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Soldiers lend democracy a hand

Sep-26-2006 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

SEAN COCKERHAM; The News Tribune

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The letter from Sunni insurgents was clear: Shiites must leave their homes or die.

A member of the Ghazaliyah neighborhood council pulled out a copy of the death threat Monday and showed it to Fort Lewis soldiers.

“There are terrorists in our neighborhood,” he said during the council’s weekly meeting.

Lt. Col. Avanulas Smiley, commander of the 1st Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Regiment, goes to each council meeting with some of his top aides. His unit – part of a larger Stryker brigade that deployed from Fort Lewis this summer – is trying to stabilize the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliyah, in western Baghdad.

But the neighborhood council has been afraid even to meet in Ghazaliyah until recently. It gathered instead in the safer Mansour neighborhood, close to the heavily fortified Green Zone.

Smiley insisted the council start meeting at the police station in Ghazaliyah. Locals will never believe the neighborhood is secure if their own council won’t meet there, Smiley said.

Neighborhood councils are an example of how even rudimentary democratic institutions struggle to take root in Iraq’s atmosphere of violence. The U.S. and its coalition partners set up nearly 90 of them in Baghdad after arriving in 2003, only to see many leaders subsequently quit or killed. Some councils exist today in name only. [...]


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