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YellowSunshine -> RE: Who is Iraq's best candidate for PM? (1/18/2008 10:59:11 AM)
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Wasn't sure where to put this article, however, I think this thread is the best for it.
Hopefully, Tigris will come along and clean it up if my copy/paste doesn't come through properly.
Rebuilding a Baghdad Neighborhood By DANIEL PEPPER/DORA Mon Jan 14, 3:10 PM ET When Captain Nicholas M. Cook arrived in the Dora neighborhood of southern Baghdad in May, the place was like a ghost town. Nearly 50% of the homes were abandoned and the residents that remained rarely ventured out. Only the crackle of gunfire pierced the streets. "Everyday it was like clockwork - 10 to 11:30 am gunfire would start. They would break for lunch and then start up again in the afternoon," says Cook, a West Point graduate from Lansing, Michigan who is on his second tour in Iraq.
if(window.yzq_d==null)window.yzq_d=new Object(); window.yzq_d['lCHLDULEYpM-']='&U=13bhnitbd%2fN%3dlCHLDULEYpM-%2fC%3d619213.12054947.12500278.1442997%2fD%3dLREC%2fB%3d4919452'; Dora is an affluent, upper-middle class neighborhood, home to many former Iraqi army generals and intelligence officers, almost completely Sunni and Baathist. It was just the kind of place hit hard by the 2003 orders to disband the Iraqi army and purge the government of ranking Baath party members. Cook's unit managed to turn the area around by patrolling 24-hours a day and putting up walls to choke off the flow of insurgents from the low-lying areas to the south. They went house to house, meeting every family they could find, asking about their problems, offering to help where they could and in the process building a network of reliable contacts and informants. They called these operations called 'close encounters'. They also cleaned up the community, investing heavily in infrastructure, building sidewalks, clearing trash, painting walls, and installing generators and new sewage lines where the government failed to provide them, all while fighting off insurgents. They refurbished a clinic and paid to upgrade a primary school. Today the neighborhood's abandonment rate is closer to 5%; where there used to be just 11 shops, 160 shops are now open on the main street. There hasn't been a major incident against Cook and his men for almost three months. (He lost five men while routing out insurgents and turning the neighborhood around; about a third of his men have been awarded Purple Hearts). Between Cook's area and an adjoining one, the U.S. spent close to $3 million, jumpstarting the local economy by hiring and sourcing locally. Another $4.7 million is budgeted for future projects. When he is out on patrol, primary schoolchildren dash across the street to greet Cook, running past armed neighborhood guards to proudly show him their report cards. "Hellow meestah Cook!" they shout. "Zien, zien!" Cook says, ("good, good") encouraging them in Arabic. Armed plainclothes gunmen - volunteers Cook helped organize - checked inside cars passing through the crosswalk. Just at that moment the mosque behind the school blares out the noontime call to prayer. "You never would have seen this a year ago," says Cook. He knows the mosque leaders well and has met almost daily with them since arriving. "When you meet him you know he's a holy man," he says of the blind imam in the nearby mosque. "The government is not coming here," says Cook. "You can't help but understand their desperation. If we don't stay here to help and maintain the infrastructure there is going to be no sustained progress." The unit has come to know the neighborhood in a way that would have been unthinkable just after the war, or even into 2004 and 2005. In fact, the U.S. military has never secured Iraq or controlled it so completely as it has today, and never before has their wealth of intelligence and ability to analyze it been better. And yet never before has the military looked and acted less like a fighting force than does today. "The problems that we have to worry about now - making sure the volunteers posted at the girls' high school don't stare at the young ladies - are a lot different from when we first arrived," says Cook. Cook and his men spend their days haranguing shady contractors, sending requests to government ministries for assistance, dragging community leaders to meetings, finding medicine for checking on home deeds from people who have recently moved in, learning the minutiae of Iraq's complicated ration card system, setting up neighborhood councils, and sometimes just lending an ear. The neighborhood still has a long way to go. It has just two entrances, only one of which residents feel safe enough driving in and out of. Some residents approach Cook to ask for help, or an application for a small grant. But many deliver cold, hard stares from a distance. And as safe as it is now, soldiers still wouldn't recommend a foreigner walk down the street without a flack jacket and a helmet. Cook is now concerned about larger issues, such as the central government's failure to maintain the U.S. financed school improvements and to allow the clinic they funded to stay open 24-hours. The government is also balking at incorporating the dozens of armed volunteer Sunni neighborhood watchmen into the Iraqi police. The days of decapitated heads, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire are still fresh in the minds of Dora's residents. Whether they will become a thing of the past never to return is anyone's guess. "My feeling is that those days are over. But will life ever really improve here?" asks Cook. "That's up to the government." View this article on Time.com
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