Operation Together Forward
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Operation Together Forward, also known as Forward Together (
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
: عملية معاً إلى الأمام, Amaliya Ma’an ila Al-Amam), was an unsuccessful offensive against sectarian militias in
Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...
to significantly reduce the violence in which had seen a sharp uprise since the mid-February 2006 bombing of the Askariya Mosque, a major
Shiite Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most ...
Muslim shrine, in
Samarra Samarra ( ar, سَامَرَّاء, ') is a city in Iraq. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris in the Saladin Governorate, north of Baghdad. The city of Samarra was founded by Abbasid Caliph Al-Mutasim for his Turkish professional army ...
. The plan was announced on 14 June 2006 by the then-recently installed Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki Nouri Kamil Muhammad-Hasan al-Maliki ( ar, نوري المالكي; born 20 June 1950), also known as Jawad al-Maliki (), is secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party and was the prime minister of Iraq from 2006 to 2014 and the vice president ...
, and intended to increase security conditions in Baghdad through instituting major new measures. Operation Together Forward was planned as an operation to be led primarily by Iraqis but with Coalition support and would put about 70,000 security forces on the streets of Baghdad. The major provisions of the operation included a curfew from 9pm to 6am, increased checkpoints and patrols, and further restrictions on carrying weapons. Additionally, Iraqi and Coalition troops would raid terrorist cells and attempt to disrupt insurgent activities through active missions against suspected insurgent locations. However, although highly touted at the time of its introduction, the plan failed to increase security in the capital as the high level of violence continued with a spate of major bombings (at least four such attacks with 40+ deaths each occurred in a one-week period) and sectarian killings throughout June and July.


Background

Soon after taking up his command,
General A general officer is an Officer (armed forces), officer of highest military ranks, high rank in the army, armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers t ...
Chiarelli began ordering operations in Iraq designed to increase security as the new Iraqi government was forming in the face of a
civil war A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
. In March 2006, Operation Scales of Justice took place in Baghdad which significantly increased the number of security forces in the city and captured some 800 suspected insurgents in its first two months, but it did not reduce the overall violence. For many months, senior British officers had been urging General Casey to make Baghdad the focus of his operations. It seemed to many intelligence analysts that that was AQI's intention, a document seized in a raid near Yusifiyah by Task Force Knight revealed the terrorists determination to make the attacks on Baghdad a central role in its plans to undermine the new Iraqi government. For this and other political reasons, the Security Plan was described by
the Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a metony ...
as "Iraqi-led:" more than three-quarters of the 61,000 to 75,000 security forces involved in the operation were Iraqi, but the aims of the operation were planned by the US-they wanted to clear neighbourhoods (with particular focus on the East Rasheed neighbourhood) of insurgents one by one before turning them over to Iraqi forces.


