HASWAH, Iraq -- Armed men barged into the police station in the center of town several weeks ago and told officers that they had five minutes to get out before the building blew up. The insurgents then demolished the station in a shooting ball of flame and dust.
The attack was a devastating blow to the fledgling Iraqi security force that had been struggling to keep the peace in Haswah, 25 miles south of Baghdad. Insurgents and criminal gangs had roamed freely through the town for months, terrorizing residents and preying on traffic traveling along Highway 8, which passes through the center of Haswah. The highway is one of the most dangerous stretches of road in Iraq, where insurgents have kidnapped and killed Iraqi security forces at illegal checkpoints and have attacked U.S. military convoys with roadside bombs.
An Iraqi boy sells fish at a market in Haswah, south of Baghdad, as Marines patrol the area.
(Jackie Spinner -- The Washington Post)
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Early last month, a platoon from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit started taking Haswah back. Moving into a building across a garbage-strewn canal from the ruined police station, they established a toehold in the center of the town of 4,000 as part of a larger sweep aimed at breaking the insurgency in the northern end of Babil province.
U.S. military officials said the move into Haswah is an example of how they intend to confront a well-entrenched insurgency made up mostly of local fighters who want to drive out U.S. forces and destabilize the interim Iraqi government in advance of national elections. Unlike the U.S.-led assault on Fallujah, about 50 miles to the northwest, where more than 10,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops backed by artillery and air power were called in to drive off insurgents, the operations in Babil generally involve small-scale raids spread over a large area. In Haswah, fewer than 100 U.S. and Iraqi forces have been involved in house-by-house raids, in which 23 insurgents from the town were captured. The military considered several of them high-value targets.
"We're like a spider web," Col. Ron Johnson, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said. "We shake up the insurgents, watch to see where they settle, who is making contact and then we go after them again. We don't do it all at once. We are doing it over time."
The Marines were routinely attacked when they first moved into Haswah. They were targeted any time they passed through the city, said 1st Lt. Stephen Detrinis, 26, of New Orleans. Roadside bomb attacks were so frequent that Marines ordered refrigerator and large appliance vendors away from the road to prevent insurgents from hiding bombs inside their wares.
Rather than moving on after conducting operations as they had in the past, the Marines are making a visible stand, alongside Iraqi security forces with whom they train and live. Over time, they said, things have quieted down.
"We're going out now on foot and talking to people and taking Iraqi security forces with us," said Detrinis, whose Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, is responsible for Haswah. "We're getting our forces out there and showing them we're here."
On a recent Monday, a Marine foot patrol meandered through a marketplace without incident. Johnson stopped to talk to vendors and bought green-skinned oranges, a tin teapot and two small rugs.
The man who sold him the oranges said he was frustrated by the lack of business. "The people, when they see the Marines they are scared to go shopping," the fruit vendor told Johnson.
Another man selling chickens complained that the Marines had closed the road that runs in front of the market. Johnson promised to open the road the next day, but he told the man who sold him the teapot, "When I open the road back up, don't let the people stop."
Cpl. Christopher Ecker, 26, of Breckenridge County, Ky., said he did not see a single person during a two-hour patrol of the town on a recent Sunday night, which he took as a sign that life was getting back to normal for the residents.
"We moved in, and everything calmed down," Ecker said. "People are doing their everyday things. They are shopping in the markets. At night, it's quiet."
As the Marines patrolled the center of town, groups of young boys approached them, asking for money, their gloves, even the cheap ballpoint pens tucked into their flak jackets. The Marines talked to the boys and exchanged short English phrases until an Iraqi National Guardsman in a black ski mask ushered the children away. "Yalla, goom," he said. Come on, go.
They hurried down the street.
The American and Iraqi forces live together inside the heavily guarded compound that was once the local headquarters for Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. A hand-painted sign left by the Baathists offers Hussein's advice that to be a leader "your people must believe you are a leader."
"Before, it was really bad, and people complained that nobody controlled the streets," an Iraqi special forces soldier said, declining to give his name or say where he was from.
Today, he said, "Haswah is now very quiet and safe. God willing, everything will be changed here. People in Haswah are asking for safety and security."
