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November 30, 2004

24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Iraq in The Triangle of Death

Topics: Middle East News and Perspectives

As our 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit closes-in on the terrorists and Islamathugs in the triangled area south of Baghdad (comprised of the terrorist-active towns that are principally Yusufiyah, Mahmudiyah, Latifiyah, and Iskandariyah), the "Triangle of Death" is very much in the news these days.

From the Sunday Herald came what we would expect from British liberal media, a rather gloomy write of a "Secret Report" that commented of Military reports passed to the Sunday Herald that showed "the full scale of the chaos and danger which awaits Scottish troops in Iraq." Read More...

Proceding from that viewpoint we then find an entire gamut of what we hope to be a more realistic portrayal of what is really happening in the "Triangle of Death." We have the following articles, and more, to wade through:

The National Review Online (NRO) had a great article yesterday morning entitled " Collapsing the Triangle of Death," by W. Thomas Smith Jr. He writes:

"We're starting to suffocate them, and they're panicking"
-- Col. Ron Johnson, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, on the reaction of enemy forces in Iraq's Triangle of Death;

In an isolated region of the Iraqi backcountry, said to be "the worst place in the world," thousands of Coalition troops are systematically wresting control of weapons caches and staging areas from insurgent forces falling back from recent defeats in Fallujah and elsewhere in the Sunni Triangle.

The operation, code-named "Plymouth Rock" (because it was launched Thanksgiving week), began last Tuesday when Coalition forces struck enemy forces in the town of Jabella, some 50 miles south of Baghdad. The strike was followed by a series of precision raids -- conducted by a 5,000-man combined force of U.S. Marines, members of the famed British Black Watch regiment, and Iraqi soldiers -- aimed at cleaning out a region of southern Baghdad and northern Babil Province known as the Triangle of Death. The triangle -- its three points connecting at Fallujah, Baghdad, and then south to Najaf -- is located just below the Sunni Triangle where the Coalition has focused much of its efforts over the past several months.

If not the "worst place in the world," the Triangle of Death -- so-named because of its profusion of bombings, kidnappings, execution-style killings of civilians, and overall banditry -- is certainly one of the most dangerous in Iraq. For months, the region's isolated towns and unsecured highways have served as a permeable haven for Iraqi criminals and terrorists. Recently, the region has been a point of refuge for embattled guerilla forces escaping south from thrusting U.S. forces in Fallujah.

Operating in an environment that more closely resembles the American Wild West of the 19th century than the tightly packed urban centers of Samarra and Fallujah, has forced some units to re-tool their battle plan. That's not a problem for tactically flexible U.S. and British forces, and they are training Iraqi security forces to be equally adaptable.

"This is not a Fallujah-like mass assault, marked by determined resistance and heavy fighting," Capt. David Nevers, spokesman for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (24th MEU), tells NRO. "The environment here south of Baghdad is very different, requiring a different approach. Our operations are surgical rather than sweeping in nature, more precision than mass."

In the Triangle of Death, Coalition raids have been characterized by collecting and processing intelligence on a specific enemy stronghold, planning a raid, then attacking that stronghold with a modicum of surprise by units trained to fight both as shock-troops and room-clearing commandos. In nearly all cases, large numbers of insurgents have been killed or captured, weapons caches seized, and new intelligence gleaned which serves planners for the next raid on the next town. Read More...

On November 23 the Washington Post wrote an article entitled " Iraq's Forbidding 'Triangle of Death,' with the comment that  "South of Baghdad, a Brutal Sunni Insurgency Holds Sway." It provides interesting background for reading the NRO article, and helps us to visualize just where the fighting is occurring and just why it is so important that we clear out this area now before the elections.

(Click image to enlarge - WP image)

As the offensive against Fallujah ends, U.S. military commanders have begun turning their attention to other restive regions of Iraq, where an insurgency in Sunni Muslim-dominated areas has proved resilient, possibly endangering nationwide elections scheduled for Jan. 30. The land immediately south of Baghdad, shared uneasily between a Sunni minority and the Shiite majority, is among the most treacherous, a swath of territory where residents say insurgents have imposed draconian Islamic law, offered bounties for the killings of police, National Guardsmen, Shiite pilgrims and foreigners, and carried out summary executions in the street.

Police don civilian clothes when they pass through the flat landscape of date palms and eucalyptus trees, intersected by canals fed from the Euphrates River and crossed by roads leading to the sacred cities of Najaf and Karbala. Stoking sectarian tension, Shiite militiamen and armed tribesmen have threatened to avenge the deaths on their own terms. U.S. military commanders have made taming the region a priority and are drawing up plans to send in Army armored units.  Read More...

Another interesting story on the "Triangle" came in an India Times/Economic Times article on Nov 26 ( LATIFIYAH, Iraq),that wrote that the US-led force was focusing on the towns of Latifiyah, Yusufiyah, Mahmudiyah and Iskandariyah which lie in an area on the main route south from Baghdad where Sunni Muslim rebels have carried out a string of deadly attacks in recent months. Read More...

Another blog that is always a good read is Backcountry Conservative, who also posted on this material today. Read what he has to say..

Also, check out Instapundit and Instalawyer, both mentioned by Backcountry Conservative.

Posted by Hyscience at November 30, 2004 12:44 PM

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