Gangs @ MindSay 
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By Lisa Daniel
American Forces Press Service
June 9, 2008 - U.S. and Iraqi military operations in northern Iraq have cut the number of roadside bombs there nearly in half since February, the commander of Multinational Division North told reporters at a Pentagon briefing today. The number of roadside bombs -- known in military parlance as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs -- discovered in May was 550, compared to 900 in February, Army Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling told reporters in a teleconference from Camp Striker in Iraq. Coalition troops clear about half the IEDs each month, he said.
Hertling, who also commands the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division, attributed the improved security to increased capability of Iraqi security forces, the contributions of the "Sons of Iraq" citizen security group, and changing attitudes among enemy fighters who are "just tired, quite frankly, of fighting."
Security in areas under MND North's purview -- a region about the size of Pennsylvania -- has improved significantly from six months ago, when northern Iraqi cities such as Hawijah were overrun with insurgents driven out of points south, such as Baghdad, Hertling said. In two offensives launched this spring, significant numbers of top- and mid-level insurgent leaders were killed and captured, allowing coalition gains in Ninevah, Diyala and Kirkuk provinces, he said.
Hertling said he agrees with assessments that the northern city of Mosul is "the last urban stronghold" of al-Qaida in Iraq. But, improvements are being made there, as well, he said. Some 30 outposts have been built there by U.S. engineers since February, and Iraqi forces increasingly are able to secure the area, he said.
"I'll never say anything is last with al-Qaida because you never know what's going to happen to them next," Hertling said.
Coalition forces are focusing more on the desert areas surrounding Mosul, where they believe enemy fighters are fleeing, he said.
Asked about the presence of foreign fighters in Iraq, Hertling said they are from Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Kuwait and enter through the Syrian border in northwestern Iraq. Foreign-fighter facilitators have been found throughout Ninevah, he said. Last week, a Sons of Iraq citizen security unit rejected bribes by smugglers and killed nine foreign fighters at a checkpoint in Salahuddin province, Hertling said.
U.S. and Iraqi officials hope that improved security and a better economy are fostering construction projects and other job opportunities that will give options to people at the lower levels of enemy fighting who aren't so loyal to the cause. In fact, Hertling said, one intelligence estimate predicted that half of lower-level, or third-tier, enemy fighters would quit if they had a job. The unemployment rate in northern Iraq is as high as 80 percent in some areas, he said.
"Many of these guys are doing some of these criminal or terrorist actions just to get paid and to survive," Hertling said. "Some of these guys are just gangs that set out to commit crimes."
The low-level enemy fighters "are the ones that, while we still sometimes have to kill or capture them, the increase in the infrastructure and the ability to provide jobs may cause some additional tipping of this organization in the north, and everywhere else in Iraq," Hertling said.
Many insurgents are tired of fighting and are beginning to realize "that the way you move forward now in Iraq society is thought the representative process and getting your vote ready," Hertling said.
Still, the general acknowledged, an insurgent's suicide attack against police in Kirkuk yesterday was a reminder that enemy fighters will continue to try to intimidate security forces. "The terrorists have gone after those individuals to see if they can break their backbone, and they haven't been able to do it yet," he said.
The biggest challenge coalition forces face in the north is in improving Iraqi police units through recruiting and training, the general said. A recently completed police training center in Diyala province is expected to produce as many as 500 new officers per month, he said.
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
May 7, 2008 - The people of Sadr City are cooperating with Iraqi forces, but clearing the crowded portion of Baghdad is a painstaking procedure, an Iraqi government spokesman said in Baghdad today. Tahseen al-Sheikhly and Army Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a coalition spokesman, discussed ongoing operations in Sadr City during a news conference.
"We see some places in Baghdad like Sadr City, suffers from the control of the criminal gangs and make those people suffer," Sheikhly said through a translator. "The Iraqi government exerted a lot of effort to provide the needs for the people of Sadr City."
Iraqi security forces and coalition soldiers are working together to bring stability and security to Sadr City, a part of eastern Baghdad with roughly 2.5 million people. The area is almost exclusively Shiite Muslim.
In the current operations in the area, the Iraqi government is going after illegal militias with medium to heavy weapons, indiscriminately launching rockets or against Iraqi security forces and coalition soldiers. The government considers these people criminals, officials in Baghdad said, and is making a concerted effort to drive them out.
"These criminals are using the people of Sadr City as shields," Sheikhly said. "Government forces are trying to eliminate these gangs without hurting the people."
In the past few weeks, more than 700 rockets and mortars have been launched into Baghdad neighborhoods. "Iraqi and coalition units are responding appropriately to these teams that position themselves close to public buildings and within residential neighborhoods and thereby endanger innocent civilians," Bergner said.
The Iraqi people are turning in these criminal gangs and their armories. Iraqi police in Karbala received a tip that led to the discovery of a cache with 20,000 items of ammunition and weapons that included bomb-making materials, mortars, grenades and rifles.
