John Spencer, Liam Collins, and Jayson Geroux | 01.14.25

The Battle of Sadr City occurred from March 23 to May 12, 2008, during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sadr City is a densely populated neighborhood in Baghdad’s northeast. It is a diamond-shaped area of twenty-five square kilometers, laid out in a grid pattern with streets running from northeast to southwest and northwest to southeast. It is part of the Thawra District (also called the Sadr City district) which also includes the Habbibiyah and Ishbiliyah neighborhoods. The entire district is approximately thirty-five square kilometers, with a population of approximately 2.4 million. Since its establishment in 1959, it had been characterized by near-slum-like conditions.

Al-Quds Street (part of what the US-led coalition designated as Route Gold) separated the relatively wealthy Habbibiyah and Ishbiliyah neighborhoods from Sadr City. Ishbiliyah was home to the Jamiliyah Market, one of Baghdad’s largest. The buildings in these neighborhoods were built immediately next to one another. Most were one to three stories, though some reached to four or five stories. Building construction ranged from cinderblock to reinforced cement. Open areas—consisting mostly of parking lots or soccer fields—dotted the Thawra District.

The Battle

The Battle of Sadr City took place fifteen months after the start of the US “surge” in Iraq, of which the Baghdad Security Plan was a key element. The United States sent five additional brigade combat teams into Baghdad and extended the deployments of units already in the country. The plan called for the troops to employ the Army’s new counterinsurgency doctrine and to leave their large forward operating bases and occupy smaller outposts throughout the city.

The one exception was Sadr City. Due to agreements between Muqtada al-Sadr and Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki, coalition forces were prohibited from conducting operations within Sadr City, leaving it an insurgent stronghold. Sadr was a young Shia cleric from a prominent family—the neighborhood of Sadr City, previously Saddam City, was renamed in honor of his father in 2003—and he had established a substantial following after the invasion. His followers, known as Sadrists, often opposed the Iraqi government and were backed by an armed militia called the Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM), which attacked US forces.

By March 2008, the surge and the Baghdad Security Plan were proving effective, but the Sadrists were becoming more brazen in their opposition to the Iraqi government. With al-Qaeda’s power greatly reduced, Maliki now had the strength to confront the Sadrists. Thus, he directed his forces to plan an offensive operation against JAM in Basra, a southern Iraqi city where JAM also maintained a stronghold. The operation, however, did not include Sadr City.

The number of JAM and affiliated fighters within Sadr City was estimated to range from two to six thousand, but coalition officials believed Sadr could mobilize up to twenty thousand more for a larger uprising. JAM militants were armed with AK-47 rifles, PKM machine guns, sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortars, rockets, and a few surface-to-air missiles. The group’s fighters also had a seemingly endless supply of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and explosively formed penetrators (EFPs). While they lacked competence in marksmanship and tactics, they made up for it with motivation and aggressiveness.

On the eve of the battle, coalition and Iraqi forces maintained a sizable presence within Baghdad. Multi-National Division–Baghdad had thirty-one thousand soldiers (although none of these, per the agreement described above, were in Sadr City), while the Iraqis numbered twenty-six thousand Iraqi Army soldiers, twenty-two thousand national police, thirty-two thousand militia members known as Sons of Iraq, and twenty thousand local police. Their quality, however, was suspect. Many considered Iraqi military forces a “checkpoint Army,” meaning they could occupy checkpoints but were incapable of conducting more complex operations.

Sadr City fell within the sector assigned to 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division (3-4 BCT), but it was only a small portion of the brigade’s area of responsibility. Prior to the start of the battle, the sector assigned to 1st Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Stryker Regiment (1-2 SCR) included the entire Thawra District. Immediately to 1-2 SCR’s northwest was the sector of 1st Combined Arms Battalion, 68th Armored Regiment (1-68 CAB).

IED attacks and other violent incidents had steadily declined throughout the surge but almost tripled in the week leading up to the battle. Then on March 23, the violence spiked even more dramatically. Insurgents launched a barrage of rockets from the Thawra District into the International Zone (also known as the Green Zone), striking Iraqi government buildings and foreign embassies. Insurgents could not range the Green Zone from most of Sadr City, so teams would leave Sadr City to fire their weapons from open areas within Habbibiyah and Ishbiliyah and then quickly egress back into Sadr City.

