Word: neighborhooding
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...Counterinsurgency is all about the people," says Crider. And residents of the predominantly Sunni neighborhood called Dora don't trust the Iraqi government, believing that the Shi'ites who run it are controlled by Iran. They trust the Americans instead. "When you realize they think we are the government then we need to take the initiative. They think if we can launch a missile from the Persian Gulf and destroy Saddam's palaces we can do anything." Like throw a switch and provide 24-hour electricity across the Iraqi capital. They look at us, says Crider, and think...
Even the Iraqi police call on Crider's men for help. The Americans have good rapport with neighborhood residents - while the police, staffed with outsiders, are generally mistrusted. And so one day the cops called in a panic. There had a been a kidnapping: someone was missing. What were they to do? Crider's men found out that the kidnapping was a case of older brothers defending a younger sibling from a bully by tying up the bully with string and tossing him into a school bathroom, where no one bothered to look for four hours...
Other stories are more touching, like the family that wanted to personally thank one of Crider's platoons for making the neighborhood safe enough for their son to get married, preparing a feast of chicken, rice and cake for the men. There was also an older lady who proudly showed Captain Nicholas M. Cook, one of the better-known American soldiers in the neighborhood, a photograph of herself decorated by the minister of defense under the old regime. She had been one of the only female generals under Saddam but was too afraid to even display the photograph...
...referred to as a "bunch of thieves." But this piece of legislation has largely been welcomed. "It's the best law they've passed so far," says Ahmed Hashim Mohammad, an Iraqi army captain-turned-insurgent who now works on the U.S. payroll as a checkpoint leader in a neighborhood watch, part of the Sunni "awakening movement" that has been key to restoring order in al-Qaeda-infested areas...
Cook is now concerned about larger issues, such as the central government's failure to maintain the U.S. financed school improvements and to allow the clinic they funded to stay open 24-hours. The government is also balking at incorporating the dozens of armed volunteer Sunni neighborhood watchmen into the Iraqi police...