| The city of Samarra, which lies south of Tikrit along the Tigris, is also strategically and symbolically important to the Sunni insurgency, evidenced by the February 2006 and June 2007 attacks on the Golden Mosque, a highly revered Shiite shrine in Samarra | The tempo of operations in the cities of the Tigris River Valley north of Baghdad increased in late 2007 during , the follow-on to Phantom Thunder |
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| South of Bayji, Tikrit has traditionally been a stronghold of insurgent activities, as it was the hometown of former president Saddam Hussein | The presence of Coalition Forces along the Tigris River Valley in Salah ad Din province is characterized by an economy of force |
The cities in Salah ad-Din, a predominantly Sunni province, have also formed important nodes on the AQI communication lines.
| AQI has used the areas along the Tigris River Valley as support zones for the insurgency | Hence, the area has remained a hotbed of Sunni insurgent activity |
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| Indeed, AQI has used oil diverted from the refinery as source of funding | To weaken and the Sunni insurgency, coalition forces have sought to disrupt the lines of communication and supply that run throughout northern Iraq |
The upper Tigris River Valley runs from the northern border of Iraq down directly into the center of.
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