Baghdad's outposts bring new perils
The troop surge brought new tactics that have soldiers patrolling urban areas more frequently, away from bases.
from the March 22, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
The anatomy of a security outpost
Shortly before midnight Friday, soldiers from the 4th Brigade's 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment's Alpha Company began moving out. Dozens of tractors, tanks, flat-bed trucks transported 10-ft.-high concrete blocks and reams of barbed wire through deserted streets toward Amel and nearby Jihad.
Both areas are located on the capital's west side, just south of the airport road, which has seen numerous fatal shootings and roadside bombs.
Alpha Company's destination was the Abu Jaafar al-Mansur sports club and judo studio in Amel. Before the US-led invasion in March 2003, it was a wedding hall and social club owned by one of Saddam Hussein's bodyguards.
A tank knocked down part of the building's walled perimeter as soldiers darted out of their Humvees and began carrying out a meticulously synchronized plan to secure it. The Iraqi caretaker, who had been expecting them but was not told of the exact time of their arrival, was roused out of bed to greet them.
The club's rooms were inspected one-by-one. The soldiers began hauling in bright yellow chainsaws, boxes of canned food, and cereal bars. Backpacks and folded cots piled up at the entrance.
At dawn Saturday, some exhausted soldiers sprawled themselves out on the floor of the weight room for a few hours of sleep. Magazine cut-outs of famous bodybuilders adorn the walls. Others began boarding up the windows of the hall, which had not seen any students for months, says caretaker Jawad Kadhem.
Amel, a mixed area, has been ripped apart by sectarian violence. In the wake of the bombing of a revered Shiite mosque in February 2006, and a retaliatory wave of Sunni mosque bombings and killings by Shiite militias, armed Sunni men in Amel began driving out Shiite families.
Then, with the launch of a security crackdown by the government of Nouri al-Maliki in the summer of 2006, Shiite militiamen, many loyal to the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, descended on Amel and began to drive out Sunni families with the tacit approval and sometimes direct help of the predominantly Shiite national police, says Kadhem.
He is a Shiite, but prides himself on getting along with everyone in Amel, where he was born and has lived all his life. He has already lost a brother and a 16-year-old nephew to the sectarian killing.
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