In Baqoubah, in the
Iraqi province of Diyala, unpleasant questions get answered very
quickly. There is a startling pop, and then: 'Who fired that
shot? Did you fire that shot?'
One of the American
soldiers of Bravo Company of the 1/12 Cavalry is shouting at the
accompanying Iraqi army troops, hoping against hope, it appears,
that a weapon has been accidentally discharged. We are standing
in a narrow dirt street lined with single-storey houses. In
places sewage has pooled in oily green puddles on the road's
surface and there is a nasty smell.
The tense soldiers had been advancing in a column down the
street, hugging the walls on either side, while the Iraqi troops
tried to engage householders in conversation, handing out
'tip-off' cards with numbers to call anonymously with
information on suspected terrorists and asking for the home of
the mayor of Burhiz. The welcome is almost friendly at first.
People come out. But no one strays far from the doors of their
homes.
A second shot, closer
and sharper in tone. It was no accident but sniper fire that
quickly turns into something more dangerous still as the
soldiers advance, beginning to jog towards the source of the
shooting. The first group bunch and duck behind an Iraqi Humvee
for cover, as the firing intensifies into repeated blasts. Fifty
or so metres down the road, at a garbage-strewn crossroads, it
is suddenly clear that they have been led towards a crossfire
and, perhaps, a trap.
Some of the soldiers are
now concerned they are being drawn towards a bomb, or bombs,
down the alley to their right, where a gunman or gunmen appear
to be. But of more immediate concern is the stream of AK-47 fire
being poured towards them from somewhere near a little mosque,
sending fragments of wall flying as the soldiers sprint for
better positions and try to communicate with the Iraqi army
using hand signals.
The soldiers take
positions under cover of walls at the corners of the junction,
bobbing out heads to look and fire. This close, the bullets are
audible where we are crouching in the dirt, viciously sucking at
the air above that is thick with the yellow mist of pulverised
brick dust, settling quickly on helmets and cameras and clothes.
A cigarette is lit and passed around and greedily inhaled.
This is how war is in
Baqoubah and in Diyala province: a jolting, sweaty and random
series of ragged engagements. The enemy is often unseen, and it
is not even clear to which of the half-dozen or so jihadist and
Sunni nationalist groups that operate in this area they might
belong.
A mission that started,
barely minutes before, as a 'hearts and minds' exercise in
persuading the residents of one of this violent city's most
dangerous neighbourhoods that US troops are here to help, has
switched into a 10-minute gun battle that ends only with the
arrival of an armed Bradley vehicle and the firing of its 25mm
gun, which shakes the ground and fills the air with a sour
taste.
While the multinational
forces have found themselves on the sidelines of the nasty
sectarian civil war unfolding in Baghdad, 48 kilometres (about
30 miles) to the south, in Baqoubah and Diyala province a
different kind of war is under way.
There is sectarian
killing, yes. And ethnic cleansing too. But as the two
communities have separated, the murder rates have dropped. In
the words of one local Shia sheikh, neither side can find anyone
left to kill. But the war in Diyala, and Baqoubah in particular,
is a different kind of war to Baghdad. And it is this war out in
the hinterland that will define Iraq's trajectory as much as the
capital's insidious death squads and suicide 'spectaculars'.
The conflict here has
thrown US troops directly into an increasingly determined
guerrilla war, reflected in American casualty figures. For in
Diyala, more than anywhere else in Iraq today, US soldiers are
the main targets. None is more painfully aware of this than the
soldiers of the 1/12th.
In nine days, nine of
their colleagues have been killed in combat in neighbourhoods
such as this - four of them only the day before, in two
incidents in which their heavily armoured vehicles were torn
apart by bombs. Three others died when a booby-trapped house
that they entered was collapsed on top of them.
Since arriving in late
autumn, the 900-strong 1st Battalion has lost 17 men in action,
and 63 have been so badly wounded they will not return. As US
troops have pushed aggressively to retake the initiative in
Diyala - re-entering former no-go areas and attacking a camp
suspected of having links to al-Qaeda - nationalist insurgents
and al-Qaeda terrorists have hit back hard, planting bombs and
laying ambushes.
All this has created a
tension you can see in the soldiers' faces as they patrol the
roads, scanning for roadside bombs on routes that their
commanders have deemed, in some instances, too dangerous even
for armoured Humvees to traverse. Their faces are drawn and
edgy, counting off metres and kilometres, minutes and hours,
until their return to the relative safety of their home base.
While the eyes of the
world's media have been focused on Baghdad, it is Diyala that
has emerged as the proving ground for whether the US can succeed
in turning round Iraq. For it is here that the
counter-insurgency strategy of the new commander of US forces in
Iraq, General David Petraeus, is being put to its first test,
and being bitterly resisted. His preferred policy of 'clear,
hold and build' - coupled with the placement of small units of
US soldiers in support of Iraqi forces in some of the most
dangerous areas - has quickly emerged, in this province of just
over a million, as a deadly game of snakes and ladders, where
'build' turns back to 'clear' in the space of a heartbeat.