Iraqi police in Sadr City found four rocket launching rails hidden in a hospital. A 122 mm rocket hit a playground and wounded seven people, Sheikhly said.
The people who live in Sadr City are growing impatient, the government spokesman said.
"We care about the safety of the people," Sheikhly said. "Our troops would be able to crush and eliminate those gangs in a very fast way, but we would like to avoid the human casualties. So we are being patient and trying to be more patient in choosing the operations to deal with those situations."
The Iraqi government is concerned about neighbors shipping arms and money to the criminal gangs. Recent talks between Iraq and Iran signal the seriousness with which the Iraqi government regards the flow of illegal arms, and the training and funding of extremists in Iraq, Sheikhly said.
"The flow of weapons to extremists is a very serious problem in Iraq," he said. "We know ... that these extremist groups could not do what they are doing without the support they are receiving from other countries."
Al-Qaida in Iraq still remains a problem in certain areas, Bergner said. The group killed 31 and wounded 50 more Iraqis in two suicide-bomb attacks in the past week, he noted.
"Al-Qaida in Iraq's ruthless tactics of sending women to conduct these suicide attacks is another example of the nature of the enemy, its corrupt ideology, and the depths to which they are willing to sink," he said.
Iraqi and coalition forces are pursuing al-Qaida aggressively, concentrating in areas around Mosul, the Diyala River Valley and other areas, Bergner said.
"They are uncovering terrorist facilities, disrupting their lines of communication, and capturing or killing their leaders," he said.
Some 50 al-Qaida in Iraq leaders and facilitators have been detained, mostly around Mosul, he added.
By Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg
Special to American Forces Press Service
April 25, 2008 - Though the Defense Department is granting waivers to allow some recruits to enlist who it once may have rejected, the system is working well, a senior Pentagon official said today. In a conference call with online journalists and "bloggers," Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, said servicemembers who wear the uniform thanks to waivers are performing well.
"The vast majority of the conduct waivers are misdemeanors and a litany of three-or-more traffic offenses. And, with that, there are some felony arrests and a few felony convictions," Carr said.
The waivers he is referring to don't represent hardened criminals, he added, but rather people who participated in childhood pranks.
"But, in every case, if their community has joined behind them and offered their support, then the recruiter might, if we've got a strong candidate in terms of their other attributes, send it up for a waiver," he said.
Carr added that officials don't relax the standards in granting waivers, but do make exceptions based on solid judgment calls.
"Last year's [waivered enlistees] proved to perform; they retained as well as the non-waivered counterparts, and they wouldn't be retaining if they weren't performing," he said. "They are doing as well as the non-waiver crowd. Therefore, we are making correct bets on the risks that we take for someone that has done something that was that much of an aberration against what we expect of our teenagers."
If people with behavior or medical problems did make it to a training base, Carr noted, officials there would be quick to notice. "And, if it were creating a problem," he said, "my knowledge of the institution tells me that the training base isn't going to put up with it, and that practice in recruiting is going to change, and we would have heard about it."
Tattoos are an issue in military recruiting, Carr said, and he noted that all of the services have adopted the same standard for what types of tattoos are and aren't allowed.
"Show me the tattoo," Carr said. "I'm going to check it against a book of gangs, and in the event that you have [a gang-related tattoo], you almost certainly are going to be disqualified."
Though up to about a year ago, gang affiliation wasn't seen as a disqualification for entry into the Army, Carr said, the Army has uniformly adopted this policy with the other services. Another disqualification for entry into any of the branches of service is the presence of a tattoo that is affiliated with a hate group.
Carr acknowledged that the Army has allowed waivers for recruits who have tattoos on visible parts of their bodies, such as on their hands and neck. "You begin limiting your market based on the kind of body art that a particular generation would apply to themselves," he said.
However, Carr said, despite the use of waivers, the standards for who the services can accept remain the same.
"We insist that the services -- every one of them, every year -- draw 60 percent from the top half [of potential recruits], and most of them are exceeding it," he said. "Army's just about exactly at 60 percent. Our goal is a high-performing military."
(Navy Lt. Jenifer Cragg is assigned to the New Media branch of American Forces Information Service.)
In Chicago, fears of a long, bloody summer
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Nine people were killed in 36 shootings over the weekend in Chicago, reflecting what some community leaders say is a deadly breakdown in discipline among gang members after a crackdown over the past few years put many of their leaders behind bars.
"The older guys, in the past, looked out for the little ones. Now they're all locked up," said Nick Stames, a social studies teacher at Crane Tech High School on the city's gang-ridden West Side.
"There's no sense of discipline in the projects," he added. "Everybody's doing their own thing."
Now there is growing fear that Chicago could be in for a long, bloody summer.
"If this happened on this weekend, what is ahead of us when it gets to be 85, 90 and when the schools close in June?" asked the Rev. Michael Pfleger, an activist on the South Side. "A lot of kids out there are running their own game, trying to one-up each other for respect."
