Battling in the Bread Basket

In the road, heavy vehicles that will look for and disable or explode the dreaded roadside bombs known as IEDs (improvised explosive devices) rumbled slowly along, then stopped as the Blackfoot warriors resumed their march on Sinsil. It was a risky and unpredictable venture, as each footstep in the half light could trigger an explosion and lead to disaster. Soldiers can trip crush wires on the ground that could detonate an explosive—"victim-operated IEDs," Shanyfelt says. But the soldiers arrived safely at their major objective, a large house on Middle Road that overlooks a canal, a grove thick with palm trees and three roads, one of which leads to the Qaeda redoubt of Hembis. They moved quickly through the rambling building, checking rooms and staking out strategic positions on the flat rooftop.

They gathered the occupants: five women, four children, an older man with cataracts and a younger man, clad in a leather bomber jacket and obviously ill. Despite orders to sit down, one old woman, wearing a shapeless crimson burqa, walked confusedly toward the soldiers—a potentially dangerous lapse at a time when the number of female suicide bombers is on the rise and every move therefore suspicious. Eventually she joined her family squatting on the decorative rug. Meanwhile, the soldiers had come to suspect that the younger man, Maad Kalaf Darweesh, was Al Qaeda. "The house is too large, too nice and this area too bad," said Brantley. "And he speaks fluent English. Come on."

Under intense questioning Darweesh told the soldiers there were many IEDS planted nearby but that he didn't know where they were. He said Qaeda operatives were all over Sinsil and that they often wore masks, but they had abandoned their old black uniforms to better blend in with the citizenry when U.S. forces arrived. He said the insurgents had established a curfew that runs from 5:30 p.m. to 8 a.m., and he said local militias would like to become CLCs but are scared. He coughed incessantly and within a half-hour was under heavy blankets and receiving an antibiotics drip administered by a platoon medic. Brantley had interviewed a neighbor, and Darweesh's story checked out.

Just then a loud blast from outside rattled the house and soldiers rushed out to find that an IED had exploded in the road, damaging a Buffalo road clearance vehicle. "I walked right on that spot just before the Buffalo came along," said Sgt. Rod Kern. The men crisscrossed the road looking for insurgents and the apparatus that set off the device. They found remnants of wiring and charges, but no Al Qaeda bad guys. No one was hurt, but the Buffalo lost its brakes and was out of commission. Operation Iron Harvest was delayed while the military rushed a new Buffalo from Warhorse, a U.S. military camp on the outskirts of Baqubah, about 45 miles northeast of Baghdad.

By then it was daylight, and the Blackfoot soldiers relaxed somewhat, some soaking up the sun in the spacious garden. But they scrambled again when a sniper started spraying the house with gunfire. No one was hurt, and the soldiers fired a few retaliatory mortar rounds into the neighboring palm groves.

Gen. Boozer soon arrived to assess the first stage of Iron Harvest, which is part of a wider offensive called Operation Phantom Phoenix. "It was very quiet last night," he said. "I thought we'd have a little more contact than this, quite frankly, but it never goes as expected. Our sense is that they're watching us. This is not a force that's going to go toe to toe with us. They have all the time in the world. This will be a long, slow, laborious process. They will wait us out and lure us in."