By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 26, 2003; Page A27

TIKRIT, Iraq -- Striking fast on intelligence coaxed from an Iraqi detainee, U.S. soldiers kicked down the door of a home in a wealthy neighborhood and grabbed the man they were after as he scooted out the back door.

The troops herded a dozen terrified women and children into a courtyard just as a dinner was being served and searched the spacious residence for weapons, although the "targeted individual," as one soldier called him, was arrested only for what he might know.

"We're going to see what we can get out of him," Lt. Col. David J. Poirier, commander of the 720th Military Police Battalion, said of the man, a prominent member of former president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. "He's from a family that's been enabling the resistance and enabling the harboring of Saddam. His brother is an organizer of the resistance -- a very, very key organizer."

With raids like the one here last week and other aggressive tactics, the U.S. military is pressing the attack against a stubborn campaign of armed resistance here in the area north of Baghdad that was home to Hussein and his clan. It is a nasty fight that pits Task Force Iron Horse headed by the 4th Infantry Division, the most high-tech component of the U.S. Army, against a low-tech adversary made up of "42-inch waistband guys" who hand out cash to teenage shooters and garage bombmakers, as Maj. Troy Smith, executive officer of the division's 1st Brigade, put it in a recent interview.

The 1st Brigade uses $5.9 million Abrams tanks and $3.1 million Bradley Fighting Vehicles to spot and help defuse $25 homemade bombs laid along roadsides by an enemy that, six months after Hussein's ouster, continues to enjoy considerable popular support and substantial financing. On Saturday, for example, Iraqi fighters used a simple rocket-propelled grenade to shoot down a $13 million Black Hawk helicopter near Tikrit.

Military police and reconnaissance teams, meanwhile, patrol with night-vision technology to stop the Iraqis from planting roadside bombs after sundown. And intelligence gleaned from Iraqi informants and the Iraqi police trigger raids, day and night, on suspected weapons caches, bombmaking factories and resistance organizers.

Col. James B. Hickey, who left a yearlong program at Georgetown University in June to take command of the brigade, said such operations have "disrupted whatever organization they may have had. We have killed or captured a lot of their low-level shooters -- and it is our estimation that they are having a very hard time finding young people to continue that."

But Hickey said those loyal to Hussein's deposed government will keep fighting for some time. While his brigade must secure an area that includes four provincial cities with a population of about 230,000, Hickey said, all the resistance must do is strike sporadically with homemade bombs and ambushes to keep hope alive among the faithful.

"The dilemma for the enemy is how to remain politically relevant, if you will," Hickey said, "without being annihilated militarily."

Over the past month, resistance fighters have killed 13 soldiers from the 4th Infantry and associated units and wounded at least that many. Beginning with a sophisticated ambush near Al Ouja on Sept. 18 in which three Americans soldiers died and two were wounded, Iraqi fighters have staged numerous attacks with homemade bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms. Significantly, the Iraqis have twice penetrated a Bradley, killing a soldier inside one of the Army's premier armored troop carriers with a mine and a soldier inside another with a rocket-propelled grenade.

Thundering down Highway 1 at 40 mph in a 25-ton Bradley, 1st Lt. Ford Lannan, a 25-year-old West Point graduate, scanned the roadside for homemade bombs while his gunner, Staff Sgt. Timothy Jones, 31, peered through its thermal sight, picking up heat emissions from vehicles and people thousands of yards away.

Only the vehicle's driver kept his eyes glued to the road. "Because if there's an [improvised explosive device] in the dirt, I could hit it," said Spec. Irvin Dervishi, 21, a recent immigrant to the United States from Tirana, Albania.

In the Baiji area about 25 miles north of Tikrit, where Lannan's crew is operating, Bradleys have been confined to paved roads since Oct. 12, when a powerful antitank mine exploded under one of the tracked behemoths on a dirt road northwest of the city. The driver, Spec. James E. Powell, was killed instantly. Lannan was platoon leader.

