Sadr City Day 3

Sadr City Day 3

9:25pm UK, Wednesday March 14, 2007
This is day three of our embed in Sadr City, writes Fox News correspondent David Mac Dougall in Sadr City.

I woke up at 4am to the sound of a soldier talking on the radio right next to my cot.

He kept calling for one of his colleagues.

Somewhere in the Joint Security Station (JSS) there are soldiers awake at all times of the day and night. After a few days we've come to understand the rhythm of the building: soldiers waking and sleeping, going on missions, preparing their body armour and weapons, the guard shift change, and peak times for getting food which is stored in boxes at the end of the hallway where we're sleeping.

After a few very long workdays, we decided to stay at our make-shift office today. The office space consists of out storage boxes on the floors, with the computers balanced on top. We've snaked the cables out a broken window up to the roof of the building so we can set up the mini-satellite and get on the internet.

'War On Smoking' Launched

The trooper running the JSS on the American side is 1st Sergeant Don Knapp. Since we've been here, he's achieved an important victory - stopping the Iraqi police and civilians chain-smoking on this floor of the building. They try to hide the cigarette smoke with incense but 1SG Knapp can smell a burning ember at 50 paces, and he makes them stop.

The soldiers tell me when they first arrived at the JSS, the hallway was thick with smoke. 1SG Knapp has made a big improvement in the air quality - and it's no small miracle to get Iraqis to obey the "no smoking" signs.

1SG Knapp isn't here today. He's gone to a large base in Taji, about 15 miles away. In theory, soldiers should get a 48-hour chance to take a shower, clean up, do some laundry, and enjoy a decent meal every 31 days - they call it a "refit". Don Knapp went about 23 days without showering. He's become an expert at using baby wipes. The crew and I are using baby wipes too. Lots of them. And we're running low on supplies! SFC Knapp promised to try and bring some back for us.

Tomorrow is another busy day. Cameraman Michael Pohl and I plan to go out on patrol again with troopers from the 82 nd Airborne (to be precise, we're embedded with Bravo Troop, 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division).

We're hoping to interview some Iraqi security personnel who are part of the big Baghdad security plan here in Sadr City to get their perspective.

Sadr City Day 2

Sadr City Day 2

5:19pm UK, Tuesday March 13, 2007
This is day two for us inside the Sadr City Joint Security Station, writes Fox News correspondent David Mac Dougall in Sadr City.

This morning cameraman Michael Pohl and I went on patrol with troopers from the 82nd Airborne. It was a dismounted patrol - which means we drove into the streets, got out, and walked around.

It's been more than two years since I was last in Sadr City - yet it's been in the news so much. People were curious about the soldiers - Iraqi and US - coming out of their homes and shops to see what was going on in the street.

Sadr City is home to around 2.5 million people - most living in what we consider poverty. The good roads have concrete, the bad roads are just dirt.

We dismounted in the middle of a market - people selling produce like lettuce and cucumber - small herds of goats wandering around, people shopping. We saw a flour mill, workers outside loading up bags of flour for delivery.

This was a busy industrious part of the city which could have been a market in any Arab city like Jerusalem Cairo or Damascus. I was expecting something worse after so much violence and so much misery in the last few years.

Apart from being curious, residents in the neighbourhood we visited were fairly friendly. They called out greetings to us or waved as we went past their homes. The Iraqi security forces conducted a "soft knock and search" operation - talking to homeowners, going inside to look for banned weapons and ammunition.

There was no kicking in doors, no shouting or shooting, no screams or crying which can sometimes accompany more "kinetic" raids (as the military calls them!)

But the soldiers we're with weren't lulled into a false sense of security. They still kept up a very vigilant stance. The signs of Moqtada al-Sadr's militia were all around us - flags flying from most homes, and banners featuring Moqtada scowling down on the Sadr City residents.

The patrol lasted five hours, and now we're back in the JSS building. Conditions haven't really improved. Everybody's still sleeping wherever they can. There's still not much water (we started the day getting clean with baby-wipes) and there's still no proper toilets. But there is one sign that things are getting better - a street vendor showed up selling us "real" Rolex watches. Just £15.

Sadr City Day 1

Sadr City Day 1

10:30pm UK, Monday March 12, 2007
We started travelling at 1am, and finally arrived at the Joint Security Station in Sadr City at 11:30am, writes Fox News correspondent David Mac Dougall.

On the crew for this trip: producer Nicola Sadler and cameraman Michael Pohl. We're spending the week with the 82nd Airborne to get as broad a picture as possible of the work they're doing to try and bring security to this vast, sprawling slum of 2.5 million people.

The Joint Security Station (JSS) is situated in an old Iraqi police station, manned by an equal number of Iraqi and American security forces.

Just a few months ago Sadr City was strictly a "no-go" area for US troops - the whole district was ruled by militia fighters from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

Under the new Baghdad security plan, the US army is back. With the backing of local community leaders and with the (seeming) approval of Moqtada al-Sadr, they've partnered up with Iraqi forces to become a visible presence once again on the streets of Sadr City.

The JSS building itself is in a terrible condition. On larger US bases they have luxuries like showers, an efficient laundry service, massive dining facilities serving lobster and steak.
Out here in Sadr City the soldiers are living in extremely basic conditions. Every room we look in has soldiers sleeping on the floor. The corridors are lined with army cots. Space is at a premium.

There's no food - just army rations. There's no bathrooms or even running water - we have to use porta-loos and dress in full body armour plus helmet to go to the toilet.

Showers will have to wait until we get back to a larger base - for now we'll rely on baby wipes to try and stay clean. We can forget about privacy too.

But these conditions are no different to conditions faced by tens of thousands of soldiers across Iraq every day.

As journalists, if we want to tell their stories accurately, we have to live with them and experience what they experience, and be somewhat grateful it's only for a week at a time.