Word: mansourism
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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...
...streets of Mansour have no 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...
Judging by the area's desolation today, it seems unimaginable that Mansour was once the ritziest neighborhood in Iraq. Populated by the country's merchant class and many officials of Saddam Hussein's regime, the place had an air of entitlement: houses boasted stone columns, and rosebushes hinted at the lush private gardens kept behind the walls. It was also my home for two years, in 2003 and 2004, when TIME's bureau was located there. But today Mansour is boxed in by bloodshed. To the north and south, the Shi'ite death squads of the Jaish al-Mahdi have...
...target now is to continue with bringing down the mortality rate to reach the Millennium Development target of a 75% decline by 2015," says Esmat Mansour, head of Primary Health Care at the Ministry of Health and Population MOHP. To achieve that, Mansour says, the focus now is on preventing infant death during the first 28 days of life due to low birth weight, premature birth and inadequate infant care...