Timeline

Violence increased in July, tensions were high between
Shia Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest Islamic schools and branches, branch of Islam. It holds that the Prophets and messengers in Islam, Islamic prophet Muhammad in Islam, Muhammad designated Ali, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his S ...
and
Sunni Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagr ...
following the 2006 al-Askari mosque bombing but then on 8 July 2006 a suicide bomber entered a Shia mosque in Baghdad and blew himself up, killing 8 worshippers-effectively bringing the Sectarian war to Baghdad. On the morning of 9 July, masked
Mahdi Army The Peace Companies ( ar, سرايا السلام, or Saraya al Salam) are an Iraqi armed group linked to Iraq's Shia community. They are a 2014 revival of the Mahdi Army ( ''Jaysh al-Mahdī'') that was created by the Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada a ...
militants gathered in groups in Baghdad's Hay al Jihad neighborhood and setup their own checkpoints asking drivers and passers by for identification. Any Sunni males among them were taken to a bus where more gunman were waiting, the bus drove to a waste ground where the captives were all murdered. By the end of the day, 36 bodies were brought into local hospitals, though the death toll maybe higher than 50; Sunni bombers carried out a double car-bomb attack on a Shia mosque in northern Baghdad, killing 19 and wounding 59. The violence on 9 July marked of 5 days of multiple suicide bombings and Shia retaliation that claimed more than 150 lives in the city. Operation Together Forward began on 9 July 2006, the operation consisted of clearance: operations (that were wearily familiar to the city's inhabitance) buildings were searched and weapons were seized, local troops were then meant to hold the area. Within weeks of the operation getting underway, it was obvious that it was not working-US commanders accused the Iraqi security forces of failing to provide two promised brigades, where Iraqi units did appear (particularly those from the
Ministry of the Interior An interior ministry (sometimes called a ministry of internal affairs or ministry of home affairs) is a government department that is responsible for internal affairs. Lists of current ministries of internal affairs Named "ministry" * Ministry ...
) they were often blamed for making situations worse. Stories abounded of Iraqi police acting like the acting like the Mahdi Army by using their freedom of movement to enter Sunni areas on murder missions. MND-B soldiers and Iraqi security forces executed continuous raids targeting known terrorist cells and cell leaders; they conducted some 32,000 combat patrols and killed or captured over 400 insurgents and seized numerous weapons and ammunition cashes. On 24 July 2006, it was announced that Prime Minister Maliki was heading to Washington, D.C. for talks about the security situation with President
George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
. The White House also publicly admitted for the first time that the Operation had been a failure, and that a new security strategy for Baghdad would be designed. Coalition commanders in the
Green Zone The Green Zone ( ar, المنطقة الخضراء, translit=al-minṭaqah al-ḫaḍrā) is the most common name for the International Zone of Baghdad. It was a area in the Karkh district of central Baghdad, Iraq, that was the governmental ...
discussed with
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...
about finding a new way to deal with the worsening situation. Casey stuck to his strategy of turning over the operation to the Iraqis, whilst senior officers and Washington policymakers were using the failure of the operation to open a debate about what needed to be done and whether Casey was the correct commander. Casey and
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Robert Fry Lieutenant General Sir Robert Alan Fry, (born 6 April 1951)Debrett's''Lt-Gen Sir Robert Fry, KCB, CBE''Retrieved 15 August 2013 served as a Royal Marine for over 30 years and was involved in military operations in Northern Ireland, the Gulf, ...
, the SBMR-I (Senior British Military Representative-Iraq) in Baghdad, agreed that the British forces team in Baghdad (particularly the intelligence section) would spearhead the F-SEC (Force Strategic Engagement Cell)- a new effort (made up of US military intelligence counterparts,
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
and
MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
personnel) to turn the Sunni community against the jihadists. The domestic policy in the UK made it impossible for British forces in Iraq to reverse its planned withdrawal and reinforce the Coalition in Baghdad, so Fry reversed his idea that Task Force Knight should move to an "operational overwatch" role and made them an important contributor to the operation. By late July, hundreds of thousands of Baghdadis had fled to Jordan or Syria; US senior officers, concluding that the operation had failed were putting into action plans to launch a new security drive for the capital using a higher proportion of US troops. But given the dire nature of the national security situation and the apparent desire by top commanders at the Pentagon not to deploy more troops to an increasingly unpopular war. On 1 August 2006, 70 Iraqis (including 20 soldiers) were killed in Baghdad violence and bombings. On 7 August, MND-B soldiers and Iraqi security forces began phase II of the operation, which was designed to further increase security and reduce violence in and around Baghdad and give Iraqi forces the chance to operate with more autonomy than previous operations in the area. The Iraqis sent 6,000 more troops to the capital to support phase II as well as 3,700 troops mainly from the 172nd Infantry Brigade, however only two of the planned six Iraqi battalions showed up. This insufficiency in the Iraqi forces was seen as a reason for the operations lack of overall success. The Coalition was able to clear certain areas of insurgents, but they were not able to keep the insurgents and terrorists from infiltrating back into the cleared areas. The violence increased in August, US and Iraqi forces cleared 4,000 houses in the Dora and Risala neighbourhoods, however there was still more than a million houses and dwellings in the search areas, which made the operation furtherly unsustainable. In addition, the insurgents were usually tipped off by complicit members Iraqi security forces and would flee the area, therefore there was no strategic result in the operation. A second major operation, Operation Together Forward II began in August, following the same tactics as its predecessor, however the operation focused too much on the pace of the clearing operations and not on the building up of essential infrastructure to better support the needs of the local population. As a result, the level of violence jumped to 43% between summer and October 2006. By 1 October 2006, Dora was completely cleared for the second time in less than two months, but with the same negligible results as in the previous operation-again the insurgents had been tipped off and fled the area.Wright, Darron L., '' Iraq Full Circle: From Shock and Awe to the Last Combat Patrol in Baghdad and Beyond'', 2012, Osprey Publishing, , Also in October, Gen. William Caldwell said: "Operation Together Forward has made a difference in the focus areas but has not met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence

