AJC.com > Iraq coverage > Blog > Archives > 2005 > September > 18
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Security hangs on the grapevine
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — Capt. Michael Cannon leapt out of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and walked over to inspect the bomb damage by the side of the road.
The blast from a makeshift bomb, detonated in broad daylight the day before as 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers were patrolling in southwest Baghdad, left a crater large enough to swallow a small car.
“I think it’s something homemade. I don’t see any shrapnel,” Cannon said.
No one was hurt in the incident, but Cannon was determined to find out who had planted the potentially deadly bomb.
After almost four months on the ground in Iraq, the 48th’s infantry soldiers have become intimately acquainted with the areas in which they operate. The soldiers who patrol the highways and villages west of the Baghdad airport know the more dangerous routes from the safer ones.
But geography is often not enough, given the random nature of the insurgency in Iraq.
Because there is little defense against some enemy tactics, the key, say soldiers, is to flush out insurgents before they can plant deadly bombs in roads, blow themselves up at checkpoints or launch rocket attacks and mortar rounds into U.S. camps.
Of the 18 brigade soldiers who have been killed in Iraq, 14 died in bombings that have become leading killers of American soldiers here.
After inspecting the damage, Cannon walked to a small shop at an intersection just a few feet away. He was certain the shopkeeper Najeeb, who lives nearby, would know something about the bomb.
At the shop, Cannon found a middle-aged man dressed in a traditional white dishdasha leaning on metal crutches. He knew nothing, he said, looking away from Cannon.
“Do you know where Najeeb is?” asked Cannon, commander of Alpha Company of the 121st Infantry Regiment’s 1st Battalion.
Silence fell over the simple shop, which had three outdoor bins filled with half-rotten potatoes, tomatoes and onions. A young boy pointed to the woman keeping the shop. “Najeeb is my father. He is not here,” he said. “That’s my mother.”
The woman’s name was Badriyah. She said she heard the loud noise from the explosion, but didn’t know anything else.
“I swear to God I don’t know anything,” she told Cannon through an interpreter. “I am sure they put the bomb in at night.”
Cannon was convinced that Badriyah and Najeeb were keeping secrets. “There’s no way someone could put something in the ground 20 meters from Najeeb’s store and [they] not know about it,” Cannon said.
The key to getting information, he added, is working with the Iraqi people. “But most people are scared that insurgents will kill them if they are seen talking to Americans.”
On a recent raid in Sadr Yusufiyah near the banks of the Euphrates River, 2nd Lt. Michael Persley faced the same frustrations as Cannon did at the roadside shop.
After a swift 10-minute ride from Camp Striker, a Black Hawk helicopter swooped down into a field behind a one-story house that had come under suspicion. Persley led soldiers of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, on house-to-house searches in the middle of the night.
No one confessed to knowing the man Persley was seeking. After several rounds of questioning, Persley decided to detain a man who knew a secondary suspect.
The cat-and-mouse game between American soldiers and insurgents in Iraq might seem old hat to Persley, who has been a police officer in Albany for 13 years. But nothing, not even his crime-fighting experience, can prepare a soldier for the violence in Iraq, he said.
“Yes, we know our area better. But people stay away from us,” Persley said. “We don’t really get to know them very well. We’re like the Goliath here. The insurgents consider themselves David.”
Persley said it would help to have more interaction with residents, just like police officers who hang out in their neighborhoods at home. But in this nation gripped with fear, no one trusts anyone any more.
“Back home, people may threaten you for talking to the police, but here, if you talk today to an American soldier, tomorrow, you might end up dead,” Persley said.
Cannon said, ultimately, building trust is essential for U.S. security efforts.
“Seeing people over and over again is crucial,” he said.
Cannon tries to meet with villagers when he is out on patrol.
In Al Radwaniyah, he sat down for tea with Abbas Hamza, a village elder.
Hamza gave Cannon his account of the situation in Iraq; that his nation needs a single governing entity, whether it be Sunni, Shiite or Kurd.
“It doesn’t matter who will be president of Iraq,” Hamza said, taking a long drag of his Miami cigarette. “The most important thing is for my people to feel safe. We can’t even go into Baghdad when we want because we don’t feel safe.”
Cannon had met twice before with Hamza. In this third, more revealing conversation, Hamza told Cannon about recent attacks in his village.
“I’m starting to develop a friendship with him,” Cannon said. “The past two times, he didn’t mention the anti-Iraqi forces. This time he began to open up.”
Cannon thought he was developing the same relationship with Najeeb, the store owner.
“I told him I held him responsible for that area,” Cannon said. “The first few times, he had remained silent. But now he’s started to divulge information.”
Cannon vowed to return to the shop to find Najeeb.
In the meantime, he left Najeeb’s wife with a stern warning.
“I find it hard to believe you were here and you didn’t notice anything,” Cannon told her. “If my men die and I think that Najeeb knows about it, I will bulldoze this store. One more bomb in this area, and your store is gone.”
Heartache at Dublin home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
3 a.m. calls from her husband in Iraq bring comfort, and concern to Belinda Stanley. STORY HERE.
