Mini Mini Battlefield Digest: Iraq, Week 45

Many developments this week. [This is long. One can skim just the first two sections and skip the third, to keep a sense of what is going on.]

The Iranians taken hostage post Irbil may be released.
The number of weapons caches appears to be diminishing.
There is a change in command in the North, as a tour ends.

Reports that refugees may be returning.

Battlefield News, Iraq

Political Developments and Major Campaign Resource Shifts

• CSM: The end of the US surge is in sight here. In two key central Iraqi provinces, American units will soon reduce their forces and modify their role in a region that is a microcosm of the fractured nation. There are Sunnis and Shiites.... -Friday, November 2, 2007
• NPR: The U.S. military transfers control of security in Karbala to Iraqi forces. It's one of eight provinces now under Iraqi control. There have been other measures of progress such as electricity. But many are not convinced the positive developments... -Friday, November 2, 2007
• MCT: The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction offered a generally optimistic picture of security developments in Iraq...noted that while violence was down, one of every seven Iraqis - 14 percent of Iraq's population - is now displaced by the war. -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
• dmregister: The Iowa National Guard said today it is mobilizing 130 soldiers from the 186th Military Police Company for the unit's second tour of duty in Iraq. -Wednesday, October 31, 2007
• BBC: The US military in Iraq says it intends to release nine Iranians being held there, including two detained on suspicion of helping Shia militias. They were among five Iranians who Tehran insists are diplomats seized in the Kurdish city of Irbil in January. -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
• [various] AP: A federal judge allowed a lawsuit to proceed Tuesday against private defense firm CACI International Inc., whose interrogators are accused of abusing detainees at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
• AP: House and Senate negotiators agreed Tuesday on a $460 billion Pentagon bill that bankrolls pricey weapons systems and bomb-resistant vehicles for troops, but does not pay for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
• Reuters: Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has said that an army operation is still planned against Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq, but diplomats suggested on Tuesday that any action would now be limited in scope. -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
• Reuters: Eight Turkish soldiers captured last month by Kurdish guerrillas were released in northern Iraq, a move which could ease public pressure on Turkey's government to launch a major cross-border incursion. -Sunday, November 4, 2007
• WaPo: The Iraqi government has resumed discussions about an amnesty program to encourage insurgents and militiamen to lay down their weapons as daily violence lessens across the country, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials. -Sunday, November 4, 2007

COIN: Actions, Reactions, Counteractions, etc.

• AP: In a dramatic turnaround, more than 3,000 Iraqi families driven out of their Baghdad neighborhoods have returned to their homes in the past three months as sectarian violence has dropped, the government said Saturday. -Saturday, November 3, 2007
• VOI: A joint force of Iraqi police-army personnel on Friday arrested three policemen, northeast of Hilla, for suspected involvement in facilitating armed attacks in Babel, a police source said. -Friday, November 2, 2007
• AP: There has been a sharp decline in the number of the most deadly roadside bombs found in Iraq in the last three months, but it's unclear whether that's because Iranians have curtailed the flow of the weapons, the No. 2 U.S. commander... -Thursday, November 1, 2007 [five soldiers killed this week by IEDs...]
• KUNA: Rear Admiral Greg Smith, MNF-I spokesman, announced Tuesday in a joint conference with Lt. Cmdr. Dowling, Task Force Troy, that 5,000 weapon cahces were found in Iraq since the beginning of 2007. -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
• KUNA: MP for the Sadrist Bloc, Sallam Al-Malki, on Sunday said he had resigned from the Iraqi Parliament. -Sunday, November 4, 2007
• NPR: U.S. Special Forces are the undetectable side of the war in Iraq, but is being used more and more in the fight against Sunni and Shiite militants. Iraqis complain some units often use excessive force, killing innocent people... -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
• AFP: Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki has gone on a rare walkabout in central Baghdad in the latest sign of the improving security situation in the war-ravaged Iraqi capital. -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
• AP: Nearly 2.3 million Iraqis the vast majority of them women and children have fled their homes but remain inside the country's borders and are in urgent need of basic care, according to a report issued Monday by the Iraqi Red Crescent. -Monday, November 5, 2007
• Reuters: Britain will start accepting applications for refuge and financial assistance from Iraqi translators and others who have worked with British forces in Iraq, the British military said on Monday. -Monday, November 5, 2007