Concurrently, JAM attacked the Iraqi checkpoints within and surrounding Sadr City and many security forces abandoned their checkpoints without a fight. Local American commanders worked to stabilize the situation by reestablishing the checkpoints surrounding the neighborhood as fast as they could, but JAM fighters frequently ambushed the forces tasked with doing so.

As was typical of many attacks, a 1-2 SCR platoon was caught in a complex ambush involving small arms, rocket-propelled grenades, and IEDs, with an EFP hitting one of its Stryker vehicles while trying to reestablish a checkpoint. On its way to support the platoon, a second platoon was caught in another complex ambush that disabled one of the platoon’s two M1A2 Abrams tanks when it was struck by an EFP. On the way out, the initial platoon was struck by six more IEDs. In total, 1-2 SCR lost six Stryker vehicles during the first week of the battle. One company commander described how the enemy “used anything and everything to barrier streets [and] put IEDs everywhere. . . . Everything that could have been an IED was.”

As American forces fought to reestablish and reinforce checkpoints, JAM rocket fire continued to hit the Green Zone and in the battle’s first six days, militants launched a total of 344 rockets and mortar rounds into it. The US embassy compound and military headquarters fell victim to frequent attacks and lost several troops when a rocket struck its gym.

On March 25, Maliki lifted some restrictions, allowing American forces to conduct air strikes into Sadr City and larger ground combat operations within the Habbibiyah and Ishbiliyah neighborhoods. With these restrictions lifted, coalition forces started working on a plan to regain control of Sadr City.

The operation unfolded in four phases. During phase 1, Operation Striker Denial (March 26–April 14), 3-4 BCT seized JAM rocket-firing positions while Iraqi security forces reestablished checkpoints within Habbibiyah and Ishbiliyah. During phase 2, Operation Gold Wall (April 15–May 15), the Americans built a five-kilometer-long wall along Sadr City’s southwestern side to prevent insurgents from infiltrating into Habbibiyah and Ishbiliyah to conduct rocket attacks. During phase 3 (starting May 19) Iraqi security forces cleared and held portions of Sadr City. During phase 4 (May 12–January 2009), Multi-National Division–Baghdad conducted an intensive reconstruction effort while continuing equally intensive counterinsurgency operations.

The division’s main effort for Operations Striker Denial and Gold Wall was 3-4 BCT and it was augmented with additional assets including four additional maneuver companies, multiple unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), three air weapons teams (a total of six AH-64 Apache helicopters), and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support from other strategic assets.

To clear Habbibiyah and Ishbiliyah, 3-4 BCT implemented several tactical changes. First, the brigade adjusted its boundaries. There was insufficient organic combat power in 1-2 SCR to clear both neighborhoods the unit was assigned, so the brigade decreased 1-2 SCR’s sector to include only Habbibiyah and expanded 1-68 CAB’s sector to include Ishbiliyah. The brigade also augmented 1-2 SCR with an M1A2 Abrams tank platoon and engineers from 1-68 CAB, so that the battalion could fight as a combined arms team.

The brigade directed 1-68 CAB to clear the Ishbiliyah neighborhood, augmenting it with three additional companies and engineers. The battalion also transitioned from armored Humvees and MRAPs to M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and M1A2 Abrams tanks. The armored vehicles offered better firepower and better protection for the combat operations the battalion would be conducting. Because 1-68 CAB was a combined infantry-armor unit, each company was a mix of armor and mechanized infantry, so the battalion’s subordinate units were used to working together as combined arms teams.

On March 27, 1-2 SCR and 1-68 CAB moved into Habbibiyah and Ishbiliyah, encountering sporadic fire and IEDs as they advanced toward the open areas that JAM fighters were using for rocket attacks. Engineers were often the frontline fighters as they took fire from militants while clearing routes of IEDs. Upon arriving at a launch site, the soldiers dismounted their armored vehicles and then entered and cleared the buildings surrounding the site. Attached sniper teams established overwatch positions in the tallest buildings while tanks and infantry fighting vehicles provided security for the dismounts. The brigade’s soldiers often encountered significant resistance from large groups of unskilled but determined militants.

