How They Did It
KAGAN, KIMBERLY
How They Did It Executing the winning strategy in Iraq BY KIMBERLY KAGAN The surge of operations that American and Iraqi forces began on June 15 has dramatically improved security in Baghdad...
...Al Qaeda’s strongholds and sanctuaries were in Salman Pak, Arab Jabour, Falluja, Abu Ghraib, Karma, Tarmiya, and Baquba...
...In northwestern Baghdad, “murders are down from a peak of over 161 reported murders per week a year ago to less than 5 per week now, and our continued efforts to defeat sectarian expansion continue to drive these numbers down,” reported Colonel J.B...
...Since security was deteriorating dramatically in Iraq a year ago, how U.S...
...The car bomb was al Qaeda’s offensive weapon of choice, and the IED its preferred defensive weapon...
...Some took refuge along the Hamrin Ridge, just north of the Diyala River valley, on a secondary road toward Kirkuk...
...and Iraqi Special Forces, as well as Iraqi conventional forces, conducted raids against key locations and individuals in Kirkuk and Mosul, cities where al Qaeda typically operated...
...Holding terrain is troop-intensive, and it requires offensive as well as defensive operations...
...How They Did It Executing the winning strategy in Iraq BY KIMBERLY KAGAN The surge of operations that American and Iraqi forces began on June 15 has dramatically improved security in Baghdad and throughout Iraq...
...By the end of June, U.S...
...Another assassination campaign targeted Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s aides in southern provinces...
...Other al Qaeda elements remained in strongholds along the Tigris River valley, such as Tarmiya, Balad, and Samarra, or in safe havens south of Baghdad...
...Burton, the sector’s commander, in mid-October...
...Special Forces killed and captured numerous high value targets during Phantom Thunder, culminating with the emir of the northern belts on August 7. As Phantom Strike began, Special Forces operating in Tarmiya killed or captured several major al Qaeda fi gures, including Ali Latif Ibrahim Hamad al-Falahi, aka Abu Ibrahim, responsible for overseeing terrorist operations in the northern belts and “coordinating VBIED [VehicleBorne IED] attacks in Baghdad,” as a military press briefi ng put it...
...Her periodic Iraq Report explaining military operations is available at weeklystandard.com and understandingwar.org...
...They regularly engaged with the local population...
...forces relied almost exclusively on Iraqi security forces to preserve gains after clearing operations, because of lack of troops and because of the focus on a rapid transition to Iraqis...
...and Iraqi forces arrived, al Qaeda exerted extreme pressure on Abu Disheer from its strongholds in Dora and Hawr Rajab...
...Special Forces targeted insurgents in Tikrit in August, making it more diffi cult for the groups to reconstitute there...
...They failed...
...The cooperation of Iraqi citizens, serving as interim and regular police, increased the ability of all forces to hold terrain...
...As U.S...
...Former insurgents in Ameriya introduced the anti-al Qaeda, concerned citizens movement to Baghdad in May...
...This large operation prevented al Qaeda from reinfi ltrating into Diyala from the Hamrin Ridge...
...Furthermore, it allowed us to operate in areas that had not yet seen a sustained coalition presence and to retain our hard-fought gains...
...They recognized that national politics and legislative agendas would not determine whether violence fell...
...Al Qaeda’s sustained campaign of vehicle bombing relied on an extensive support system outside the city to supply stolen and stripped vehicles, factories for converting them into vehicle bombs, explosives, money, and suicide bombers (most of them foreign...
...Most Sunni insurgents, therefore, moved from east to west, following the arc of roads and highways from the Tigris to Mahmudiya...
...operations closed the gaps in the belt from Karma to Baquba and struck along al Qaeda’s northsouth routes, they drove members of the network into more constrained spaces, such as Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown and a major source of Sunni insurgents since 2003...
...With violence falling sharply, Iraqis are no longer mobilizing for full-scale civil war, as they were at the end of 2006...
