In Iraqi Swing City, Hope vs. Defiance

Anger at Americans

One morning this week, a company of American troops arrived in Ishaqi, a garbage-strewn Sunni Arab town near Balad where U.S. forces routinely come under attack. The aim of the operation was to sweep Ishaqi of insurgents ahead of Saturday's vote, which was to be held in a downtown school.

Iraqis were to take the lead, but the Americans arrived unannounced out of concern, U.S. commanders said, that insurgents had infiltrated army and police units. Once the operation began, the town was sealed off; no one was allowed in or out until the Iraqi soldiers, instructed by the Americans, had searched every block, a process that took about three hours. Residents trying to exit Ishaqi were stopped by U.S. soldiers holding M-16 assault rifles. Also blocking their path was a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, its heavy machine gun pointed at the city.

Capt. Jake Dalton, 28, a good-natured West Point graduate from Topeka, Kan., ordered the Iraqi forces to search a wide sandstone house. Knocking on the steel gate, American and Iraqi troops swept into a courtyard where two small girls were playing. One burst into tears and cowered, terrified, behind a tree. The Americans instructed the Iraqi soldiers to gather the rest of the family, all women and children, in one downstairs room while searching the rest of the house.

"They usually respond much better to Iraqi forces coming in," Dalton said.

His uniform drenched with sweat beneath his bulletproof vest, Dalton moved farther down the street, cheerfully greeting children and shopkeepers who stood by tentatively in the blistering heat. "How's it going there, partner?" he said to a boy holding a toy cell phone. He asked some of the Iraqi men whether they planned to vote and where.

"Al-Amil will be good to vote," Dalton assured one man who said he planned to cast his ballot at a polling site near Ishaqi that had been bombed the night before.

"There are people who see the Americans saying go vote, and they'll refuse to vote just for that reason," Mishhin, the doctor from Ishaqi, said the next day. "One-third of the people will refuse to vote simply because the Americans told them to."

The face of the American occupation is most aggressive in Sunni Arab towns and cities like Ishaqi, where insurgents blend seamlessly into the sympathetic populace and raids, arrests and clashes are commonplace. Two years on, the resentments have gained their own momentum, deepening a divide that seems unbridgeable, regardless of intentions. For Sunnis, the fight here is often cast in existential terms: Whatever their pledges, the Americans are determined to deprive the Sunnis of their wealth, power and dignity.

"Here, they only hate the Americans," said Latif Feisal Jannabi, 28, a tribal leader with a degree in English. "Really, when I see them, I get angry. They killed my relatives, arrested my friends, and they destroyed our ambitions. Iraq is the best in the entire world -- in my eyes, at least -- and the Americans have destroyed everything."

Last week, Jannabi's cousin, 22-year-old Ahmed Samarrai, was arrested in his village of Aziz al-Balad and, Jannabi believes, sent to Tikrit. Since 2003, U.S. forces have detained, then released, six of his eight brothers, he said. Jannabi estimated that more than 300 of the village's 3,000 residents have spent at least some time in jail.

"We'll continue to live with our problems: kill or be killed," he said.

U.S. commanders said they consider the village to be a locus of insurgent activity in the Balad area.

Jannabi said he still planned to vote, depending on the instructions of his tribe, clerics and Sunni political leaders. He predicted that turnout in the region would dwarf the paltry results in the January parliamentary elections. "Everyone will vote -- even the women," he said. Although he acknowledged the confusion in the community, he suggested that most would still reject the document.

A Civics Lesson

The Americans are warning Sunnis that if they refuse to participate in the referendum, they will be left further behind in a country now dominated by Shiite religious parties and the two main Kurdish political movements. As he inspected polling sites this week with a quiet Iraqi election official, Petery, 41, a 6-foot-2 former third baseman at West Point, carried that message into Jannabi's village, Aziz al-Balad.

The polling station was located at the Qadriya school, its classrooms filled with girls clad in blue-and-white uniforms, its entrance protected by newly installed canvas receptacles filled with sand. Low-slung concrete barriers designed to prevent car bomb attacks blocked the dirt road leading to the school.

Petery seemed to relish the exchange with teachers, who used the unexpected visit to pepper him with complaints.

The principal, Hamid Habib Mahmoud, asked him how many houses the Americans would provide with potable water.

"I don't provide the water to the people," responded Petery, his M-16 slung over his body armor. "I do the projects that the city government asks me to do. We just provide the money."

A second-grade teacher, Rahim Hassan, asked why more roads had not been paved, why electricity was often unavailable.

"How much do you think those things cost?" Petery said through an interpreter as wide-eyed students watched. "Don't be angry. Talk to your government about what is most important to you."

As Petery said goodbye to the students, he quipped: "Well, they just got their civics lesson for today."

In the courtyard, Petery told the teachers that he sympathized with their concern that the constitution could lead to Iraq's division. But, he said, "the question is what is the best way to go about getting the constitution you want."

"There are three ways you can try to get the constitution you want," Petery continued. "You can use violence, and I think we all agree that that's the wrong way to do it. You can vote no and start the process all over again. Or you can vote yes and say, 'It's not exactly what we want, but it's close.' If you vote yes now, you can then get your people elected and they can help you get the constitution you want. You can change anything in the constitution. It's called an amendment."

"Make your voice heard by votes, not IEDs," Petery said finally, using the military shorthand for improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs.