he said, is the sight of “children going to school, schools being built, hospitals open and working, business thriving, people on the streets and everybody doesn’t have a scowl and a contemptuous look towards American forces.”
That’s in stark contrast to some parts of Iraq, where “you can see hatred in some people’s eyes, burning a hole through you,” he said.
Petraeus’ arrival
U.S. officials hope to replicate this across the city. Spurred on by Gen. David Petraeus, who took command of coalition forces in Iraq on Feb. 10, U.S. forces have made security for the Iraqi people the highest priority.
Petraeus’ arrival closed a gap in understanding about the counterinsurgency fight that had developed between junior leaders and senior generals in Iraq, said Lt. Col. Douglas Ollivant, a planner for Multi-National Division-Baghdad.
Under Petraeus, U.S. units have become more proactive. In Baghdad, they have established 39 coalition outposts, or COPs — U.S.-only bases that until June were called “combat outposts.” The COPs provide a continuous presence in the heart of the community.
It is this change, rather than the sheer increase in manpower associated with the “surge” of 30,000 troops, that is making a difference in Baghdad. The hope is that by offering protection from all stripes of violent Sunni and Shiite extremism, U.S. forces can give Iraq’s political leaders breathing room to achieve national reconciliation.
But the obstacles are numerous and substantial.
One of the tallest hurdles standing between the coalition and its goal of a stable Baghdad is the sheer complexity of the fight in the Iraqi capital.
“You’ve got at least six different wars going on here in Baghdad,” Ollivant said, listing them:
å The sectarian fight between Sunni and Shiite factions.
å The Sunni insurgency.
å Al-Qaida in Iraq’s anarchic war against the coalition and the Iraqi government.
å The reach of organized crime.
å Interference from Iran and Syria.
å The dawn of a power struggle within the Shiite faction.
But for the service member on the street operating at the tactical level, a common solution to all these problems exists, he said. “If you get [troops] out in the community, your mere presence discourages all these people, and eventually the people who aren’t wrapped up in any of this will tell you who the bad guys are.”
Ellie
Gaining local trust helped troops revitalize a Baghdad neighborhood. Matching that success elsewhere could be a tall order
By Sean D. Naylor - snaylor@militarytimes.com
Posted : October 22, 2007
Baghdad — Capt. John Gilliam’s last memories of Haifa Street here in this war-torn city were of insurgent bullets pinging against the Bradley in which two medics worked on the pumping artery in his leg that had been severed by shrapnel, then being rushed away in a Humvee from the trash- and rubble-strewn thoroughfare.
The commander of C Troop, 4th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, and two of his platoons had been “leapfrogging” through a maze of alleys in pursuit of militiamen when he heard the chilling sound of metal on pavement as a grenade flew from the shadows and bounced in front of him.
His radio operator, then-Pfc. Stephen Battisto, “saw the grenade hit, threw me on the ground and jumped on top of me,” Gilliam recalled. It exploded, destroying the radio on Battisto’s back but leaving him unscathed.
But Gilliam felt an electric shock in his left leg. He’d been hit. Under fire, medic Sgt. Ahmad Mohamad Astacio ran to Gilliam and, with Battisto, dragged him to the Bradley.
Astacio and another medic cut away Gilliam’s pants and applied dressings. Unaware that a small piece of shrapnel had severed the main artery in his calf, Gilliam soldiered on, following the battle and issuing orders over the radio.
“I wanted to see this thing through,” he said. “About 30, 45 minutes into it, I was like, ‘OK, now it is a big deal, I can’t feel my leg.’”
His men bundled him into a Humvee that sped away into the night. After six weeks battling to clear out foreign and Iraqi Sunni insurgents, Shiite militiamen and common thugs from the central Baghdad neighborhood, Gilliam’s luck ran out at 11 p.m. on Feb. 3.
Fast-forward to midday May 15. After spending three months recovering from his wounds in the U.S., Gilliam was back on Haifa Street. Col. Bryan Roberts, commander of 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, had invited Gilliam to join him and Brig. Gen. John Campbell, assistant commander of 1st Cav and Multi-National Division-Baghdad, for a stroll in the neighborhood just north of the Green Zone.
The scenes Gilliam encountered were a surreal contrast with his previous experiences. Streets he had known only as the setting for murderous combat were full of traffic. Tea houses were crammed with men playing dominoes. Blacksmiths and woodworkers labored in cramped storefronts on narrow side streets. Soldiers and civilians walked beneath tall apartment buildings that had previously sheltered insurgent machine-gun nests.
“In early January, as a troop commander, those high-rises were my worst nightmare,” Gilliam said later that day. “From what I saw today, Haifa Street could be a case study for how to effectively secure an area and take it back and revitalize a community.”
‘Security first’
Statistics suggest that the changes Gilliam perceived on Haifa Street — however fragile — are real. In January, the area saw 53 murders; in July, there was one, said Maj. David Shoupe, a spokesman for Roberts’ brigade. Attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces over the same period declined from more than 50 to about 10.
