Perspective: After a year's effort, Diyala still a hotbed of sectarian violence

Col. Brian Jones, finally winding down after a year in Iraq, says that what his soldiers in the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team faced in Diyala province shows what other units are up against in the battle to pacify that country.

The brigade ran more than 24,000 patrols during the year and brought a measure of peace and stability to an area the size of West Virginia. The unit can claim credit for ridding Diyala province, northwest of Baghdad, of al-Qaida operatives, including Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, and overseeing the revitalization of the region’s agriculture economy.

But many efforts to build bonds between Sunni and Shiite Muslims so the rival religious groups could govern together ended in frustration, and the struggle to bring peace to the region is far from over, he said. That’s being proven now by rising violence in Diyala being reported by the unit that replaced the Fort Carson brigade.

And that’s just the way some Iraqis want things.

“Certain segments of society don’t want the trouble to end,” said Jones, commander of the 3rd HBCT.

Diyala is known in some circles as Little Baghdad. It’s a microcosm of Iraqi society and brings the same ethnic, religious and tribal tensions that have mired the country in sectarian violence since shortly after the 2003 invasion.

“Everything you see going on in Baghdad, you see in Diyala,” Jones said. “All the levels of power are controlled by a minority population.”

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