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Caption:
Marines from 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, drive their Amphibious
Assault Vehicle into position Oct. 2, 2005, during the beginning of
Operation Iron Fist – a counterinsurgency operation to clear the
towns of Sa'dah and Eastern Karabilah in the western Al Anbar Province,
Iraq. After spending seven months of routing out insurgents and
stabilizing the Al Qa’im region, located along the Euphrates
River in northwestern Al Anbar Province near the Syrian border, the
Camp Lejeune, N.C.-based Marines say they’re leaving the region
in better shape then when they arrived last year. During the past seven
months, the Marines have brought stability back to the people of
western Iraq by training Iraqi Army soldiers and ridding the region of
anti-Iraqi forces, thanks to an aggressive counterinsurgency campaign,
which included Operation Steel Curtain last November - a major
offensive to disrupt insurgent activity along the Syrian border which
saw hundreds of insurgents killed or captured. “We're able to
progress now with getting consistent (electrical) power, free and clean
running water for all the villages up there, as well as starting to
rebuild the hospitals and the schoolhouses that have suffered over the
last three years,” said Col. Stephen W. Davis, who commanded all
Marine forces in western Al Anbar Province for the past year, during a
Pentagon press briefing last month. The battalion’s redeployment
to the U.S. is part of a regularly scheduled rotation of forces in Al
Anbar. More than 25,000 Marine and sailors of Camp Pendleton,
Calif.-based I Marine Expeditionary Force are replacing the Camp
Lejeune, N.C.-based II MEF. (Official U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt.
Jerad W. Alexander)
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