...It drove most remaining al Qaeda into rural areas, far from population centers...
...After President Bush decided to change strategy and increase the number of U.S...
...These operations set the stage for the concerned local citizens movement in Tarmiya, which had proceeded fi tfully in June, July, and August because of al Qaeda’s presence in the city...
...Prime Minister Maliki traveled to Najaf on September 5 and met with the grand ayatollah...
...commanders catalyzed those efforts in former insurgent safe havens once they were cleared...
...In mid-September, the main effort shifted closer to Baghdad...
...In early August, that division, supported by its U.S...
...According to an offi cial press release, Maliki and Sistani talked about “technocratic” government and about security in the holy cities...
...the Mahmudiya-Baghdad highway...
...Securing the capital from al Qaeda also required the dismantling of a car bombing network based in Karkh and Rusafa, neighborhoods in central Baghdad on both sides of the Tigris...
...These trends persisted through Ramadan, when violence had typically spiked...
...Enemy groups will attempt to regenerate...
...and Iraqi forces, partnered together, cleared an area...
...and on the east-west route along which al Qaeda operatives traveled from the Euphrates to the Tigris...
...Rather, the “concerned local citizens” movements generally spread after U.S...
...and Iraqi troops throughout the capital in order to secure its inhabitants...
...U.S...
...commanders fostered grassroots movements throughout Iraq, methodically negotiating security agreements with local offi cials, tribes, and former insurgent leaders...
...The total number of enemy attacks has fallen for four consecutive months, and has now reached levels last seen before the February 2006 Samarra mosque bombing...
...The additional forces, General Odierno explained, permitted “a surge in simultaneous and sustained offensive operations, in partnership with the Iraqi security forces...
...Commanders positioned the other three additional brigades in Baghdad’s “belts,” the networks of roadways, rivers, and other lines of communication within a 30-mile radius of the capital...
...Operation Phantom Strike, which is still going on, has consisted of quick-strike raids aimed at destroying terrorist staging areas and preventing insurgents from establishing new sanctuaries...
...Our ability to put pressure on al Qaeda and other extremists and deny them safe havens and sanctuaries increased signifi cantly...
...Some units still need Americans at their side, and others need them at their back as they assume new responsibilities...
...Diyala Province, which has an extremely complex network of Sunni, Shia, and mixed tribes, illustrates the complementary relationship between improving security and movements of concerned citizens...
...U.S...
...For example, al Qaeda leaders from Baquba reconstituted in several areas in northern Iraq after U.S...
...Thirty masked al Qaeda gunmen attempted to overrun a U.S...
...conventional forces conducted a series of large, coordinated operations there in mid-September, to remove an illegal court and clear gigantic caches of explosives...
...These leaders helped U.S...
...Their campaign is the largest and longest sustained offensive that America has undertaken in Iraq so far...
...First, the surge allowed us to eliminate extremist safe havens and sanctuaries, [and] just as importantly to maintain our gains...
...And VehicleBorne IED attacks are down nearly 85 percent thanks to our combined efforts to defeat the Karkh VBIED and IED networks—which has had a tremendous impact on insurgents’ ability to instruct and employ those types of weapons effectively...
...U.S...
...The Iraqi army and Iraqi police are more capably conducting long operations...
...As the Baghdad Security Plan began in February, U.S...
...and Iraqi forces had liberated western Baquba...
...Kimberly Kagan is president of the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C., and an affiliate of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University...
...The Phantom Thunder offensive killed over 1,100 enemy fi ghters and detained over 6,700, including 382 major fi gures...
...By the end of 2006, al Qaeda and militia groups were fi ghting for control of territory in Baghdad...
...troops in Iraq, the goal became to secure Iraq’s population from violence in order to allow civic and political progress...
...Locals willing to cooperate with Americans and Iraqi security forces might jump-start clearing efforts, as in Hawr Rajab, but few locals turned against al Qaeda before military operations cleared terrorist sanctuaries...
