RUINATION TO REVITALIZATION:
REBUILDING A WAR-TORN CITY IN
BAGHDAD
Christopher L. Allen
Georgia Tech
City and Regional Planning
Graduate Student
CONTENTS
• Baghdad: Historical Context
• Perspective from Saydiyah
• Lines of Effort
• Security
• Economics
• Essential Services
• Governance
• Obstacles and Constraints
• Lasting Effects
• Lessons Learned
BAGHDAD: MODERN CONTEXT
• OIF Post-
Surge, 2007.
• U.S. COIN
Strategy shift
• 2LT Allen
deployment
PERSPECTIVE FROM SAYDIYAH
• Pop: ~40,000
• Majority Ba’athist
•
•
•
•
community
2007: sectarian violence
Jan 2008: abandonment
Rashid District
Internally Displaced
Persons (IDPs), squatters
LINES OF EFFORT
ECONOMICS
ESSENTIAL SERVICES
GOVERNANCE
STABILITY
SECURITY
SECURITY
• Weapons trafficking,
insurgents
• T-Wall Solution
• Joint U.S./Iraqi Army
patrols
• Iraqi National Police
Checkpoints within walls
• Sons & Daughters of Iraq:
local concerned citizens
ECONOMICS
• Micro-Grants
• Fruit and Fish
Market project
• Rafidain Bank
Reopening
• Job Creation
ESSENTIAL SERVICES
• Education
• Clinic
• Roads
• Sewers
• Trash
management
• Power
generation
GOVERNANCE
• Reconciliation
• Support Council:
“unelected” body,
local sheiks
• Balance of power
• Primary function:
Resettlement
OBSTACLES AND CONSTRAINTS
• Culture gap
• Language barrier
• Enemy threat
• Weather & Climate
• Training
• Collective Benefit
• Adjudicating legitimacy:
Iraqi-led
LASTING EFFECTS
• Saydiyah set the standard
• January 2010: 7,200 families
reintegrated
• Gradual drawdown, return to normalcy
• Over $1 Million dollars invested
• Sporadic sectarian & insurgency
violence
• 31 December 2011: U.S. Withdrawal out
of Iraq
LESSONS LEARNED
• Citizen input CRUCIAL
• No perfect 100% solution
• Quality of life significantly
improved
• No “one best way”
• All military objectives
accomplished despite
obstacles
• Outside agency support
• Transition to Iraqi control
• Deliberate analysis