Thursday, August 24, 2006
Mean Streets
So in the last few days WaPo ran a story asserting that "the debate is over" and the Iraqi Civil War is officially raging, and the NYT ran a story claiming that "by almost all measures," Iraq's insurgency is getting worse. So how is it that people in Baghdad are telling ABC News that they feel safer than they've felt in a long time?
“I’m happy because we’re safe,” said a man who lives in Dora, a Baghdad neighborhood. “Stores are open and we can move around freely.”
Turns out that, news of the Apocalypse notwithstanding, there's apparently been a significant decline in Baghdad street violence this month, including both criminal and political attacks. At least that's what U.S. and Iraqi officials are claiming. While it's reasonable to take a skeptical view of such claims like these, it's just as reasonable to be skeptical of the U.S. media's reports about the state of the city. As for me, I put my bet on the Baghdadis.
Here's what's going on. The U.S. military has increased its presence in Baghdad in order to rein in the murders, kidnappings and other criminal violent activity that has been plaguing the capital. (This security program does not address car bombings.) Some 5,000 extra troops moved in two weeks ago, and joined with thousands of Iraqi troops to do door-to-door sweeps in a series of dangerous neighborhoods.
The result, according to ABC news, is “encouraging.” The network reported that in the last two weeks, there has been a significant decline in violent attacks. The Iraqi ministry of defense says that violent attacks were down 30 percent, the U.S. military says the violence was down 22 percent, and both agree the numbers are preliminary.
ABC 's report focused on the Dora neighborhood, a mostly Sunni area. According to that report, July was a very bloody month in Dora, with as many as 20 people killed there every day. Stores closed, and people were afraid to leave their homes. In the last 14 days, however, there has been just one killing, and normal activity has resumed.
The Associated Press has reported similar results from a different neighborhood. On August 16th, early in the process, the west Baghdad area of Amariyah, which is also a Sunni-majority community, was reportedly secured in a house-to-house security sweep that lasted three days.
"Since we began the operation, not one person from Amariyah has died, not one act of violence has occurred," a U.S. officer told the AP at the time. "We have demonstrated that it can be done,"
In eastern Baghdad, an Iraqi is in charge of the security campaign. Gen. Bashar Mahmood Ayoub told the BBC that (as the Beeb paraphrased it), "the number of killings and kidnappings has been reduced a lot in the past month."
"While there may be a dramatic drop in violence in some neighbourhoods at the moment," notes the BBC, American officials are concerned "that some of the death squads might simply have moved elsewhere to escape the security net." That's may well be true, though there are as yet no reports of death-squad activities in areas where they had not been active before.
In the meantime, the lives of many Baghdadis are improving, at least for now. Indeed, to borrow a phrase from the apocalyptic NYT, if their lives haven't improved "by almost all measures," they've improved by the most important one. Perhaps, to echo WaPo, the debate's not quite over after all.
Update: David Ignatius walks down Baghdad's mean streets, too (Aug. 25). "In the past three weeks," he writes, "the U.S. military has killed about 25 death squad leaders, and captured more than 200," according to the officer leading the sweep.
posted by IraqPundit at 9:28 AM
