Wasit Iraqi Police Celebrate 87th Anniversary

Members of the Kut Special Tactics and Weapons Team lead the vehicle parade during the 87th anniversary of the Wasit General Police Department at the Wasit IP Headquarters, Jan. 11.
Photo By: Sgt. 1st Class Joe Thompson – Multi-National Division-Central

Combined Forces Capture Criminal Suspects, Find Weapons in Iraq

Iraqi and U.S. soldiers and Iraqi National Police have detained suspected criminals and seized weapons in operations in Baghdad over the last few days according to U.S. military officials. Here’s a look at some of what’s happened in Iraq over the last few days.

January 11, 2009 in Iraq:

In the city’s Rashid district, Iraqi and U.S. soldiers arrested a suspected insurgent with a fake identification card, bomb-making materials and CDs that allegedly contained insurgent plans.

Iraqi and U.S. soldiers served a warrant for the arrest of a suspected weapons trafficker with alleged ties to criminal organizations in Rashid district’s Hadar community.

In Rashid district’s Saydiyah community, Iraqi and U.S. soldiers served warrants for the arrest of two Iraqis suspected of serving as informants for criminal elements.

In northwestern Baghdad, Iraqi National Police and U.S. soldiers confiscated a cache yesterday that contained 10 projectile fuses, propellant, small-arms rounds, two 130 mm high-explosive projectiles and a 122 mm high-explosive projectile. An explosive ordnance disposal team destroyed the cache.

Iraqi National Police and U.S. soldiers seized an unexploded artillery round in Rashid district’s Shurta community. The patrol transported the round to a nearby national police headquarters for disposal by an EOD team.

January 10, 2009 in Iraq:

In Rashid district’s Saha neighborhood, a tip from a local civilian led Iraqi National Police and U.S. soldiers to a suspected criminal wanted for acts of violence, murder, extortion and kidnapping in connection with known terrorist groups operating in Baghdad.

In Rashid district, Iraqi and U.S. soldiers confiscated three AK-47 assault rifles from three different houses and moved the weapons to their headquarters.

Also in Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi forces in Iraq’s Diyala province are preparing for rising violence amid upcoming provincial elections, an Army commander in Iraq said at a Pentagon news conference today.

Army Col. Burt Thompson, commander of the 25th Infantry Division’s 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, said he anticipates an increase in violent activities as the Jan. 31 polling date nears.

“It’s pretty clear what they’d be going after,” Thompson said, referring to potential election saboteurs. “It’s to sway the hearts and the minds, to intimidate those civilians from going and voting.”

Thompson, speaking via video teleconference from Forward Operating Base Warhorse, said Diyala province experiences about one “security incident” per week. A typical occurrence includes a bombing with homemade explosives targeting civilians in market areas.

He identified members of al-Qaida and Jaysh al-Mahdi, the militant constituency of the Iranian-influenced Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, as the main perpetrators of violence in the region.

To mitigate potential threats, Thompson said, Iraqi security forces have detailed plans for securing polling sites and the routes leading to and from them.

“Al-Qaida, the enemy, the opponent, obviously, has a vote. And he will look for those critical vulnerabilities, if he can find them, and he’ll try to exploit those,” he said. “Our job is to prevent that from happening.”

Iraqi forces are culling “human intelligence” — word-of-mouth information from local people — to inform their preparations leading up to the elections.

“The individuals that you talk to on the street are the greatest values, because quite frankly, most of the folks in Diyala province … want peace, they want stability, they want to move ahead, they want to get this behind them,” he said.

Thompson added that combined forces are emphasizing the security of ballots to ensure the accountability and responsibility of the process.

Participants responsible for election security met for six hours yesterday ahead of a rehearsal planned for this week, Thompson said. Iraqi police will act as the “inner cordon” at voting sites and other sensitive locations, with Iraqi soldiers serving a support role as U.S. forces provide the “outer layer.”

The colonel characterized the upcoming vote as a moment of great historical and political significance for Iraq, marking the first real opportunity to seat a representative government at the provincial level.

“The 2005 election was to prove that, ‘I’ve got some ink on my finger, and we can actually do this election,’” he said, alluding to iconic images of Iraqis displaying ink-stained fingers indicating a ballot cast in national elections.

While the voting in January 2005 represented the first general election since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, reports of widespread boycotting by Sunni Arabs called into question the vote’s legitimacy.

“The 2009 elections are a little bit different,” Thompson said. “This is an opportunity to seat governance, [which makes it] a critical period in the history of Iraq, certainly the history of Diyala, to move this place forward, to continue the growth, to continue the stability and prosperity that we’re starting to see now in Diyala province.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 7:42 am and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.