By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 19 February 2006
SAMARRA, IRAQ - The gunfight by the Tigris River was over. It was time to retrieve the bodies.
Staff Sgt. Cortez Powell looked at the shredded jaw of a dead man whom he'd shot in the face when insurgents ambushed an American patrol in a blind of reeds.
Five other soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division scrambled down, pulled two of the insurgents' bodies from the reeds and dragged them through the mud.
"Strap those ... to the hood like a deer," said Staff Sgt. James Robinson, 25, of Hughes, Ark.
The soldiers heaved the two bodies onto the hood of a Humvee and tied them down with a cord. The dead insurgents' legs and arms flapped in the air as the Humvee rumbled along.
Iraqi families stood in front of the surrounding houses. They watched the corpses ride by and glared at the American soldiers.
Fifteen months earlier, when the 1st Infantry Division sent some 5,000 Iraqi and U.S. soldiers to retake Samarra from Sunni Muslim insurgents, it was a test of the American occupation's ability not only to pacify but also to rebuild a part of Iraq dominated by the country's minority Sunnis.
Driving a wedge More than a year later, American troops still are battling insurgents in Samarra. Bloodshed is driving a wedge between the Iraqis who live there and the U.S. troops who are trying to keep order.
Violence, police corruption and the blurry lines of guerrilla warfare are clouding any hopes of victory.
"It's apocalyptic out there. Life has definitely gotten worse for" Iraqis, said Maj. Curtis Strange, 36, of Mobile, Ala., who works with Iraqi troops in Samarra. "You see Samarra and you almost want to build a new city and move all these people there."
Soldiers such as Sgt. Powell desperately want to reach out to the community, but they're mired in daily skirmishes. Residents have fled, and a 7-mile-long, 5-foot-high earthen wall that U.S. soldiers built around the city last August has failed to keep out the insurgents.
Many of the American troops who patrol the city say they don't see much hope for Samarra. Some officers privately worry that the city will fall to insurgents as American troops withdraw.
A lack of will "Samarra is one example of many towns in Iraq that are barely functioning," said Capt. Ryan Edwards, 31, of Plain City, Ohio, who majored in Middle Eastern studies at West Point. "What the insurgents know is that we lack the will to go after them. It's not the American Army that lacks the will; it's the American people and their leadership."
Most of Iraq, including its Shiite Muslim and Kurdish areas, is relatively free of the kind of violence seen in Samarra.
Yet a failure to secure Samarra and other Sunni areas in central and western Iraq - where some 85 percent of the daily insurgent attacks take place - would threaten the unity of the nation and could determine the Bush administration's legacy in Iraq.
The dirt wall that the Americans built around Samarra left three checkpoints where residents can enter after they show identification and submit to searches.
After the wall went up, the city's population fell from about 200,000 to about 90,000, according to U.S. military officials.
The wall cut insurgent attacks in Samarra roughly in half, to eight to 10 a day. But they're increasing again. Eight roadside bombs exploded in Samarra in October; at least 15 blew up in January.
"The textbook answer is to build infrastructure," said Capt. Scott Brannon, who commands Bravo Company, which oversees Samarra. "But what happens with the contracts is that we're funding the AIF," or anti-Iraqi forces - the insurgency.
In the middle of town, in an abandoned schoolhouse, Sgt. Powell, 28, of Columbia, Mo., lives with his fellow soldiers from the 2nd platoon of Bravo Company in the 101st Airborne's storied Rakkasan Brigade.
A name is painted on the door to the company's tactical operations center: the Alamo.
One afternoon, 1st Lt. Dennis Call and his men of the 2nd platoon were planning an afternoon "hearts and minds" foot patrol to hand out soccer balls to local kids.
As Call sat in the schoolhouse, preparing to go out, he heard two bursts from the .50-caliber machine gun on the roof.
Specialist Michael Pena, a beefy 21-year-old from Port Isabel, Texas, had opened fire.
Walked into `kill zone' Pena had shot an unarmed Iraqi man who had walked past the signs that mark the 200-yard "disable zone" that surrounds the Alamo and into the 100-yard "kill zone" around the base. The Army had forced residents to leave the houses last year to create the security perimeter.
Looking at the man splayed on the ground, Call asked his medic, Spc. Patrick McCreery, "What the ... was he doing?"
McCreery didn't answer. The man's internal organs were hanging out of his side, and his blood was pouring across the ground. He was conscious and groaning.
Down the street, "Allahu Akbar" - God is great - wafted down from a minaret's speakers.
The man looked up at the sky as he heard the words. He repeated the phrase "Oh God. Oh God. Oh God."
He looked at McCreery and raised his finger toward the house in front of him.
"This my house," he said in broken English.
Looking into the dying man's eyes, the medic said, "Haji, haji, look at me," using the title reserved for older Muslim men who presumably have gone on Hajj - pilgrimage - to Mecca.
"Why? Why?" asked the man.
"Haji, I don't know," said McCreery.
An Iraqi ambulance pulled up and the Humvees followed the man to the hospital they'd raided a few days earlier.
The soldiers filed in and watched as the man died.
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Citation: Tom Lasseter. "Sides blur for U.S. troops trying to secure Samarra," Knight Ridder Newspapers, 19 February 2006.
Original URL: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/iraq/13880446.htm
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