Within the battle’s first week, the brigade had secured the rocket launch sites in Ishbiliyah and Habbibiyah through aggressive patrolling, ambushes, and the establishment of patrol bases and sniper positions. This significantly decreased the number of rockets falling into the Green Zone, but the insurgents were still able to range the Green Zone from the southern limits of Sadr City. With coalition forces prohibited from entering Sadr City, the brigade was reliant on air assets that had been delegated to it by the division to deny these firing points to the enemy.

Within days, the brigade became extremely proficient at engaging enemy targets with its additional air assets. It could locate a rocket team in the southern parts of Sadr City within sixty to ninety seconds and then direct a UAS to reorient its sensors onto the launch area to confirm the presence of insurgents. The brigade would then use an MQ-1 Predator, Apache helicopters, or a guided multiple-launch rocket system to launch a missile or rockets to kill the enemy at the launch site. Eventually the brigade learned to follow the teams from the launch sites to their supply points and command locations, and would then conduct a strike against these higher-payoff targets. By the end of the battle, the rocket attacks ceased altogether.

While 3-4 BCT secured the launch sites within Ishbiliyah and Habbibiyah, the Iraqi Army went in to secure the neighborhoods. The Iraqis began their movement on April 6, but they were fairly ineffective. Almost from the start, the Iraqis asked American units to lead the attack. Once the Iraqi forces realized they had to conduct the operation on their own, they tended to remain on the main roads, making them susceptible to IEDs and ambushes.

The Iraqi soldiers often believed the insurgent threat was much greater than it was. One battalion commander almost withdrew his entire unit after receiving minor harassing fire. He remained only after his American advisor provided him a UAS video feed that showed he was only facing a few insurgents who were firing haphazardly. Senior Iraqi officers and their American advisors had to constantly coax the Iraqi soldiers to move forward. Eventually, the Iraqis advanced and occupied positions along al-Quds Street, but it took significant American support and pressure to do it. Nonetheless, this signaled the end of phase 1, Operation Striker Denial.

On April 15, the Americans initiated phase 2, Operation Gold Wall, which was a plan to construct a five-kilometer-long wall—made up of five-foot-wide, twelve-foot-tall, six-ton, concrete T-wall sections—along Route Gold from Sadr City’s southern corner to its western corner. The idea for a wall was not new. Americans had emplaced concrete barriers in Baghdad shortly after arriving in the city in 2003 and parts of Ishbiliyah and Habbibiyah already had walls around them. Thus, building a wall was a natural solution to control the movement of people and supplies into and out of Sadr City.

The brigade planned to have 1-2 SCR start its wall construction at Sadr City’s southern corner and build northwest toward Jamiliyah Square. Concurrently, 1-68 CAB would start its own section of the wall at Jamiliyah Square and build northwest to Sadr City’s western corner. The units planned to build during twelve-hour nighttime shifts to avoid building during the heat of the day and to make it more difficult for insurgents to impede the construction during limited-visibility hours, when the Americans had the advantage with their night optics.

Each evening, a convoy comprised of tanks, engineers, flatbed trucks loaded with T-walls, a civilian or military crane, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and other vehicles would transport the T-wall sections to the building site. At the site, infantry and armor would provide overwatch, while the crane would lift each T-wall section off the flatbed and put it in place. The element would work all night to install as many barriers as possible and then repeat the next evening.

However, the nighttime-only building strategy did not last long. The brigade quickly learned that this strategy ceded the offensive to JAM. During the day, insurgents littered the walls’ temporary endpoints and convoy route with IEDs hidden under piles of garbage and other debris. This slowed the convoy’s movement to the wall as engineers might spend hours searching for and neutralizing or destroying the devices. Sometimes route clearance would take all night, leaving no time for wall construction.

After several days of little to no wall construction, the brigade transitioned to a continuous, twenty-four-hour-a-day operation. Lacking the manpower to build at two locations, the brigade was forced to build the wall from a single point, with each unit working twelve-hour shifts. While this exposed those at the wall to greater risk from insurgent attacks during daylight hours, the continual use of the roads and the continued occupation of the construction site made it difficult for the insurgents to emplace IEDs, thereby reducing the overall risk to the brigade.

