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America's North Shore Journal » Entries tagged with "Anbar Awakening"

Sons of Iraq Status Update

Today’s Bloggers’ Roundtable was with Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Kulmayer, Chief of Reconciliation and Engagement, Multi-National Corps – Iraq, OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. He discussed the on-going transfer of the Sons of Iraq [SoI] to the Iraqi government. The Sons of Iraq is a program developed by Coalition forces based upon the success seen in al Anbar Province with the Anbar Awakening. The Awakening was a largely volunteer effort that predated the SoI progam by nearly a year. The SoI were locals who were recruited for infrastructure security duties within their community. They use their personal weapons and guard buildings, operate security checkpoints and patrol highways. At its height, the SoI program employed 94,000 men in 9 provinces. Some 800 contracts were in place allowing these SoI to be paid by the Coalition. Overall hiring … Read entire article »

Filed under: Iraq, Rebuilding, War on Terror

Surge Success

The surge in Iraq has been a success by any measure, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said during a news conference July 23. The policy, announced by President Bush in December 2006, pushed additional brigades in to Iraq to provide a security umbrella so the Iraqi military could build and the country’s government could grow. The surge has allowed Iraq to make improvements from security, political and economic standpoints, Morrell said. The last of the five surge brigade combat teams recently left Iraq. “By every metric that we measure violence in Iraq, there has been a dramatic improvement from where things were before the surge,” Morrell said. “I’ll just point to one, and that is [that] in July of last year, we had 79 U.S. [servicemembers killed in action] in Iraq. We have … Read entire article »

Filed under: Iraq, Surge 2007, War on Terror