Sadr City, 2008

The battle, stage by stage

1. 23–25 March 2008

   Rockets on the Green Zone

   On 23 March Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM) and the Iranian-backed 'Special Groups' fire a barrage of 107 mm rockets and mortars from Sadr City at the International Zone (the Green Zone), about 9–10 km to the south-west; in the first week of the fighting 3-4 BCT counted 86 rockets. Two days later Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki opens his offensive against the militias in Basra, Muqtada al-Sadr ends his ceasefire, and JAM overruns about half of the Iraqi checkpoints in and around Sadr City. Colonel John Hort's 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, which had taken over the sector only on 15 March, gets the mission. The launch sites lie south of Route Gold — al-Quds Street — in Habbibiyah and Ishbiliyah, where the militia is at the edge of its rockets' range. Lt. Col. Dan Barnett's 1-2 Stryker Cavalry tries to restore the checkpoints; Lt. Col. Mike Pappal's TF 1-68 holds the areas west and north of Sadr City proper.

2. 26 March – 4 April

   Operation Striker Denial

   Operation Striker Denial (26 March–14 April) goes after the rocket points of origin. 1-2 SCR seizes Habbibiyah and TF 1-68 Ishbiliyah, with C Company 1-68 in the Jamila area; within about a week the brigade holds the launch sites south of Route Gold and has overwatch positions in Tharwa I. The fighting is costly: 1-2 SCR loses six Strykers to IEDs, EFPs and RPGs in the first week, and TF 1-68 switches from Humvees and MRAPs to Abrams tanks and Bradleys, lending a tank platoon to the Strykers. General Jeffery Hammond sends Hort five more companies. Pushed north of al-Quds Street, the rocket teams are now near the limit of their range.

3. 5–6 April

   The Iraqi Army goes to Route Gold

   Iraqi security forces join the attack on 5 April. The 3rd Battalion, 42nd Brigade (11th Iraqi Army Division) enters southern Sadr City from the south and by 6 April has fought its way to positions near Route Gold; the 2nd Battalion is sent in when the 3rd meets heavy resistance. American accounts judged the Iraqi troops uneven at first — they kept to the main roads and often asked U.S. units to lead — but RAND counts the 3/42's attack to Route Gold as proof that the Iraqi Army could hold under pressure.

4. Late March – April

   Eyes overhead

   Hort controls his own sensors and strike assets directly: two RQ-7B Shadows, two Hellfire-armed MQ-1 Predators, Apache aerial weapons teams, fixed-wing aircraft, GMLRS rockets and Paladin artillery. When a rocket team fires, a Shadow is flown to the launch point; Predators, preferred because JAM was thought to carry SA-7 missiles, or Apaches then kill the team. 'Watching the rail' — following launch vehicles back to where they came from — leads to caches and leaders deeper in the district. Positions of individual strikes are not published; the arrows are illustrative.

5. 15–26 April

   Operation Gold Wall

   To keep the rocket teams out of range, the brigade walls off the southern third of Sadr City along al-Quds Street. Convoys of tanks, Bradleys, engineers, flatbeds and cranes bring up T-wall sections 12 feet high, 5 feet wide and about six tons each. 1-2 SCR builds from the southern corner toward Jamiliyah Square, the midpoint by Jamila market, Baghdad's largest market east of the Tigris and a source of JAM's protection money; TF 1-68 builds from the square toward the western corner. At first the crews work at night from two sites; after IEDs slow them the brigade moves to one site working round the clock in 12-hour shifts. Snipers shoot at the cranes, and soldiers climb the sections to unhook them by hand. Wall progress is shown schematically.

6. 27 April – 6 May

   A magnet for every fighter

   The wall becomes, in one officer's words, 'a magnet for every bad guy in Sadr City'. JAM attacks the crews from north of the street, first in platoon strength, later in groups of four or five as its losses mount. In a dust storm in late April, when aircraft cannot fly, militiamen attack along al-Quds Street; by press accounts 22 were killed on 27 April and 28 more on the 29th, and by one account attached Navy SEAL snipers killed 46 fighters in a single sandstorm day. TF 1-6 Infantry joins on 4 May, C Company 2-30 Infantry extends barriers on the district's eastern edge, and the 821st Engineer Company helps finish the wall. Reports that a GMLRS strike near a hospital in early May wounded civilians were disputed by the division, which took reporters to the site.

7. 11–15 May

   Ceasefire and the last T-wall

   With weekly militia attacks in 1-68's area falling from a peak of 138, al-Sadr asks for a ceasefire on 11 May and agrees terms with the government on the 12th. The last of 3,138 sections is set in place on 15 May, closing a barrier of about 4.6 km from Route Aeros to Route Grizzlies. In about two months the brigade's tanks and Bradleys fired 818 120 mm and 12,091 25 mm rounds. RAND counts six U.S. soldiers killed in these operations (other tallies give nine for the period) and an estimated 700 JAM fighters; press tallies record hundreds of civilians killed in Sadr City in the spring fighting.

8. 20 May 2008

   Operation Salam

   Before dawn on 20 May, under 'Operation Salam' (Peace), Iraqi troops pass through openings that U.S. engineers cut in the wall overnight and push into the northern two-thirds of Sadr City: six battalions of three brigades, among them the 11th Division's 42nd and 44th, by one estimate 4,000–5,000 men. They meet almost no resistance and occupy the hospitals, police stations and the Sadrist political office. No U.S. troops go north of al-Quds Street. By June the Jamila market, cleared of sewage and rubble, is trading again.