The brigade also changed the tactics it employed to neutralize and destroy the devices. Upon discovering an IED, previous protocol had been to secure the site and attempt to recover the device so that it could be examined and exploited by forensics experts. But this process was extremely time-intensive—it could take an hour or more to clear a single device. If the brigade continued to employ this technique, the wall’s construction would be severely hampered. Thus, the brigade received permission to use a technique known as standoff munitions disruption to blow the explosive in place without the time-consuming recovery procedures. Most often, this meant using direct-fire weapons from a Stryker, Bradley, or tank to destroy the explosive. The tank’s 120-millimeter canister ammunition was particularly effective. Each antipersonnel round was like a large shotgun shell that, once fired, opened into hundreds of small pieces and acted like a violent broom, blowing garbage off the streets and either neutralizing or destroying any IEDs in the process.

While the wall was originally intended to deny JAM’s access to launch sites in Ishbiliyah and Habbibiyah, its construction had the unintended consequence of forcing JAM fighters to expose themselves. With routes more secure and entrance and exit points around Sadr City becoming more limited, the insurgents were forced to attack units emplacing the walls. However, this put them at the disadvantage because 3-4 BCT had tanks, snipers, and dismounted infantry in defensive positions overwatching the building site. At first, JAM was able to mount attacks of up to platoon-sized strength, but as JAM suffered losses, these attacks dwindled to only four- to five-man elements.

Insurgent sharpshooters often targeted the crane’s cables or the person disconnecting the T-wall. One sharpshooter successfully cut a cable, and it took the remainder of the day to replace it. One of the more dangerous parts of the entire procedure was unhooking the crane’s cables from the T-wall after it had been emplaced. A soldier had to climb a ladder and unhook the two cables by hand from the large eyelets on top of each concrete piece, which exposed the soldier’s upper body to enemy fire.

Most often, 1-68 CAB and 1-2 SCR engaged enemy forces located in Sadr City using their organic weapon systems and attached attack helicopters, but they also employed the division’s guided multiple-launch rocket system when the right conditions existed. In one instance, US intelligence learned that several JAM leaders periodically met in a trailer complex next to a hospital inside Sadr City. The leaders likely picked this location believing the coalition would not risk an attack that might damage the hospital. After determining the attack could be executed with an acceptable level of collateral damage, Multi-National Division–Baghdad conducted the strike on May 6. Initial media reports claimed that the strike had wounded twenty-eight innocent Iraqis and damaged nine ambulances and forty civilian vehicles. Multi-National Division–Baghdad’s commander had watched the attack on a UAS feed and knew it was false, so he immediately moved to the hospital’s parking lot and brought media to quell the rumors by showing the hospital had not been hit.

JAM militants often took advantage of degraded weather conditions to conduct attacks, knowing the sandstorms grounded airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms. During one such storm, the insurgents made the mistake of thinking that they were free to approach the wall unobserved, but attached US Navy SEAL snipers observed them and killed forty-six enemy fighters that day.

Over time, the brigade had decimated JAM’s fighting capability within Sadr City to such an extent that Sadr felt compelled to sign a ceasefire agreement with the Iraqi government on May 12. The Sadrists largely followed the agreement. In the previous month, they conducted nearly ninety attacks each week. In the week following, they conducted only eight.

On May 15, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment (which had been assigned to assist in the wall construction earlier in the month) and the 821st Engineer Company emplaced the last of the 3,138 T-wall sections at the western corner of Sadr City, marking the end of phase 2, Operation Gold Wall. It is important to note that building the wall was the main effort for 1-68 CAB and 1-2 SCR, but they were also conducting many other combat operations and supporting tasks throughout the operation. With the Gold Wall complete, the brigade had completely walled off Ishbiliyah and Habbibiyah since coalition forces had previously built walls along neighborhoods’ other sides.

This also marked the beginning of the next two phases: reestablishing security within Sadr City and reconstruction efforts within Ishbiliyah and Habbibiyah. With Sadr City walled off and JAM severely degraded, the Iraqi security forces were now ready to enter the city. Yet Iraqi military and coalition leaders were hesitant to send them in, especially given the Iraqis’ reluctance to advance earlier in the battle. To date, the Iraqis had not demonstrated an ability to fight without American support. Disregarding their caution, Maliki ordered the operation to proceed on May 19 or 20.

The Iraqi Army provided six battalions for the operation. They entered from the Ishbiliyah and Habbibiyah neighborhoods, moving northeast along the seven major roads that crossed Sadr City. To almost everyone’s surprise, the Iraqi soldiers were unopposed as they reestablished checkpoints and joint security stations throughout the neighborhood.

