Peace and progress in Ramadi

[unhappycamper]

Peace and progress in Ramadi
By Ashley Rowland , Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Friday, March 6, 2009

RAMADI, Iraq — In a chandelier-topped sitting room lined with some of the most powerful men in the city, the sheik in a gold-tasseled robe listened attentively as Lt. Col. Thad Trapp listed his biggest concerns for the area: Getting farmers enough fertilizer, seeds and water.

In Ramadi, talking about irrigation instead of insurgents would have been unthinkable a few years ago, when al-Qaida in Iraq virtually ruled the city and used an amusement park in the center of town as its beheading site.

But Ramadi and the rest of Anbar province are now some of the quietest places in Iraq, thanks in part to Sunnis who turned against al-Qaida and began cooperating with the United States. Now, the U.S. is relying less on military power and more on strengthening its ties with local leaders and economic- and government-building projects to maintain the peace.

"It wasn’t until we formed a partnership with the sheiks and the people of Iraq that we began to see some progress," Trapp, commander of 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, told Sheik Sa’ad Nayif Mishan al-Aethawi.

That progress is especially notable in Ramadi, where for nearly two weeks, there have been no sniper bullets, no car bombs, no suicide bombers — no "significant kinetic actions" against the Marines of 2/9, Trapp said. It is the longest period of time that the battalion has gone without even a minor attack since arriving in Iraq last September.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=61143