...The combination of more U.S...
...According to Colonel Burton: “Very rarely do we fi nd an effective EFP within our . . . former . . . EFP hot spots, given the increased participation of local nationals in helping us to fi nd these weapons, the increased responsiveness of the Iraqi security forces to defeat these cells and the increased effectiveness of our targeting operations to defeat the entire network...
...They sent detachments from Joint Security Stations to smaller outposts and slowly spread throughout the city...
...The terrain in Arab Jabour consists mainly of rural farmland (conducive to producing homemade explosives from fertilizer components) and dense palm groves along the Tigris (conducive to concealing weapons caches...
...The opening campaign of Phantom Strike, therefore, targeted insurgents and extremists trying to reconstitute further along the Tigris River valley...
...Al Qaeda launched its failed June expedition to recapture Ramadi from this area, which likewise served as a base for the September 13 assassination of Sheikh Sattar Abu Risha...
...General Joseph Fil, the Baghdad division commander, explained in late June how the operations inside and outside Baghdad worked, and why the fi ghting briefl y intensifi ed...
...Rather, the intensive operations in Tarmiya, Balad, Samarra, and the Zaab triangle impeded it from coordinating attacks in northern and central Iraq...
...Hawr Rajab is farmland in Arab Jabour wedged between three important areas: the farmland closer to the Tigris that U.S...
...The fragmentation of Al Qaeda in Iraq, extremist militias, and secret cells has only just happened...
...By contrast, the operations running concurrently in the Diyala River valley were conducted by a heavy brigade of division cavalry...
...He was a close associate of and likely successor to Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of AQI...
...The development of an economic and political capacity helps maintain our gains...
...The summer offensives in Hawr Rajab reduced the supply of fi ghters and materiel to Dora, making it more diffi cult for the enemy to reinfi ltrate that neighborhood...
...They established a new forward operating base near Muqdadiya, so that they could control the Diyala from Baquba to Hamrin Lake with Iraqi assistance...
...forces in August increased the tempo of attacks on al Qaeda in Balad and Samarra...
...and Iraqi security forces were especially sparse in these rural areas...
...Competing enemy groups drove the sectarian violence in Baghdad in 2006...
...Detainees included fi nanciers, weapons traffi ckers, death squad leaders, snipers, and members of a splinter Jaysh alMahdi group that conducted extra-judicial killings...
...Second, the ongoing quantitative and qualitative improvement of the Iraqi security forces are translating to everincreasing tactical successes...
...and Iraqi forces continued to target rogue elements of the militia that did not respond to Sadr’s request throughout September and October...
...In mid-September, over 1,200 men volunteered within two days to serve as volunteers for a new provisional security group known as the Critical Infrastructure Security Contract Force to help defend Tarmiya, alongside U.S...
...Moktada al-Sadr’s movement is based in Najaf, where the Eighth Iraqi Army Division has responsibility for security...
...and Muayyad Ali Husayn Sulayman al-Bayyati, aka Abu Wathiq, who helped establish AQI in Tarmiya...
...and Iraqi troops in Baghdad adopted a new posture...
...As a result, beleaguered Sunnis turned to al Qaeda for protection against death squads...
...This Tunisian-born terrorist oversaw the movement of foreign terrorists in Iraq...
...Coalition forces killed him in an airstrike on September 25, near Musayyib, on the road from Mahmudiya to the Shia holy cities...
...Coalition and Iraqi Special Forces captured and interrogated secret cell leaders throughout Iraq in the months from March through June, prior to the start of Phantom Thunder...
...The spring ’07 search for American soldiers kidnapped in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, led U.S...
...These military operations have improved security throughout central Iraq...
...Operations against Shia militias and Iranian extremists have reduced their ability to take advantage of al Qaeda’s demise in order to advance their sectarian agenda...
...forces clear enemy sanctuaries during the summer offensive by revealing enemy positions and weapons caches...