VIOLENCE: Tactical Developments

• Reuters: Six police guards were killed and eight wounded in an attack on Faris al-Umairi, police chief of the town of Balad Ruz, near Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad. The police chief was not harmed, police said. -Thursday, November 1, 2007
• Roggio: Six police were killed and eight wounded in an assassination attempt on the Balad Ruz police chief. Five were killed and 18 wounded in a car bomb attack in the Saadiya district in Diyala province -Thursday, November 1, 2007
• Roggio: Apache gunships destroyed an anti-aircraft. -Friday, November 2, 2007
• Reuters: Sabri Abdul-Jabar, a university professor in Kirkuk, was found shot dead two days after being kidnapped in a town near the city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. -Thursday, November 1, 2007
• KUNA: US forces killed 51 dissidents from AL-Sadr militias during military operations on October 21-27th in Baghdad, a US military statement said on Wednesday. The statement said US forces were able to target "special locations"... -Thursday, November 1, 2007
• BBC: A girl who survived a massacre in Iraq in which a British man was shot dead, later identified five Iraqi policemen as his killers...Security worker Brian Tilley...was killed when gunmen walked into his girlfriend's house in Baghdad on 14 May 2004. -Wednesday, November 7, 2007
• Reuters: At least 12 people were wounded in a suicide car bomb attack on the Kurdistan Democratic Party headquarters in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said -Wednesday, November 7, 2007
• Reuters: Gunmen killed a woman teacher in a drive-by shooting in the Mansour district of western Baghdad, police said. -Wednesday, November 7, 2007
• NYTimes: Six American soldiers were killed in three separate attacks Monday, the military said Tuesday, taking the number of deaths this year to 852 and making 2007 the deadliest year of the war for U.S. troops. -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
• Reuters: Gunmen killed six off-duty policemen on a road near Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, said Police Brigadier-General Ibrahim al-Jouburi. He said the militants also burned the bodies. -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
• Reuters: Police said they found two bodies tortured and shot near the town of Latifiya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad. -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
• Reuters: Police found the decapitated bodies of two policemen buried in the town of Dhuluiya, 70 km (45 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
• AP: Five American soldiers were killed in two separate roadside bomb attacks, the U.S. military said Tuesday, after Iraqi soldiers discovered 22 bodies in a mass grave northwest of the capital. The soldiers died Monday, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith... -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
• KUNA: In Tikrit, a Lieutenant Colonel and his escort policeman were killed in an ambush by unkown gunmen. -Monday, November 5, 2007
• KUNA: armed men kidnapped two doctors who works in Baqouba hospital, an Iraqi police officer in Diyali province said. Iraqi Captain Qassem Al-Zubaidi said the armed men who used two vehicles stopped the doctors who were departing work... -Monday, November 5, 2007
• Reuters: Gunmen killed Hamad Abdul-Latif, a member of the Khadhra neighbourhood council, in western Baghdad's Jamiaa district, a hospital source said. -Monday, November 5, 2007
• KUNA: The media coordinator for the Joint Multi-National Force centre, Janah Hamoud, on Monday quashed reports that a US soldier in Iraq, abducted with other two in May, had been found dead. -Monday, November 5, 2007
• honoluluadvertiser: The car bomb in Fallujah exploded in May. On that warm evening, insurgents drove a vehicle packed with explosives into mourners of a slain local tribal leader as they wound through a ramshackle corner of the city, killing 20. -Monday, November 5, 2007
• Reuters: A kidnapped Baghdad correspondent for a United States-funded radio was released after two weeks in captivity, the station said on Sunday. -Sunday, November 4, 2007
• LATimes: U.S. officials met with Iraqi and Turkish diplomats here Saturday on the crisis threatening Iraq's northern border, but key Kurdistan officials failed to offer assurances that they would move against Kurdish militants attacking Turkey.... -Sunday, November 4, 2007
• Reuters: Gunmen killed a woman principal at al Mustakbal primary school and wounded a woman principal at Um Qassir school, both in the southern Baghdad district of Saidiya, police said. -Sunday, November 4, 2007
• Reuters: Gunmen kidnapped the wife of a police officer on Saturday in western Kut. Police said it was not known why the woman was kidnapped. -Sunday, November 4, 2007
• Reuters: An adviser in Iraq's finance ministry, Qutaiba Bader-al-Din, was found shot dead in a vehicle along with another ministry employee in the western Baghdad district of Jamiaa, police said. -Sunday, November 4, 2007
• dpa: In a separate incident, a senior police officer and two civilians were shot dead on Sunday on a road in Samara...The three bodies with marks of heavy shooting in different parts were found in a car they were riding, sources from the Tirkit police -Sunday, November 4, 2007
• Xinhua: Iraqi police and anti-Qaida fighters have discovered some 40 corpses buried in a mass grave in Iraq's western province of Anbar, a provincial security source said on Sunday. -Sunday, November 4, 2007

Economic Developments, Reconstruction, and General Good News

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