In Iraqi Oil City, a Formidable Foe

"Most of the people fighting the Americans tell me they do nothing for us but destroy the houses and capture people," Adil Faez Jeel, a director at the Baiji refinery, said of the U.S. forces. "There are no jobs, no water, no electricity."

Meanwhile, U.S. military convoys passing Baiji along the main north-south highway from Baghdad to Mosul have killed some residents in hit-and-run accidents, according to local leaders. "A lot of people from my tribe are dead, and I don't know what to say," said Ghaeb Nafoos Hamed Khalaf, leader of the Qaysi tribe, one of the largest in Baiji.

Insurgents have used Baiji as a base for staging attacks on Mosul and Baghdad while skimming funds from the oil trade, U.S. officers said. Together with criminal networks, they began profiting by cutting pipelines and trucking oil products to be sold on the black market. "No one makes money when oil flows. They make money when it's disrupted," said Lt. Col. Mike Getchell, an operations officer with the 101st in Tikrit.

In Baiji, the black market for gasoline bustles, with vendors often reappearing within days or hours of being detained by U.S. troops. "They're all over the place," Houston, 20, of Cincinnati, said on a recent patrol through town.

About 150 Iraqi soldiers oversee checkpoints around the city but have failed to stop the attacks. Inside Baiji, the police are ineffective -- they often sleep on night duty, U.S. officers said. The police and army "are fence-sitters -- they don't like the coalition or insurgents, and they're just trying to stay alive," said 1st Lt. Billy Bobbitt, 24, of Woodstown, N.J., an Army intelligence officer in Baiji. "We're already on our second police chief. The other one was going to be fired, but then he got blown up" by a roadside bomb.

U.S. troops have made some headway, recently tracking down a key weapons smuggler and a large cache of munitions. But residents say security in Baiji is far worse than it was under Hussein. Many residents, fearful of insurgent threats, refuse to tell U.S. soldiers who is planting the bombs in their neighborhoods. Insurgents target Iraqis who work for Americans; one man who cleaned toilets at the U.S. base was recently beheaded, Baiji residents and a U.S. officer said.

"When Saddam was in power, we used to go to Mosul, to Tikrit, to Baghdad. . . . It was safer all over," said Salah Aub Ramadan Obaydi, 65, a retired teacher, serving tea and pastries to visiting American soldiers in the curtained sitting room of his east Baiji home. Now "people get shot every day and no one cares."

Outside, on a wall along a trash-strewn street, graffiti declare: "Long live the resistance" and "We're the Baiji heroes, we still resist."

The soldiers go door to door, seeking to identify and photograph all military-age males as part of a tedious effort to figure out who's who. Iraqis oblige, sometimes grudgingly. No one offers information on attackers.

"They have the place locked down," Kidd said of the insurgents. "We have almost no support from the local people. We talk to 1,000 people and one will come forward."

First Sgt. Robert Goudy, of Bulldog Company, summed up the soldiers' frustration in fighting an elusive enemy: "It's like an elephant trying to catch a mouse."

A Deadly Ruse

At the home of Ghaeb, the Qaysi tribal leader, Capt. Matt Bartlett leans forward and directs a piercing gaze at the sheik, who is dressed in a gold tasseled robe and red-checked headdress.