Narrator: Peacebuilding can be possible even in the most difficult circumstances. Mahmoudiya, a thriving city in Iraq, had been called the “Gateway to Baghdad.”

But by 2007, violence was at its peak.  Local Sunni and Shia tribes and al-Qaeda insurgents were locked in a vicious cycle of violence and revenge. Many people had been killed; many more forced from their homes. Trade and transportation had been shut down.

The district had become known as the “Triangle of Death.”  U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel William Zemp of the 101st Airborne Division was there.

LTC Zemp: My name is Lieutenant Colonel William Zemp of the United States Army, and I’m an American soldier. The conditions when we got there were horrific…is probably the best way to characterize it. It was not uncommon for people to be beheaded in the streets. The quality of life for the general population was dismal at best. The conditions were changing, though…

Narrator: In the early months of 2007, combined U.S. and Iraqi forces and tribal militia had made progress in tamping down the violence and expelling al-Qaeda.

LTC Zemp: With the change in the strategy and the political backing that we had during the surge, we had the resources, for the first time in that area, to truly bring some sort of stability where the norm could change. The local leaders were courageous enough to come forward at that time….

Narrator: Iraqi leaders asked U.S. forces for support to help them seize this window of opportunity for a peacebuilding initiative.

LTC Zemp: You get to a certain point where the fighting is only going to get you a certain amount of returns.  And everyone is either to the point where they’re defending what they fought for, or they’re trying to get back things that they’ve lost. Up until that time, because of the fighting, we could only engage the interests of each one of the tribal leaders individually. What was missing was the ingredients of a formalized process, to bring the players together…

Narrator: The U.S. military and the Department of State called on the U.S. Institute of Peace for help.  With support from U.S. and Iraqi troops, and working with Iraqi partners, USIP spent four months carefully studying the situation, building relationships, and rebuilding trust between tribal leaders.

The process culminated in a three-day reconciliation conference, which was led by the Network of Iraqi Facilitators, supported and trained by USIP.  

LTC Zemp:  Thirty one sheiks from all the tribes got together at the al-Rashid hotel in Baghdad and worked through the framework for how the conditions would be for communication forward. It was the first time we could have that dialogue away from the stress of the violence that was happening on a daily basis. That ended with the signing of the formal declaration. For the first time, we were able to define what peace could look like.

The reconciliation conference was the result of the hard work of a lot of players: The unit before us was the Second Brigade of the Tenth Mountain Division, and what those soldiers did was remarkable; the Iraqi military was involved; the Iraqi population; the sheikhs themselves were involved; we were also fortunate enough to have…the Department of State and the U.S. Institute of Peace.

There’s considerable value in civilian and military organizations working together in situations like these. There’s extreme value in those relationships…but I would go even as far as to say that they’re necessary to any success that can happen in any of these conflict areas.

Narrator: During its first six months in the Mahmoudiya district, Lieutenant Colonel Zemp's battalion and the Iraqi security forces were engaged almost daily by enemy attacks. In the months after USIP began the reconciliation process, the number of attacks was significantly reduced.

LTC Zemp: In the end, the impact that it had on the Iraqi population was substantial.  We went from it not being uncommon for people within the urban areas to be beheaded, for mass gravesites to be discovered …to the extreme of actually open markets, basically overnight, and then bringing commerce in from the villages surrounding.

If we didn’t have people there to help guide us, we would’ve just seen it through the prism of war and not looked for the opportunities that some of these resolutions could’ve helped with.