Phase 4 aimed to prevent JAM and other militant groups from returning in large numbers and lasted from May 2008 until the January 2009 provincial elections. It involved an intensive counterinsurgency campaign that included a large reconstruction effort within the district to exploit the battle’s success. The brigade lacked the capabilities to orchestrate such a large reconstruction effort, so Multi-National Division–Baghdad assumed responsibility for this phase. The division reassumed control of the attachments that it had delegated to 3-4 BCT during the battle, and the brigade and its subunits returned to their prebattle sectors.

The reconstruction efforts within the district were quite extensive. Multi-National Division–Baghdad’s commander told his subordinates that he wanted them to make Ishbiliyah and Habbibiyah “look like Disneyland,” so that local Iraqi citizens would rally to the government’s side when it was clear their quality of life was much better with the government of Iraq than it had been with JAM.

Coalition forces had established a civil-military operations center earlier in the battle at a joint security station near Sadr City. By June, the center had already initiated two hundred microgrant programs valued at over $400,000 and eighty-three reconstruction projects valued at over $13 million. The center had also processed more than one thousand claims from Sadr City residents and paid out over $70,000. The center also ensured large water breaks within Sadr City were fixed and oversaw the removal of over three hundred tons of debris and rubble. By June, the division had the Jamiliyah Market up and running and had cleared the market of the overflowing river of sewage that had plagued it for years. For the rest of the year, the division helped rebuild the battered neighborhoods.

The total number of casualties for this battle was not as high as other urban battles, but it is important to remember that JAM and other associated militants within Sadr City were only estimated to have two to six thousand fighters at the start of the operation. Official reports listed over seven hundred killed and an unknown number of wounded, so the militia suffered an extremely high percentage of casualties. By contrast, US forces suffered nine killed and ninety-three wounded during the battle. It is unknown how many casualties the Iraqi security forces suffered.

Lessons Learned

At the strategic level, the first lesson from the battle is that more constraints are placed on forces fighting in urban environments than other environments due to concerns about civilian casualties, collateral damage, or the political pressure of subgroups. These prohibitions can hinder military operations, but they arise from legitimate concerns for political leaders trying to maintain power or control within a nation. Prohibitions can occur in any environment, but they are amplified in urban areas due to the large populations that reside there. During the Battle of Sadr City, US forces were prohibited from entering the city but were allowed to conduct limited air strikes after previous earlier prohibitions were lifted. In this case, the limitations stemmed not from a fear of casualties or collateral damage but from the fear of antagonizing Sadr, a powerful political actor within Iraq that could leverage a large political and militant base. Military leaders must understand the pressures that political leaders are under and realize that if they go too far, they risk not only additional limitations but the collapse of the government. At the same time, they cannot be so fearful that they fail to do what is necessary when there is a valid military need. In this battle, 3-4 BCT and Multi-National Division–Baghdad did a masterful job of conducting only the necessary number of strikes into Sadr City. These attacks degraded JAM’s fighting capability while not triggering additional limitations or threatening Malaki’s hold on power. Likewise, the decision to build a wall allowed US forces to accomplish their mission without having to physically enter Sadr City. Militaries are rarely sent to support strong and stable governments—they are deployed to support struggling nations, ones in which leaders have a tenuous grip on power. Thus, they must expect significant prohibitions on their use of force, be prepared for those constraints, and come up with ingenious ways to accomplish the mission—in this particular case, building a wall—within the limitations they face.

At the operational level, one lesson is that when it comes to determining the force requirements for a particular urban operation, it is not a simple equation based on the size of the area and population. Force requirement calculations should factor in elements of the mission, friendly and enemy capabilities, and physical terrain, just to name a few. In urban warfare, some scholars and military practitioners have tried to use a city’s size and its population as the predominant factors driving force requirement calculations, arguing that because “cities are sponges that soak up troops,” operations in them require massive numbers of personnel. Others argue, or at least imply, that operations in megacities should be avoided at all costs based on the size of those cities alone. Yet an enlarged brigade task force augmented with a wide range of supporting arms and a sizeable (though less competent) partner force was able to control a neighborhood of 2.4 million people. The unique force package that evolved to achieve the mission included division- to theater-level intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets as well as a wide range of responsive, precision-strike capabilities from attack helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, UASs, and guided multiple-launch rocket systems. This battle demonstrated that a massive ground force is not always required to conduct effective operations in a densely populated city.

