Al Dora, Baghdad.

My buddy Steve has gone back to Iraq for a second tour on the police training mission. When we were there in 2004 and 2005 things were a little rough, to say the least. Steve sent me an email the other day with a BBC video report about one of the neighborhoods in our area of operations. Although we always knew that things were going to get better, it is amazing to see the changes in Al Dora.

Steve's email:

Hi All,

Thought you might be interested in seeing some news from Iraq:

** Return to Dora, Iraq **
Once known as 'the worst place in Iraq', the Baghdad suburb of Dora has made some remarkable changes for the better.


Video

Dora is a neighborhood in south Baghdad. When I was working at Rustamiyah we lived farily close to there and used to travel through now and again. We also had teams that operated in that area with and without military support. I don't know if it was the worst place in Iraq but it was pretty bad. (Erik, you can attest to that.)

With a lot of hard work the Iraqis and the coalition have made a lot of headway there and throughout Iraq. It isn't perfect by a long, long shot and the cooperation and relative calm are very fragile - anything could cause a return to the bad ol' days. Still, progress is possible and it is happening.

Interestingly, when I was here before (and now) there were (and are) US police advisors imbedded with those military units but they don't get mentioned in the news story. I guess that's fair enough. The military's signature goes on this project so they get the credit.

Anyway, the video is about 20 minutes and for the BBC, it is pretty even handed.

Steve

Baghdad is representative of Iraq as a whole. As Baghdad goes, so does the rest of the country. I would think that some places in and around Mosul and Tal Afar were worse than Al Dora back in 2004, but it was a very bad place nonetheless. I'll go out on a limb here and say that this story probably won't get much airtime here in the U.S. Probably because it doesn't involve a friendly body count.