...As the offensive began, U.S...
...These operations also severed the northern belt from the southern belt...
...Operations in Mahmudiya targeting facilitation of foreign terrorists south of Baghdad thus led coalition forces to a major fi gure within AQI, Abu Usama al-Tunisi, in the third week of September...
...IED and small arms attacks are down from a peak of 50 per week in June to less than 5 per week since the end of August...
...forces reconnoitered Baquba and its vicinity, some locals who had once fought the Americans as insurgents began cooperating with U.S...
...In early September, when the operations south of Lake Hamrin concluded, U.S...
...troops cleared the al Qaeda stronghold in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora at the end of June and fi rst several weeks of July...
...In addition, the Phantom Strike offensive aggressively targeted the Karkh-Rusafa car bombing network, which al Qaeda had supplied from the belts, reducing the number and lethality of vehicle bombs in Baghdad...
...The theater-wide offensives were meant to buy time for the government of Iraq to develop the institutions of governance...
...It also sits astride the north-south line of communications that extremist militias used to push northward from Karbala to Baghdad...
...Generals Petraeus and Odierno pursued a vision of local-level reconciliation aimed at supporting the overarching political goals...
...and Baghdad’s southernmost neighborhood, Abu Disheer, which is primarily Shia and sits on the underbelly of Dora...
...A large concentration of U.S...
...In early 2006, al Qaeda also moved fi ghters along the Euphrates River valley between Anbar Province and North Babil...
...Generals Petraeus and Odierno have conducted a sophisticated counterinsurgency campaign aimed at securing the population of Iraq, and at the development of political, economic, and communications infrastructure to support the overarching political objectives...
...The opportunity to negotiate a political settlement now belongs to the government of Iraq...
...forces thus moved from clearing operations in former enemy sanctuaries to the next stage, called maintenance operations, by which they controlled and retained cleared territory...
...The key city of Mahmudiya lies on the border of Sunni and Shia zones...
...For example, after removing al Qaeda leadership in Tarmiya, U.S...
...Iraqi civilian casualties, which peaked at 3,000 in the month of December 2006, are now below 1,000 for the second straight month...
...The headquarters of the Islamic State of Iraq remained in Mosul...
...Marines, meanwhile, were clearing Falluja and Karma...
...Al Qaeda established emirs in the northern and southern belts in order to link its efforts in the different sanctuaries in these regions...
...In early August, residents of Adhamiya stormed the Abu Hanifa mosque, an al Qaeda stronghold...
...The rejection of al Qaeda by the Ramadi sheikhs in late 2006 has been widely reported...
...This theater-wide effort has been aimed at securing the population using all military instruments available to the coalition...
...The elimination of important secret cell leaders in western Baghdad has reduced EFP attacks in northwestern Baghdad dramatically...
...The division then arrested the commander of a battalion of a rogue Jaysh al-Mahdi group, and continued the campaign against secret cell leaders nearer its headquarters in Diwaniya...
...forces south of Baghdad conducted clearing operations from north to south along the Tigris River valley, focusing fi rst on the al Qaeda sanctuary in Arab Jabour on June 15...
...commanders and soldiers and their Iraqi partners achieved this positive momentum deserves explanation, even though hard fi ghting continues and the war is not yet won...
...observation post in Samarra in late August, presumably to regain control over a safe haven or line of communication...
...Commanders are therefore trying to connect these local movements to the provincial and national government...
...As U.S...
...As we assess the security gains made over the past four months, I attribute the progress to three prominent dynamics,” General Odierno explained...
...These dynamics worked together to improve security...
...Phantom Thunder also fractured the belts, compartmentalizing some al Qaeda operations around the capital so that the surviving portions of the network could not readily support one another...
...Generals Petraeus and Odierno conducted three successive, large-scale military operations in 2007...
...It is too soon to know what the Iraqis will do...
...Death squads, operating on behalf of extremist militia groups, purged mixed neighborhoods of their Sunni residents and intimidated Shia into compliance with their agenda...
