Must Read: Michael J. Totten In Baghdad
This one really is a must read. Michael J. Totten recounts a trip into the Graya’at neighborhood of Northern Baghdad. It is nothing - not a bit - like what the media has inundated us with daily. The soldiers are, frankly, bored.
“We were on base at Camp Taji [north of the city] and commuting to work,” Major Jazdyk told me earlier. “The problem with that was that the only space we dominated was inside our Humvees. So we moved into the neighborhoods and live there now with the locals. We know them and they know us.”
Lieutenant Lawrence Pitts from Fayetteville, North Carolina, elaborated. “We patrol the streets of this neighborhood 24/7,” he said. “We knock on doors, ask people what they need help with. We really do what we can to help them out. We let them know that we’re here to work with them to make their city safe in the hopes that they’ll give us the intel we need on the bad guys. And it worked.”
The area of Baghdad just to the south of us, which the locals think of as downtown Adhamiyah, is surrounded by a wall recently built by the Army. It is not like the wall that divides Israel from the West Bank. Pedestrians can cross it at will. Only the roads are blocked off. Vehicles are routed through two very strict checkpoints. Weapons transporters and car bombers can’t get in or out.
The area inside the wall is mostly Sunni. The areas outside the wall are mostly Shia. Violence has been drastically reduced on both sides because Sunni militias – including Al Qaeda – are kept in, and Shia militias – including Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army, are kept out.
Graya’at is a mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhood immediately to the north of the wall.
We dismounted our Humvees and set up a vehicle checkpoint on the far side of the market area. Curfew was going into effect. Anyone trying to drive into the area would be searched.
Dozens of Iraqi civilians milled about on the streets.
“Salam Aleikum,” said the soldiers and I as we walked past.
“Aleikum as Salam,” said each in return.
They really did seem happy to see us.
I have linked to Totten's writings a number of times. He tells what he sees, warts and all. This is not the Baghdad the American media reports - at all. And it is not the doom and gloom of our defeatists. Are there still bad areas? Sure, Totten reports that Sadr City is very bad still, with nothing like the progress in this area. But please, read it all, it really is important. And if you can, help Totten cover the expenses of this very costly private venture so he can keep bringing us reports like this.
By crosspatch, Tuesday, 24 July , 2007 @ 7:14 pm
Totten and Yon and the other independents who take time out of their life to go and cover those stories are a national treasure.
President Bush should give them a medal in his next (and final) State of the Union address.