Baghdad attacks were said to have escalated by 22% over the beginning of the operation. During the operation the number of sectarian killings throughout the capital were at an all-time high. Each month during the operation between 1,300 and 2,000 civilians were killed. Attacks on American units in the city were happening each day. Members of the al-Mahdi Army conducted sniper attacks on American foot patrols, while Sunni insurgents attacked American convoys with roadside bombs. Some 81 American soldiers were killed during the operation in fighting in the capital along with almost 200 members of the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi police. Also 20 American soldiers were killed in the fighting in the town of Taji, just 20 kilometers north of Baghdad. One American soldier was captured in Baghdad a day before the operation ended. An unknown number of Iraqi insurgents were killed or captured but it was probably several hundred. The U.N. reported that 14,000 civilians were killed in the whole of Iraq during the battle. On 23 October the White House announced that it would be reviewing its overall Iraq security strategy as the unrelenting violence the country continued and the U.S. military death toll for October became the highest of 2006. The operation ended the next da

On 23 November a massive, coordinated car bomb and mortar attack in the Sadr City section of Baghdad killed 215 people and wounded a further 250. On 12 December, a suicide car bomber targeting laborers killed 60 people in Baghdad and wounded 220 others. The truck driver signaled to the would-be workers that he had jobs—prompting people to crowd around the pickup before he detonated his bomb. This scenario has been used dozens of times in Iraq to inflict maximum casualties, yet Iraqis continue to look for work in this manner - despite the obvious risk - due to the poor economic situation in the country. The
Iraq Study Group The Iraq Study Group (ISG) also known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission was a ten-person bipartisan panel appointed on March 15, 2006, by the United States Congress, that was charged with assessing the situation in Iraq and the US-led Iraq War and ...
, in its December 2006
report A report is a document that presents information in an organized format for a specific audience and purpose. Although summaries of reports may be delivered orally, complete reports are almost always in the form of written documents. Usage In ...
br>
cited Operation Together Forward II (i.e. the second phase of the Operation), writing: On 22 January 2007, a suicide car bomber crashed into a market in the central neighborhood of Bab al-Sharqi, killing 88 people. This attack highlighted the complete inability of the United States or the Iraqi government to stop large-scale bombings in Baghdad more than six months after Operation Together Forward was announced.


Operation Fardh al-Qanoon

In February 2007, a new security operation was launched throughout Baghdad. The city was divided into 9 security zones which were cleared by US and Iraqi forces. Joint Security Stations were established following the securing of each sector to enable reconstruction work to begin in safety. As a result of this operation, made possible following a "surge" in US troop levels, large portions of the city came under Coalition control.


See also

*
Iraq War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish) , partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
*
Iraqi insurgency Iraqi insurgency may refer to: * Iraqi insurgency (2003–2011), part of the Iraq War ** Iraqi insurgency (2003–2006), 2003–2006 phase of the Iraqi insurgency ** Iraqi civil war (2006–2008), multi-sided civil war in Iraq * Iraqi insurgency (20 ...
*
Operation Sinbad Operation Sinbad was an operation led by the Iraqi Security Forces and supported by British, Danish and other Multi-National Forces in southern Iraq. The operation began during the early hours of 27 September 2006. The stated goal of the operatio ...
*
Operation Law and Order Operation Law and Order was an Israeli military operation against a Hezbollah base in the village of Maydoun. Background On April 26, 1988, a Hezbollah infiltration attempt at Har Dov ended in a battle during which an Israeli officer, Lieuten ...


References


External links


Central Command press release

Central Command press release announcing Operation Together Forward, phase II


{{DEFAULTSORT:Together Forward Military operations of the Iraq War involving the United States Military operations of the Iraq War involving Iraq Military operations of the Iraq War in 2006