There are numerous tactical lessons that can be learned from this battle. The first is that concrete can be an extremely valuable tool in full-spectrum urban operations. Once complete, the Gold Wall prevented JAM from launching rockets into the Green Zone from nearby neighborhoods. The wall also cut the group’s lines of communication, making it harder to reequip, resupply, and replenish forces within Sadr City. It also degraded the militia’s funding by denying access to nearby markets. JAM forces realized the wall would be devastating to their operations, so they contested the wall with everything they had, but in the end, they were decimated and their attempt to stop the wall’s construction failed. Thus, not only was the concrete wall extremely effective at isolating Sadr City once it was completed, but the sheer threat of the wall caused JAM to destroy itself trying to stop its construction.

Another tactical lesson is the need to understand a partner’s limitations and know how to employ partner forces effectively despite these limitations. It would be easy to say the United States should have done a better job at building a more capable military or police force as opposed to a “checkpoint Army.” While true, that matters little to the tactical commander who is visualizing a way to leverage his or her current assets and capabilities into a plan. While the Iraqi security forces did falter at the start of the battle when they abandoned their checkpoints, they successfully cleared Habbibiyah and Ishbiliyah during phase 1 and reestablished checkpoints and joint security stations throughout Sadr City during phase 3. They often wanted US forces to lead operations because they lacked confidence in their own abilities. But during this battle, US forces lacked the manpower to do everything themselves (or were prohibited within Sadr City), so they had no choice but to rely on their Iraqi partners. In the end, the Iraqis accomplished the necessary tasks, albeit sometimes with strong American coaching and assistance. Too often, units are overly critical of their partner forces—including by using pejorative terms like “checkpoint Army” to describe them—when it is more useful to understand their capabilities and limitations, and then figure out ways they can help partner forces accomplish the tasks they must. In the end, the “checkpoint Army” accomplished its mission and gained a tremendous amount of self-confidence while doing so.

Conclusion

The Battle of Sadr City will take its place as one of the most unique urban battles in modern military history. Since US forces were prohibited from entering Sadr City, 3-4 BCT had the difficult task of neutralizing JAM’s capability without directly pursuing its fighters. Thus, the unit was forced to build a wall to create the same effect. What surprised many was just how effective the wall would become. They knew the wall would limit JAM’s ability to leave Sadr City and conduct rocket attacks from Ishbiliyah and Habbibiyah while it would also limit JAM’s ability to resupply its fighters and reinforce its positions within the city. But no one anticipated the degree to which building the wall would degrade JAM’s capability.

JAM expended its warfighting capability to stop the wall’s construction to such an extent that when the wall was completed, it had almost nothing left. The Americans did not have to expend combat power trying to fight through the city to root out a dug-in defender. Instead, the enemy came to them, which gave 3-4 BCT the upper hand and is one of the reasons why the brigade suffered so few casualties. Yet, it is important to note that this technique might not work against a large conventional force or when a military is compelled to seize a city. Thus, while some of the lessons learned from the fighting in Sadr City can be applied to urban operations more broadly, other lessons may be more limited in their application.

John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirector of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. He served twenty-five years as an infantry soldier, which included two combat tours in Iraq. He is the author of the book Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connections in Modern War and coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare.

Liam Collins, PhD was the founding director of the Modern War Institute at West Point and a Fellow at New America. He is a retired Special Forces colonel with deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, the Horn of Africa, and South America, with multiple combat operations in Fallujah in 2004. He is coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare.

Major Jayson Geroux is an infantry officer with The Royal Canadian Regiment and is currently with the Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre. He has been a fervent student of and has been involved in urban operations training for over two decades. He is an equally passionate military historian and has participated in, planned, executed, and intensively instructed on urban operations and urban warfare history for the past ten years. He has served twenty-nine years in the Canadian Armed Forces, which included operational tours to the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia-Herzegovina) and Afghanistan.

The authors would like to thank retired Colonel Michael Pappal for his reviews, interviews, and guidance for this article.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense, or that of any organization with which the authors are affiliated, including the Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Canadian Department of National Defence.

Image credit: Lt. Col. Steve Stover, US Army