Lannan said that even as the Iraqis increase their use of mines and roadside bombs -- buried in the dirt, hidden under trash, even stuffed inside dead animals -- the armored patrols are already making their tactics less effective than they would be against trucks or Humvees. "And when they switch back to direct-fire engagements, they get toasted," Lannan said. "That's the fight that we like. That's the fight that we win."

The following morning, Sgt. Steve Sanders, 27, of Centralia, Ill., led an eight-man patrol through Baiji's crowded main marketplace, where merchants sold fresh vegetables and carpets.

Sanders's men were a cross section of America. They came from seven states stretching from New York to North Dakota. Their average age was 23. None spoke more than a word or two of Arabic. Small children ran after them and smiled. But it was almost as though they were invisible to adults in the market. This, Sanders said, was progress: When they arrived in the spring, adults would clear out from the street as they approached.

"They just didn't know whether we were there to help them, or just cut loose and start destroying the city," Sanders said.

"I think the majority of them like us," said Andrew Christy, 22, of Warren, Ohio. "They're coming around to the American way, and we're coming around to the Iraqi way. It's coming together."

Their commander, Lt. Col. Larry "Pepper" Jackson, ordered his troops, tanks and Bradleys back into the city in force after a riot erupted in Baiji this month. The cause of the riot was never determined, but afterward pro-Saddam fliers quickly went up in shop windows and a crowd began stoning trucks moving down Highway 1. One fuel truck crashed and was set ablaze by a mob of hundreds.

Jackson said the riot may have been instigated by some local sheiks. "And the police were nowhere," Jackson told Mezhir Taha Ghaman, the Iraqi police commander for Salahuddin province. "It's a ticking time bomb up there. It shouldn't take tanks to break up a demonstration when you've got police. When I ask them who is responsible for laying mines, they have no idea."

Jackson and Mezhir, a former major general in the Iraqi army, met in Mezhir's office in Tikrit last week to discuss Baiji's police chief. While Jackson recently installed a former Baathist after consultation with local sheiks, he seemed resigned to Mezhir making a change and putting his own man in the job.

"I want somebody that I can work with," Jackson told Mezhir. "Because the problem is right now, if something happens downtown, without effective police to stop it, you run the risk of a lot of innocent folks getting hurt in a melee."

Poirier, the MP commander, joined Jackson in Mezhir's office. He urged his colleague to consider Mezhir's man, explaining that the Iraqi has been installing strong and independent chiefs throughout the province. Even some former police officers from Tikrit, serving on the new force, Poirier said, are starting to show initiative in response to aggressive actions by the U.S. military.

Five hours later, Poirier was leading the raid on the Baathist's home, directly across Highway 1 from the MP base. "We kind of caught him right under our noses here," he said.

The tip that led to the raid came from an Iraqi police informant, he said, although Poirier's unit had learned the man's address from a second source earlier in the day. Still, he took the Iraqi informant with him on the raid and made him point out the correct house, as a test. "He was right on the money," said Poirier, who would not release the Baathist's name for security reasons.

The 4th Infantry has been out in force in this area south of Tikrit since the attack on a command post near Al Ouja. The 4th Infantry responded with a counterattack employing ground forces and Apache helicopter gunships, killing numerous fighters in several raids. Since then, enemy activity south of Tikrit has dropped to almost zero.

"Are they rebuilding cells in the same area? I don't know," said Smith, the 1st Brigade's executive officer. "There's money coming in from somewhere to pay these individuals."

Poirier said commanders now believe they are "starting to see more of the organizers getting involved in offensive operations," which they take as a sign that the resistance is running out of shooters and starting to lose a war of attrition.

Col. Hickey, the 1st Brigade commander, said they are "going into their bloodline to take us on now," relying on prominent members of families that once made up Hussein's security forces.

When will the resistance end? Hickey shrugged. Nobody knows.

"Right now, I feel confident we're turning the corner," he said. "I can show you the trends. You can say I'm not using the right metrics. But I'm here to tell you, the enemy is just not having a good day."