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BAGHDAD \u2014 The Zafaraniyah Joint Security Station doesn’t look like your typical army base or police station.<\/p>
The electricity cuts off every once in a while, the ground is unpaved and the leaking sewage system floods the compound with dark, murky water.<\/p>
But the station, also known as a JSS, is a key piece of the fight to restore safety to Iraq’s capital.<\/p>
Located just down the street from the Zafaraniyah Government Center, where a neighborhood council meets once a week and locals stream in and out to talk to their community’s leaders, the JSS is a place where American and Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi police can live and work together among the people they serve.<\/p>
Capt. Dave Eastburn, commander of B Battery, 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, spends two 24-hour periods at the joint security station every week. There are always at least two platoons of 2-17 soldiers, as well as other U.S. troops involved in training Iraqi forces, at the station at any time.<\/p>
“When we got here, it was a lot more hostile,” he said, citing the deeply rooted presence of insurgents. “The estimated participation in [the Jaysh Al Mahdi militia] was probably 90 percent. They had a stronghold on gas stations, the police, some of the national police. Pretty much everybody was affected in some way, shape or form.”<\/p>
His soldiers and their counterparts from 1st Brigade, 9th Iraqi Army Division, have been able to improve the security in the area by maintaining a constant presence in the neighborhood, Eastburn said.<\/p>
“Once the people started seeing they could trust us, the information started to flow,” he said. “The situation is extremely manageable now. We have days when we have a found IED or small-arms fire that you hear. The difference now is the Iraqi army and Iraqi police tell us they found the IED before it went off.”<\/p>
Soldiers from 2-17 belong to 2nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, which took control of east Baghdad in November. When 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, arrived in January, they took over part of 2\/2’s area of operations, including Sadr City and Adhamiyah. Without those two districts, 2\/2 is still responsible for an area that is home to 2.1 million people, about 60 percent of whom are Shia, said Lt. Col. Dean Dunham, the brigade’s deputy commanding officer.<\/p>
The soldiers of 2-17 are in charge of Security District Karadah and its 400,000 residents. Karadah is one of Baghdad’s nine security districts, said Capt. Andy White, 2-17’s operations officer.<\/p>
“This is the first peace and quiet in this [area of operations] for a long time,” White said.<\/p>
Plans are in the works to establish a satellite joint security station and a combat outpost.<\/p>
Putting Iraqi soldiers and police in the same place also forces them to work together, Eastburn said.<\/p>
“When we first moved in, nobody got along,” he said. “Now they sit together, they talk, they eat together. I think the professionalism of the Iraqi army is rubbing off on the Iraqi police.”<\/p>
The Iraqi forces have picked up a large share of responsibility, Eastburn said.<\/p>
“I think we’re well ahead of where we need to be as far as Iraqis taking control of the area, and I have full confidence the Iraqi army will be able to do as good a job as we do,” he said.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Security stations support constant presence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":102216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[15,88],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1908],"class_list":["post-113190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-military"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"N5LTS6GNW5BXHP27WQYFR2TDJA","arc_canonical_url":"\/2013\/03\/27\/security-stations-support-constant-presence\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n