That's a good point about the curfew, we worked almost exclusively at night so that is a different situation entirely from what you were doing. But on that note... if you are heading to an OP, it's my opinion that you should be conducting the movement at night if it is in urban terrain regardless. I wouldn't feel comfortable with half the population in a city block seeing me move to my OP.
I agree, and I would say about 75% of our missions were conducted at night/early morning hours. However, the other big issue was at night (during the summer) all the fucking hajis sleeping on the roofs and side walks. Again, it was very METT-TC dependent. We knew some neighborhoods better than others, we knew how the population would act, how they slept, when they ate, which A/O’s had wild packs of dogs that would literally chase your ass, what time frames most people would be working, kids walking back from schools, etc-etc.
Most of the SOF guys in our A/O (Haifa St, and central to S/E Baghdad) used helo’s almost exclusively or were completely low-pro.