The War: February 2008 Archives
If you’ve closely followed the events in Iraq since the troop surge in 2007, then you’ve no doubt heard the term ‘counterinsurgency’ or the military acronym ‘COIN’ and how our forces have adapted to the complex and challenging environment in Iraq by applying the various COIN principles.
Getting to know the local leaders is critical to success here; finding out who the real men of influence, the neighborhood power brokers and getting them on board has been an essential element of Task Force Dragon’s ability to get past the dark days of early and mid-2007 when we averaged more than 30 attacks per day against our Soldiers and were in the fight of our lives (as of the 13th of Feb., we’ve not had 30 attacks total for the month yet).
While every neighborhood in the Rashid Security District is distinct and different, one common denominator is that the local tribal and religious leaders have a major say as to whether progress will take root there by how actively they work with our troops and the various elements of the local and national-level Government of Iraq (GoI) functionaries to improve quality of life.
Muoyad, a member of the sizeable Sunni Jubori clan, is a cardiologist by trade, a medical doctor who once successfully treated one of Saddam Hussein’s sons (Uday) for a gunshot wound during one of the several attempts made on the eldest Hussein’s life before he was killed by U.S. forces in July 2003.
Not one attack has been launched against U.S. or Iraqi Security Forces in the area since September, 2007 and under Muoyad’s guiding hand, the streets are clean, electricity and power runs nearly 24 hours a day, which is a drastic improvement over the 2-3 hours per day that we saw when the 1-4 CAV first showed up there in mid-summer.
Read it all!
