Battling in the Bread Basket

Operation Iron Harvest began in the dark of night, as Blackfoot Company soldiers marched across the bridge leading from their K-Wal combat outpost in Shakarat and headed toward the village of Sinsil some 500 yards away. It could have been another nighttime mission, but in fact was the opening maneuver in a determined U.S. military operation to drive Al Qaeda in Iraq out of Diyala province. In the next few hours the Americans would narrowly escape an IED attack, face sniper fire and establish a beachhead for the expected final onslaught on Al Qaeda.

Hounded from Anbar province and other hiding places, the insurgents have descended on their longtime stronghold of Diyala to wage a murderous stealth effort built around IED detonations and high-profile suicide and bombing attacks. But the U.S. forces believe they are slowly beating them back and have deployed some 24,000 U.S. troops and 50,000 Iraqi Army soldiers to take part in the four-province operation. "We want to put a stake in [them] and be done with it," says Brig. Gen. James Boozer, assistant commander in chief of Multinational Division-North, in a briefing before the launch.

Iron Harvest's main thrust is here in the Diyala River Valley bread basket, a fertile area in the north of the province at the foot of the Hamrin Mountains where much of the country's produce—mainly oranges and palm dates—is grown. The objective of the days-long, four-battalion operation is to kill or evict an estimated 200 Qaeda operatives who have sought refuge in the bread basket, planning and executing their missions from there. "We want to either take them out or force reconciliation," says Boozer.

Just before midnight Monday, the 1st and 3rd platoons of Blackfoot Company, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, led off the effort, with the 2nd platoon taking a rear defensive position. Walking briskly under a clear sky that twinkles with stars, the approximately 80 men (and one woman) move quickly to investigate homes and secure the area to allow Stryker personnel carriers and road-clearance vehicles to advance.

At the first house a woman sat on the floor clutching a blanket as the 3rd platoon's leaders, Capt. Travis Batty and Sgt. John Shanyfelt, arrived. A man wearing a long traditional robe cowered in another room; an Iraqi interpreter incongruously named Peter translated instructions as a cigarette burned dully in his left hand. This was the first mission in a planned series called "bounding overwatch," in which a squad takes over a position by fire and another squad goes through it and seizes another position. To a civilian it sounds a good deal like leapfrogging.

At the second house Batty, Blackfoot Company First Sgt. Ken Brantley and others questioned the patriarch at length, as his family sat on the floor swaddled in blankets to ward off the cold. The temperature had dropped to 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and the soldiers huddled in a room around a kerosene heater as they waited to move on to the next objective. The Iraqi man eagerly answered every question in a torrent of words: Yes, Al Qaeda has many cadres in the area. No, he does not support the terrorists. Yes, he'd be interested in joining a Concerned Local Citizens (CLC) group if one were founded. And perhaps most significantly tonight: Yes, he had heard something about the Americans' upcoming operation and yes, he believes Al Qaeda also was aware of it. They had been tipped off by Iraqi Army elements, he said. Batty was neither dismayed nor surprised. Leakage is not atypical; the important thing is that Al Qaeda not know specifics of the overall campaign.