Decline in Baghdad Attacks

Staff Sgt. Paul Cruz checks a driver's identification at a checkpoint outside Baghdad. Since U.S. troops pulled out if Iraqi cities, attacks in the Iraqi capital have been on the decline.

Definite good news on the way to the Iraqi nation getting its sea legs:

WASHINGTON (Oct. 8, 2009) – Attacks committed by al-Qaida and other insurgents operating in Baghdad and its environs continue to drop three months after U.S. combat troops moved out of Iraqi cities, a U.S. brigade commander posted there said Thursday.

“Security is still the first order of business for the units in this brigade, as well as our Iraqi partners in uniform. Overall, I think we’ve been making steady progress in this area,” Army Col. Tobin L. Green, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, told Pentagon reporters during a satellite-carried news conference.


Green’s Fort Hood, Texas,-based brigade falls under Multinational Division Baghdad and supports and trains Iraqi security forces operating in and around Baghdad. The brigade has slightly less than 4,000 troops, Green said, noting his soldiers also participate in combined counterinsurgency operations with Iraqi forces.

On June 30, Iraqi soldiers and police assumed security duties in Iraq’s cities, to include Baghdad, as U.S. combat forces moved to outlying areas, Green said. Since July, he said, enemy attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces have declined.


Today, overall enemy attacks in the Baghdad region -- including improvised explosive devices and explosively formed projectiles -- “remain pretty low,” Green said. Concurrently, he said, casualties among U.S. forces in the Baghdad area have experienced “a significant downturn.”


Iraqi security force casualties ticked upward in July, Green said, but they since have declined. Iraqi civilian casualties did rise in August, he said, due to the terrorist bombings of the Iraqi foreign and finance ministries in Baghdad on Aug. 19. One hundred Iraqis were killed and 600 were injured by the blasts.


During his Oct. 6 remarks at the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference here, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, described the Aug. 19 Baghdad bombings as “a particularly difficult day.”

Good work.