...American troops play an important role in preventing the enemy from reestablishing sanctuaries...
...Al Qaeda set up defensive positions in some neighborhoods, such as Dora in southwestern Baghdad, to defend the Sunni population against attack...
...On August 28, rogue militia elements or special groups disrupted the Shia pilgrimage in Karbala...
...Phantom Thunder and Phantom Strike not only removed the network’s established personnel, but also degraded the infrastructure that had permitted the organization to stage regular vehicle bomb attacks from Karma and Tarmiya in March and April 2007...
...OPERATION PHANTOM THUNDER In order to preGenerals Petraeus and Odierno designed Operation Phantom Thunder to clear al Qaeda from its sanctuaries in the belts around Baghdad...
...Reconciliation efforts proceeded as soon as U.S...
...and Iraqi troops have fought side by side in these campaigns...
...and Iraqi forces cleared 50 villages in the Diyala River valley during the middle of August, many of which al Qaeda had occupied as recently as April...
...Al Qaeda’s leadership used the rural villages along the Zaab River to plan and synchronize attacks...
...Like Arab Jabour generally, Hawr Rajab lacked American troops and Iraqi security forces prior to the summer of 2007, and was therefore an exporter of weapons to Baghdad...
...commanders and soldiers have reversed the negative trends of 2006, some of which date back to 2005...
...An assassination campaign in August successfully targeted offi ceholders affi liated with the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (which, along with the two other leading Shia parties, Dawa and the Sadrist Trend, comprised the political bloc that originally helped Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki to power...
...These campaigns against secret cells led rogue militia and Iranian-backed elements to retaliate...
...These elements attempted to shoot their way past mosque guards, but failed...
...The disturbances became more widespread...
...After the major clearing operation in Arab Jabour and Salman Pak, enemy fighters moved southward along the Tigris just beyond the reach of U.S...
...The security facilitated by the military operations accelerated the spread of local efforts to turn against al Qaeda...
...Residents, tribal sheikhs, government offi cials, and U.S...
...None of these al Qaeda groups fared well during Phantom Strike...
...Tribal leaders in Diyala recruited locals to guard their communities alongside U.S...
...and Iraqi forces lived together at these small headquarters...
...This was done with the goal of protecting the population and in concert with political and economic initiatives to buy time and space for the government of Iraq...
...The incident prompted Moktada al-Sadr to issue a statement once again requesting that militia members loyal to him lay down their arms...
...The second was Phantom Thunder, an Iraq-wide offensive to clear al Qaeda sanctuaries...
...The displacement of al Qaeda leaders and fi ghters made it possible to track many of them down with Special Forces...
...Northeast of Baghdad, almost 10,000 U.S...
...The Iraqi security forces could not remove al Qaeda from its fortifi ed positions, nor could they stop the spectacular attacks...
...and Iraqi forces had cleared western Baquba, and rippled outward through the Diyala River valley as U.S...
...forces to Samarra, north of Baghdad, where the identifi cation cards of two of the soldiers were found...
...forces waged an aggressive campaign against Iranian-backed secret cells and extreme elements of Moktada al-Sadr’s militia, the Jaysh al-Mahdi...
...and Iraqi forces attacked al Qaeda safe havens at the northwestern end of the Hamrin Ridge, known as the Zaab triangle...
...The campaign against rogue militias has improved security...
...Meanwhile, U.S...
...These cities were important to al Qaeda’s ability to project force into Anbar...
...Shia militias defended Abu Disheer and attacked from that location into Dora...
...The summer offensive widened the scope of the population’s movement against al Qaeda and other terrorists...
...Holding territory, particularly in urban areas, requires continuous military operations based on sophisticated intelligence...
...U.S...
...And so their freedom of maneuver inside of the city, their own battle space, has been more and more restricted, and their support zones have been severely restricted, both inside the city and also in the belts around the city...
