By Bill Murphy Jr.
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 19, 2007

BAQUBAH, Iraq, Feb. 18 -- Helicopters hovered over the American military base here Sunday night, and the crackling of automatic gunfire echoed as U.S. forces attacked insurgents they believed were trying to plant an improvised explosive device, or IED, just outside the camp.

Detecting IEDs is a never-ending task for American and Iraqi military forces here, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, a place that has become one of the most lethal in Iraq for U.S. troops. In the past two weeks, nine members of the U.S. Army battalion responsible for this city of 300,000 have been killed, most as a result of IED attacks.

U.S. military officials reported Sunday night that in operations in the past 72 hours, troops had found 32 IEDs in some of the city's most troubled areas. They also recovered 16 rocket-propelled grenades, along with antitank mines, AK-47 assault rifles, IED components and other weaponry used by insurgents.

Violence is on the rise in Baqubah, U.S. military officials acknowledge, even as they maintain that it is waning in other parts of oil-rich Diyala province. In recent weeks, they say, insurgents have stepped up attacks against civilians and staged spectacular strikes against the Iraqi police and army.

Although the U.S. military has the might to eliminate the insurgents, officials say, keeping Baqubah secure for the long term requires building up the police and army and boosting confidence in the government.

The task is difficult, they add, in a city where former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, Shiites looking to cement their political control, Iranians seeking an Iraqi foothold, Kurds attempting to expand southward and insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq struggle for dominance. The provincial council has not met in six months, and there are few local media the government can use to communicate with the people.

"Sometimes, fast is slow and slow is fast. I could reach through this city and clean it out, but I have to do it right," said Col. David W. Sutherland, 45, the brigade commander responsible for all of Diyala, a province the size of Maryland, with 1.6 million residents.

Because of the tribal complexities here -- Diyala is home to 19 tribes and 100 subtribes -- "trying to find one individual leader who will say, 'We will not allow terrorists on our land. We will not allow IEDs to be placed on our land. We will not give support' is difficult, because you can't find just one leader in Diyala," Sutherland said. "If you're asking what I need, I need the provincial council to come to work an d show backbone, and I need local media. . . . I don't need more forces."

A major part of the U.S. effort involves trying to build the Iraqi army and police into competent, professional forces. In the latest milestone Sunday, a combined class of American soldiers and Iraqi troops and police officers graduated from a week-long U.S. Army training course on military values, marksmanship, tactics and leadership.

Under a bright sun at a smaller military base in Baqubah, the troops and police officers demonstrated a live fire exercise for an audience of reporters and other Iraqi and American troops. The event culminated in a display of firepower -- mortars, grenade launchers, automatic rifles -- targeting an empty field next to the camp.

"The focus is aimed, controlled shooting," said Command Sgt. Maj. Donald Felt, 50, the creator of the course, in which 10 U.S. Army soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division and 32 Iraqis participated.

Afterward, the U.S. soldiers stood in a formation alongside the Iraqis -- army troops wearing "chocolate chip"-pattern camouflage fatigues and police officers in several types of blue uniforms.

On the first day of the class, said Staff Sgt. Jeff Young, 27, of Lockhart, Tex., the instructors realized they had to separate Iraqi police officers and Iraqi army troops in the barracks because of animosity between the two groups. But after a few days, the rivalry dissipated.

Several Iraqis said in interviews that veterans of the old Iraqi army form the backbone of the new Iraqi army. Young said that at least one former soldier in the old Iraqi Republican Guard was in the class. The veterans are "the guys who take the lead," he said.

Sgt. 1st Class Muhammad Hussein Jasim, who emerged as the class leader, said he had spent 3 1/2 years in the old army. He has seen a lot of combat in his new unit, he said, but "not every day."

"About half were in the old army," agreed Pvt. Mahmood Jasim, including "more than half" of the sergeants and officers.

Cpl. Muhammad Agala, 22, said he had been in the new Iraqi army for only three months but had been given a higher rank because he had served in the old army. He added that he had been captured by coalition forces last year and spent 13 days in jail -- a matter, he explained, of simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Everybody Iraqi," said Nassaf Jasim Muhammad, 32, a police officer. "There is no Sunni and Shia. We are all Muslim. All here, no problem." Later, he said that he is Sunni and is married to a Shiite woman.

"An Iraqi who can pick up on a dialect or say, 'Hey, that license plate's not from around here' " has skills that Americans simply don't have, Felt said as the exercise wound down. But he reiterated that besides instilling the values of a disciplined army, one of the most important skills the Iraqis worked on was the ability to pick and aim at a target, rather than firing the undisciplined shots that some U.S. troops here call "spray and pray."

"Fire control," he said. "That's one of the things they need a lot of work on."