The Enemy Comes in From the Cold

Hawija is a mean town, decaying and sullen. Not long ago a sniper hit a soldier from Black Sheep Company while he was standing inside a downtown police station. But the company's commander, 32-year-old Capt. Quinn Eddy of the 87th Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, speaks without malice of the insurgents taking potshots at his men. "A lot are just triggers who get paid," he says. "They're just trying to survive." Before Iraq, Eddy served a tour in Afghanistan. The enemy in Hawija, he says, is "not the same Al Qaeda that you and I know."

Eddy and other 10th Mountain commanders are testing that conviction with a remarkable and little-publicized program. Since early February, insurgents willing to confess their past deeds have been able to win a form of probation—a "no target" promise from U.S. troops. They must turn in their weapons, be fingerprinted, tell all they know about the insurgency and stay clean for eight months. Those who have killed civilians aren't eligible. Those who have attacked uniformed Americans or Iraqis are. So far almost 200 insurgents have signed up.

"It is really tough to sell this idea to [my] soldiers," says Eddy, a soft-spoken Nebraskan with three kids. Nearly two thirds of his brigade has fought in Iraq before, and many have seen friends die. But officers remind their men of the steep drop in violence since Sunni tribals were recruited to serve as a makeshift militia in Hawija. The fighters don't have to admit whether they were once part of the insurgency, but Eddy says he can tell they were by the way they carry their AK-47s. And all that experience has bred a grim pragmatism among the Black Sheep. "We could probably kill here for the next 40 years," says Eddy's battalion commander, Lt. Col. Christopher Vanek. "But where has it gotten us the last four years?"

© 2008