...forces fought to control Hawr Rajab in September and October in order to stabilize Arab Jabour and to tamp down the violence in Baghdad proper by weakening the regions that supplied weapons and fi ghters to al Qaeda in Dora...
...Generals David Petraeus and Odierno implemented the new strategy and determined how to use the additional troops...
...The Phantom Thunder offensive began on June 15, as soon as all the new brigades had arrived and were ready...
...Lastly, there’s a clear rejection of al Qaeda and other extremists by large segments of the population, this coupled with the bottom-up awakening movement by both Sunni and Shia who want a chance to reconcile with the government of Iraq...
...The fi rst was Fardh al-Qanoon, or the Baghdad Security Plan, which dispersed U.S...
...and Iraqi forces struck alternately at enemy groups in Diyala and in the provinces to the north, Nineweh, Salah-ad-Din, and Tamim...
...forces cleared the city of Muqdadiya, at the junction of the Diyala and Hamrin Lake, in a follow-on operation in midOctober...
...casualties spiked during the fi rst week of these major clearing operations, but both fell as U.S...
...General Odierno identifi ed the terrain between Karma and Tarmiya, south of Lake Tharthar, as “a known al Qaeda transit route...
...And some of the same al Qaeda operatives and couriers moved in each of the belts and through Baghdad...
...Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) launched spectacular attacks against civilians, particularly in Shia neighborhoods...
...In past years, U.S...
...The enemies of the coalition and the Iraqi government were able to use the terrain around Baghdad to funnel forces and supplies into the capital, to circumnavigate the city by highway, and to move from the city into the provinces...
...They thus achieved one of the major objectives of the counterinsurgency strategy by reconciling much of the Sunni population with the government...
...troops and the new mission of protecting the population drove down the number of execution-style killings in the capital...
...Before U.S...
...The operations have severely disrupted al Qaeda’s ability to project power into Baghdad by denying the group sanctuaries, fragmenting the belts, destroying support networks, and eliminating key personnel...
...Meanwhile, U.S...
...forces eliminated the enemy there...
...By the end of July, they also controlled eastern Baquba, Dora, and Falluja—the major urban strongholds of AQI...
...For example, members of the 1920s Brigades—a Sunni insurgent group that operated alongside al Qaeda until May—in Baquba identifi ed the specifi c locations of rigged houses and deep-buried IEDs before the city was cleared in June...
...Shia death squads responded by increasing executions of Sunnis...
...The third was Phantom Strike, an Iraq-wide offensive to pursue al Qaeda operatives and other enemies as they fl ed those sanctuaries and attempted to regroup in smaller areas throughout Iraq...
...Because of the sparsely settled terrain and the force composition south of Baghdad, a series of air assaults comprised the main effort in the region for much of August...
...Enemy attacks and U.S...
...American troops also play a critical role in persuading the government of Iraq to accept the new military and political realities, including a Sunni community that is willing to support the government in order to participate in political decisions...
...The operations against secret cells in the northern belt recently exposed several large caches of EFPs in Diyala Province, probably intended for Baghdad...
...In addition, they coordinated simultaneous and successive military operations throughout Iraq, rather than concentrating on one region...
...I believe we have achieved some momentum,” General Raymond T. Odierno, commander of coalition combat forces in Iraq, said modestly in his November 1 press briefi ng...
...IRAQI SECURITY FORCES AND CONCERNED LOCAL CITIZENS U.S...
...As of November 1, 2007, approximately 60,000 Iraqis had volunteered to protect their local communities as part of these fully screened and monitored forces...
...forces cleared in June...
...some reconstituted in tribal areas just south of Baquba...
...Abu Yaqub al-Masri, an inner circle al Qaeda leader with close ties to Abu Ayyub al-Masri...
...The population is primarily Sunni, but the predominantly Shia areas of Babil and Wasit province limit al Qaeda’s ability to move freely into safe havens much farther south...