And here in Diyala there
can be no illusions about the nature of the Iraqi war. Its
landscape of canals and fields and groves of dates and oranges,
with strategic roads that connect both Sunni and Shia armed
groups with their strongholds in Baghdad, is patrolled by tanks
and Bradley fighting vehicles. The sky is sectored by Apache
helicopters and jets. US and insurgent mortars trade fire across
the fields.
The problems of the US
military here have been exacerbated, according to some accounts,
by the security operation in Baghdad that was supposed to mark
the beginning of the fight to wrest back control from the gunmen
on the streets. For an unforeseen consequence of the long
flagged-up Baghdad security plan has been to give forewarning to
insurgent and al-Qaeda-linked groups in the city, who have
responded by moving back to the countryside, Diyala in
particular.
When we get back to
their 'outpost' - the half-ruined police station in Burhiz - the
men of Bravo who have not accompanied the mission are firing
their mortars. While their colleagues were fighting in the
street, four mortar rounds have been fired towards the company
headquarters, landing outside of the wall. Now they are
returning fire, their own mortars detonating in an area of open
ground nearby, suggesting how close the attackers had come.
Not all of the incoming
mortars miss. In places the concrete of the outpost has been
splashed by detonations. Regular sniper fire from the south and
east means that going outside, even for a call of nature, is
done quickly, in helmet and body armour.
Six weeks ago this
building was deserted. The police station and the neighbouring
army post were overrun on 23 December by insurgent fighters more
heavily armed than the members of the Iraqi security forces. A
bomb was planted in the police station, collapsing half of the
structure.
Now, the half-ruined
outpost has been permanently re-occupied by US troops who rough
it in its austere surroundings. And with US soldiers back in
Burhiz, the Iraqi army and police have returned, setting the
scene for a struggle to control these impoverished
neighbourhoods close to the Diyala River.
Sitting in the ruined
police station after the gun battle, 26-year-old Lieutenant
Leonard Pijpaert describes the present battle for Burhiz and
Baqoubah as a fight for influence with 'al Qaeda types'. 'It is
frustrating,' he says. 'When we try to do things, to make things
better, they resort to hit-and-run tactics.'
He believes the aim of
engagements like that earlier in the day is as much about
forcing the Americans to fight in civilian areas, making them
appear the aggressors, as to kill them. 'The fact that we go
into these neighbourhoods to try to show that we only fire our
weapons when attacked is threatening to the terrorists. Their
control over people's minds is based on demonstrating that the
US is bad. So what we are working to achieve is to put the Iraqi
army in the lead. At the moment we stay very close by. But they
do the house searches and eventually the aim is to separate, to
be there for them only if they need us.'
Later, Bravo Company's
Captain Peter Chapman says: 'It is better to talk than to shoot
in the long run. It is not for us to solve the problems. But we
found ourselves talking less and less and shooting more and
more, and we are now trying to reverse that in Burhiz.'
That is the paradox of
what the 1/12th are being asked to achieve: to fight a hot and
worsening war while simultaneously attempting to remove the
conditions for that war. To kill the 'bad guys' in communities,
while persuading those people's neighbours and friends that they
are better off with the American plan than the 'terrorist
agenda'.
It is a paradox
recognised by these soldiers. 'The insurgency,' says Sergeant
Otto Daniels emphatically, 'cannot survive without the consent
of the people.'
Which leaves the
question of how that consent is 'leveraged' - in the words of
one officer - away from violence towards a consensual peace
process. For if it is ever to succeed as it has been conceived,
it would surely require more patience than the present public
and political mood has appetite for.
'There is a tendency in
the First World,' says battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel
Morris Goins, 'to expect things to happen yesterday. It takes
time. It is not going to get done yesterday here. If that is how
it has been framed here, well, it is not going to happen
overnight.'
This is the message he
has been trying to deliver not just to Iraqis but to his own
men, as he has visited his companies in the last few days
following the run of casualties. He wants to persuade his men
that this is a mission that is worthwhile. He admits, however,
that while he believes his mission needs time, he will be in
Iraq only until the 'President decides to pull us out'.
Which brings us back to
the real lesson of last week's messy little engagement in Burhiz:
not simply that those firing on the men of Bravo Company would
like to kill Americans - which they would - but that they also
succeed by simply by persuading the US soldiers to return heavy
fire in a civilian neighbourhood. In doing so, it allows them to
maintain the mindset that the US soldiers are invaders in Iraq
to 'kill', not build, and they are the real 'defenders'.
For in the end it is a
battle not about victories and territory, but people's minds.
'If that is the battlefield,' says Colonel Goins, 'then we have
to leverage it in another way. If I see a terrorist in a
building next to a school, I know I can't level that building,
which would be the easiest thing to do. So if I can't drop a
bomb on you, my message to the terrorist is that I am going to
find ways to take away your support.'
He mentions handing out
soft toys to local kids and projects. 'We're spending millions
of dollars to improve the lives of people here. When they look
around I want them to ask themselves, "What have al-Qaeda
built?" The answer is, nothing. My message then to that
terrorist in that building is this: "I'm going to kill you with
a Beanie Baby."
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