U.S. troops across Baghdad now follow basic counterinsurgency doctrine, which some officers here refer to as “clear, hold and build,” and others as “clear, control and retain.” On Haifa Street, the “clearing” is over, but it was an essential first step, Gilliam said.
“With any operation in any part of Iraq or Afghanistan ... you have to have security first, period,” he said.
Clearing and holding Haifa took much hard fighting, plus classic counterinsurgency techniques.
“The first step is just literally giving [the insurgents] a choice: Either you’re going to lay down your arms and get out of here, or you’re going to get captured or you’re going to die,” Gilliam said. “Some chose to stand and fight, and they paid the price.”
From late December to early February, U.S. and Iraqi troops fought pitched battles with Shiite militiamen, Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters, clearing Haifa Street block by bloody block. U.S. and Iraqi forces killed more than 100 enemy fighters of all stripes during that period at a cost of 14 Iraqi troops and at least one U.S. casualty, Shoupe said.
The process was just about complete when Gilliam was hit. “The last contact that anybody had on Haifa Street, period, was the night I got wounded,” he said.
A matter of trust
Round-the-clock operations were key to gaining the locals’ trust. “The people saw us out there 24 hours a day with the Iraqi forces; they saw that we weren’t leaving,” Gilliam said. “They immediately began saying [to us], ‘This person’s living here, he’s not from around here, I’ve seen him with weapons and he’s threatening me.’ It allowed us, with the Iraqi army, to start getting rid of those people.”
Identifying — and gaining the cooperation of — Haifa Street’s power brokers also paid off.
U.S. troops began escorting the movement of food and medical supplies that had been donated by mosques in other parts of Baghdad. “If you start handing out stuff, the people will pull you aside, tell you things,” Gilliam said.
A crucial step in “holding” Haifa Street — preventing insurgents from regaining a foothold — has been the establishment of a joint security station in a palace once owned by one of Saddam’s sons. The 31 JSSs that U.S. and Iraqi forces have created across Baghdad serve as sites where U.S. and Iraqi military and police units operating in the area share information.
The JSSs are a first step to turning over responsibility for security in Baghdad’s neighborhoods to Iraqi forces. Ultimately, Gilliam said, the goal is to have the military forces take a back seat to the local police.
The final part of “clear, hold, build” on Haifa Street is an ambitious plan to improve quality of life in the neighborhood.
The first phase of “The Haifa Street Project,” as it is known, is a 20-point plan for “visible signs of change,” from such simple steps as installing street lights and picking up trash to grander ideas to “improve small businesses [and] ... apartment dwellings,” according to a pamphlet about the project.
The second component is a focused effort to improve the area’s infrastructure, particularly sewer and water pump stations.
“Security operations” by Iraqi and U.S. forces constitute the third part of the project.
“The intent is to make Haifa Street a better place to live and work,” Roberts said.
To Gilliam, shows that the counterinsurgency methods being applied across the Iraqi capital can succeed.
The end result, he said, is the sight of “children going to school, schools being built, hospitals open and working, business thriving, people on the streets and everybody doesn’t have a scowl and a contemptuous look towards American forces.”
That’s in stark contrast to some parts of Iraq, where “you can see hatred in some people’s eyes, burning a hole through you,” he said.
Petraeus’ arrival
U.S. officials hope to replicate this across the city. Spurred on by Gen. David Petraeus, who took command of coalition forces in Iraq on Feb. 10, U.S. forces have made security for the Iraqi people the highest priority.
Petraeus’ arrival closed a gap in understanding about the counterinsurgency fight that had developed between junior leaders and senior generals in Iraq, said Lt. Col. Douglas Ollivant, a planner for Multi-National Division-Baghdad.
Under Petraeus, U.S. units have become more proactive. In Baghdad, they have established 39 coalition outposts, or COPs — U.S.-only bases that until June were called “combat outposts.” The COPs provide a continuous presence in the heart of the community.
It is this change, rather than the sheer increase in manpower associated with the “surge” of 30,000 troops, that is making a difference in Baghdad. The hope is that by offering protection from all stripes of violent Sunni and Shiite extremism, U.S. forces can give Iraq’s political leaders breathing room to achieve national reconciliation.
But the obstacles are numerous and substantial.
One of the tallest hurdles standing between the coalition and its goal of a stable Baghdad is the sheer complexity of the fight in the Iraqi capital.
“You’ve got at least six different wars going on here in Baghdad,” Ollivant said, listing them:
å The sectarian fight between Sunni and Shiite factions.
å The Sunni insurgency.
å Al-Qaida in Iraq’s anarchic war against the coalition and the Iraqi government.
å The reach of organized crime.
å Interference from Iran and Syria.
å The dawn of a power struggle within the Shiite faction.
But for the service member on the street operating at the tactical level, a common solution to all these problems exists, he said. “If you get [troops] out in the community, your mere presence discourages all these people, and eventually the people who aren’t wrapped up in any of this will tell you who the bad guys are.”
Ellie