Word: baghdad
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...trouble at Abu Ghraib was a long time brewing. The 260-acre prison complex lies behind tall walls off a highway 20 miles west of Baghdad. In the days of Saddam it housed thousands of criminals and political prisoners who were subjected to unspeakable torture at the whim of the regime. The U.S. military decided to reopen the prison last August for all Iraqis being detained and renamed it the Baghdad Correctional Facility. But reminders of the prison's grim history were inescapable. From the ceiling of each 10-ft.-by-12-ft. cell still dangled a large hook, which...
Winning it back will be a critical test of the U.S. military's surge in Baghdad. Under Saddam, Mansour and places like it--neighborhoods with names like Amariyah, Ghazaliyah, al-Adil, al-Khadra--were the purlieu of Iraq's educated Sunni élite. As security has deteriorated and sectarian killings have soared, those areas have been overrun by insurgent groups tied to al-Qaeda. The jihadists offer protection to local Sunnis against Shi'ite death squads in exchange for use of the neighborhoods to launch suicide bombings against Shi'ite civilians. But over the past few months, al-Qaeda...
That's why building trust in middle-class Sunni enclaves like Mansour has become a key component of the military's counterinsurgency strategy. "We're in competition with al-Qaeda," says Lieut. Colonel Dale Kuehl, "for who can protect the Sunnis better." Baghdad's Sunni population is largely confined to a narrow band west of the Tigris, extending from Mansour to the Baghdad airport. Kuehl and his 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment live in the middle of the Sunni stronghold, dug into a former police station. A floor-to-ceiling map of west Baghdad in Kuehl's operations center...
...names anymore. They are identifiable not by what is there now but by what used to be. In the center of the neighborhood, our armored humvee circles around the crater that once held a 20-ft.-tall statue of Abu Jaffar al-Mansour, the 8th century founder of Baghdad; it was pulverized by a homemade bomb in 2005. To keep their bearings, the troops have taken to identifying routes by the names of 1980s heavy-metal bands. We drive down Bon Jovi, where the barbershop used to be, and pass Skid Row, which had the best falafel in town...
...block by block over the past year, warning Sunni families to move or be killed. In response, Sunni insurgents have poured in from Anbar province, bringing with them weapons, explosives and suicide bombers. The warring forces have made my old neighborhood one of the most dangerous areas in Baghdad...