The shootings included drive-by attacks and one case in which someone shot up a plumbing supply store with an AK-47. At least 14 of the shootings were gang-related, according to police. As for the rest, the only thing they can say for sure is that three had nothing to do with gangs.
Police spokeswoman Monique Bond would not comment on the breakdown-in-discipline theory. She and others said they were not surprised the spike in shootings happened on one of Chicago's first spring-like weekends.
"When the warmer weather comes, more people come out of doors," Bond said. "More crime can occur."
In the past few years, federal and local law enforcement authorities have taken dozens of gang leaders and members off the streets in and around Chicago.
In December, for example, federal authorities broke up a drug-dealing ring at Chicago's notorious Cabrini-Green housing project, arresting 16 people, including a leader of the Gangster Disciples. Six months earlier, in Kane County, authorities arrested 31 members of the Latin Kings in 22 slayings, some dating back two decades.
Tio Hardiman, executive director of CeaseFire, an anti-violence group that uses former gang members to mediate conflicts, said that with the gang leaders behind bars, rank-and-file members have decided it's every man for himself and are fighting over turf and money.
"It used to be a guy had to get an order before he could shoot somebody," Hardiman noted. Now, "guys go off on their own. Nobody has to answer to nobody."
During the same weekend last year, Chicago had 19 shootings, including four killings, and 21 shootings were reported during the same weekend in 2006. Chicago had 87 homicides during the first three months of this year, compared with 88 during the same period in 2007. Police said more recent figures are not available.
The weekend shootings come after a six-month period during which more than 20 Chicago public school students were shot to death. It is unclear just how many of those were gang-related, but many of the students attended schools on well-known gang turf.
Across the country, a number of cities, including Boston, Massachusetts; New York; Los Angeles, California; and Dallas, Texas, are not reporting surges in gang violence.
In response to the bloodshed, Chicago police are making a show of force, deploying SWAT officers -- something the department usually doesn't do until the summer -- focusing more attention on areas where gang retaliation is likely and increasing their presence at schools.
At Crane Tech, for example, officials began escorting students to and from a nearby public housing complex last month after more than 100 simply stopped coming to class. They were too scared after a reputed gang member shot and killed a student.
Pfleger said the weekend shootings are proof that more needs to be done to fight gun violence.
"We better come together now," he said. "It's no coincidence on the first warm weekend, all hell breaks loose."
By Army Sgt. Sara Moore
American Forces Press Service
April 14, 2008 - Iraqi security forces are continuing to lead operations against insurgents in Basra and Baghdad and have made significant progress toward establishing security, a U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said yesterday. Speaking to reporters in Iraq, Navy Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, Multinational Force Iraq spokesman, detailed recent operations, including those in the southern city of Basra, where Iraqi and coalition forces have been conducting increased operations since March.
"In Basra this week, Iraqi security forces continued operations against illegally armed gangs, intimidation and extortion groups, and other criminals," Driscoll said. "Although there still is much work to be done, citizens in Basra are beginning to report a return to normal life."
Since operations began in Basra in late March, Iraqi security forces have arrested more than 430 criminals, including 28 death-row convicts who had been at large, Driscoll said. He said he spoke with an official from the Iraqi Interior Ministry overseeing security operations in Basra who indicated that the situation in the city has improved and stability is being restored. In part, the progress is due to a growing number of tips from local citizens, which are allowing security forces to conduct targeted raids on suspected criminal hideouts, Driscoll said.
"Coalition forces continue to provide operational advisors, surveillance information, and air-strike support for operations in Basra," Driscoll said. "But the progress thus far in Basra is largely due to the resolve and bravery of the Iraqi ground forces, the efficiency of the Iraqi air force in maintaining supply and support, and the operational direction of Iraqi civilian and military leadership."
In Baghdad, Iraqi security forces have redoubled their efforts against insurgents in recent days in certain parts of the city, including Sadr City, Driscoll said. Coalition forces continue to support the Iraqi forces in these operations, which focus on areas of the city that have suffered under criminals, he said.
"Without improved security, it is difficult to provide essential services so that people can live their lives peacefully and freely," he said, adding that the Iraqi government is committed to following security with the delivery of essential services such as health, electricity, water, and sewage and trash disposal.
"The people of Iraq deserve an opportunity to live without fear and intimidation brought upon them by criminals and thugs," Driscoll said. "They also deserve reliable public services, employment opportunities, and hope for a better life."
Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the government of Iraq, joined Driscoll at the news conference and highlighted political progress made by the government recently. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki today is starting a visit to the European Union, where he will meet with several leaders with an aim of enhancing Iraq's political and economic situation, Dabbagh said. The prime minister also will conduct talks about gas and energy, and cooperation between Iraq and the European Union, he said.
Iraq's Council of Ministers decided yesterday to approve the provincial elections bill, and the bill will now move forward to the Council of Representatives, Dabbagh said. If the bill is passed, elections could be held at the beginning of October, he said.
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