Posted on 01/12/2008 10:02:17 AM PST by SandRat
BAGHDAD — Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, Task Force Dragon, have been in country less than a month and have picked up where their predecessors left off by working with the Iraqi citizens to make their neighborhood a better place.
District Council members, tribal leaders from the Doura neighborhood and Coalition forces met for a reconciliation meeting to discuss current challenges facing the area at the Rashid District Council Hall, Jan. 8.
San Diego native Lt. Col. Timothy Watson, commander of the 2nd Bn., 4th Inf. Reg., from Fort Polk, La., said reconciliation must start with the people, as a grass-roots campaign.
“Reconciliation is first a local issue, then a national issue,” he said.
He added Doura has already embraced reconciliation with the neighborhood councils seeking solutions to problems on their own.
“We’ve seen that some of the (neighborhood councils) are starting to get involved in fuel distribution and security, and we encourage you to find local solutions to local problems,” Watson said to those in attendance. “We’ve already done a great deal of reconciliation locally, and the goal is to demonstrate to the government of Iraq that Doura is a great place.”
In the past, security was the biggest concern of the local citizens, but that’s changed in recent months and extremists have been largely rooted out.
“We just finished the fighting, and now we have another effort; to rebuild the area,” said Iraqi Lt. Col. Kadhem, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Brigade, 2nd National Police Division.
Although security is still a concern for the people of Doura, other challenges can be addressed; mainly, making Doura a cleaner and more prosperous community.
“For services, we’re really focusing on four areas: sewer, water, electricity, and trash,” Watson said.
With reconciliation taking hold at the local level, governmental assistance was necessary.
“We asked (the Government of Iraq) to provide services which have been closed due to violence, such as banking,” said Yacoob Yousef, chairman of the District Council.
Another challenge facing the group was transitioning security to Iraqi forces.
“Our goal here is to transition most of the security responsibilities to the Iraqi Security Forces,” Watson said, as he addressed the attendees of the meeting.
For one Iraqi citizen, there is but one goal.
“We’re hoping to rebuild a new Iraq, a modern Iraq,” said Hashim Mahmoud Al-Dahash, the Security Chairman for the District Council.
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