...To establish safe neighborhoods and markets, they placed concrete barriers around positions vulnerable to car bomb attacks...
...it did not prefer special forces to conventional forces, but rather used them synergistically...
...As we have gone through the city and concentrated in a lot of areas where [the enemy] had free rein sometime before, those areas are now denied to them...
...At this time, coalition forces also arrested a major smuggler of Explosively Formed Pentrators (EFPs), a powerful, armor-piercing IED, east of Baghdad and secret cell leaders north of Baghdad in Diyala...
...commanders developed a new Critical Infrastructure Guard Force to protect important facilities in Adhamiya...
...forces cleared Diyala’s capital...
...forces consistently worked to eliminate insurgents from Mahmudiya during the major offensives, and they drove al Qaeda further south toward Karbala and Babil...
...The number of coalition soldiers killed in action has fallen for fi ve straight months and is now at the lowest level since February 2004...
...The Iraqi army secured Karbala and helped evacuate the thousands of pilgrims...
...Whether the political developments that were always the ultimate objective of the surge can be brought to fruition remains to be seen...
...In Tarmiya, just south of Balad, along the Tigris, U.S...
...OPERATION PHANTOM STRIKE In order to prevent al Qaeda and Shia extremist groups from reestablishing themselves in cities or rural support areas, Generals Petraeus and Odierno launched Phantom Strike, the second Iraq-wide offensive, in the middle of August...
...Operations in Diyala aimed to keep Baquba secure by clearing and holding territory in its vicinity...
...U.S...
...STRIKING SECRET CELLS AND SHIA EXTREMISTS As the imminent threat from al Qaeda receded, U.S...
...forces in 2007 likewise relied on their partner units in the Iraqi army and Iraqi police, and the greater number of Iraqi and American troops meant that more soldiers were available to hold terrain...
...And so they’re running out of maneuver space and they are starting to fi ght very hard...
...But clearly, this skillful military operation has created new realities on the ground...
...They cleared some neighborhoods in order to locate their Joint Security Stations there...
...General Petraeus transformed the tribal movement in Anbar into a national phenomenon supportive of government institutions...
...forces drove the enemy from these sanctuaries...
...The air assaults south of Baghdad eliminated enemy positions, such as safehouses and weapons caches, in the arc from Suwayra to Iskandariya...
...In late July, U.S...
...advisory team, detained a suspect in Najaf for recruiting and paying Jaysh al-Mahdi militia members from charitable funds to emplace IEDs...
...Phantom Thunder consisted of multiple, simultaneous military operations around Baghdad designed to prevent the enemy from fl eeing from one safe haven to another with impunity...
...and Iraqi security forces against al Qaeda...
...EFFECTS OF THESE OPERATIONS Clearing al Qaeda out of its strongholds in Dora, Ameriya, and Adhamiya reduced violence in Baghdad...
...They developed relationships with residents, gained their trust, and reconnoitered or cleared enemy positions...
...and Iraqi forces surrounded Baquba and blocked the escape routes from the city along the Diyala River valley on June 18...
...Citizens did so with the aim not only of preventing the return of terrorists, but also of joining the Iraqi police and thus supporting the government of Iraq...
...and Iraqi forces intensifi ed their operations against secret cell leaders in Baghdad, killing or capturing cell leaders and militia members threatening western Baghdad neighborhoods such as Shula, Mansour, Hurriya, Bayaa, and Aamel...
...Phantom Thunder and Phantom Strike did not eradicate AQI...
...By mid-August, they had also cleared other al Qaeda and Shia extremist strongholds south of Baghdad, including a terrorist safe haven in Musayyib, on the road from Karbala to Baghdad...
...and Iraqi security forces, and helped to hold Tarmiya against encroaching enemy forces...
...commanders sent two of the fi ve new brigades provided by the surge to Baghdad...
...IED explosions have plummeted to late 2004 levels...
Vol. 13 • November 2007 • No. 10
