Word: babil
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...official, archaeologists are taking advantage of those gains. "After the events of 2003, there was no security. When stability returned to some of the provinces, we resumed excavations," said the official, who added that 11 sites were excavated in 2007 across southern Iraq, in areas like Diwaniya, Basra, and Babil. "This year we have plans to excavate again in the town of al-Hathar, just outside Mosul [in northern Iraq], but the security situation there is still bad," the official said...
...many American troops, the picture of Iraqi troop performance is not quite as rosy. In Hilla, the largest town in the central Iraqi province of Babil, soldiers and residents say the violence was fiercest on March 25. And at least one American soldier said he was angry that the role of Iraqi troops was exaggerated after the battle. "A gunfight broke out and we were fighting [the Mahdi Army] for about four hours," the soldier told TIME. "The army article made it sound like we were just there supporting the Iraqi Army, but we did all the work. We just...
Another soldier at Forward Operating Base Kalsu in north Babil said he has little confidence in the battle abilities of the Iraqi forces. "Sometimes they start shooting because they heard or saw something, but then there's nothing there," he said...
Some U.S. troop commanders also foresee an indefinite dependence. "When we can adjust and withdraw [from Babil province] is really conditions-based," says Colonel Thomas James, refusing to speculate on a date. Despite this, James, like many of his high-ranking colleagues, insisted that the focus should be on progress made. "Four years after my first deployment, it's amazing to see how much progress has been made," he said. But with the American praise of Iraqi troop performance far outshining the reality on the ground, it seems unlikely that Iraqi forces will be able to catch up with their...
...political district of Mahmudiyah lies just south of metropolitan Baghdad and includes the violent urban centers of Yusifiyah, Latifiyah and Mahmudiyah. It shares a rough-and-tumble neighborhood with Anbar to the west and Babil to the south. A mixed region of Shi'a and Sunni, city and country, the mostly agricultural region suffers all the sectarian, economic and political woes of the capital. While the region's Sunni and Shi'ite tribes battled each other for land and primacy, they found a common enemy in the U.S. troops stationed there. But that situation changed about four months...