Coming alive in “Triangle of Death”

By Patrick Quinn The Associated Press

ISKANDARIYAH, Iraq – When the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division arrived in Iraq’s once infamous “Triangle of Death,” violence there and in neighboring Baghdad was so intense that hundreds were dying every day and the country was virtually in a state of civil war.

Now, as the division headed home at the end of May, the region stretching south from Baghdad and across central Iraq has become a showcase for what the U.S. military hoped to achieve in Iraq.

“When we first arrived here 15 months ago there was nothing but sectarian violence, al-Qaida, Shiite extremists,” the division commander, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, said as he wrapped up a tour of an industrial complex.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and U.S. officials are likely to tour successes like that here during a U.N. conference that begins Thursday in Sweden, aimed at reviewing political and security progress in Iraq.

The U.S. military says violence across Iraq has reached its lowest level in more than four years after successes this year in breaking al-Qaida’s and other Sunni insurgents’ hold in western Iraq and – more recently – government crackdowns in the southern city of Basra and northern city of Mosul.

But the success in the Triangle of Death, centered on the town of Iskandariyah, is perhaps the most dramatic. The area’s population is mixed between Sunnis and Shiites to a far greater degree than many others, and in 2006 and 2007 militants from each community were killing each other, as well as attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces.

The area has boomeranged to become a bastion of relative peace on the edge of a violent capital, while Sunni militants remain elusive in the north.

Among other factors, battalion commanders in the field point to new counterinsurgency strategies, where units clear an area of fighters and stay to hold it from slipping back into insurgent hands.

Sunni fighters who swarmed the area are also nearly gone. They have either been killed, or co-opted into Awakening Councils, said Lt. Col. William Zemp, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment based in nearby Mahmudiyah. The councils are Sunni groups who turned against al-Qaida in Iraq.

Shortly after the 3rd ID arrived, its 20,000 Soldiers launched large military operations to quash al-Qaida cells and Shiite militias.

Violence in the area, where U.S. troops once traveled only in large numbers, has plunged by 89 percent since last year, according to the military.

“I just don’t see sectarian violence anymore,” Lynch said. “In our area, people kept talking about Sunni versus Shiite. I don’t see that now. Everywhere I go, people identify themselves as Iraqi. That is their identification – I am not Shiite, I’m not Sunni, I’m Iraqi.