Learning to Live With the Mahdi Army

Hansen's Humvee turned down narrow streets lined with staring people. Mixon's voice crackled over the radio: "We're getting a lot of 'You're-not-going-to-catch-us' smiles." Finding nothing, the convoy headed toward the joint station, passing a poster of Sadr.

Frustration and Fear

Inside the two-story building covered in peeling blue paint, Iraqi soldiers and police and U.S. soldiers gathered in separate clusters.

No one had been injured in the earlier attack on the outpost. But the soldiers at the station -- many of them infantrymen from the 2nd Brigade, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, out of Fort Bragg -- were clearly shaken. All the building's front windows had shattered.

"We need to bring a bunch of troops into Sadr and [expletive] this place up," said Spec. Josh Saykally, 25, of Minocqua, Wis., meaning soldiers should be living in the center of the district, not just on the edge.

Staff Sgt. Jesse Benskin, 24, fumed. The car bomb, he said, was the work of Mahdi militiamen fed information by Iraqis at the station. Benskin said they all made phone calls right after the blast, which he read as a sign they were reporting results to the attackers. "In my opinion, they're not really holding back," Benskin said of the Mahdi Army.

"I see a whole lot of money and a whole lot of American lives on the line," he said. "Two weeks after we leave, it's going to go back to the way it was."

In a nearby conference room, the joint station's newfound collaboration was on display: whiteboards showing who was on patrol and where, a mission statement in Arabic and English. As Mixon and others looked on, Col. Shaker Wadi Hamoud al-Maliki, the officer in charge, approached a map. The mortars were launched from here, he said, pointing to a Sunni neighborhood outside Sadr City.

His launch sites were completely different from those U.S. soldiers had identified. Mixon shrugged.

"There are no militias in Sadr City now," the colonel said.

The next morning, two more mortars hit near the joint station. Again, the U.S. soldiers' analysis determined they were launched inside Sadr City.

U.S. soldiers marveled at the damage done by the previous day's car bomb. The hot projectiles had traveled at least 200 yards, past the overturned blast barriers and through two concrete walls.

Later, the convoy headed to the police station complex to meet with another commander, Maj. Mohammed Lefta Flaih -- a man Sgt. Dennis Gurney, 38, the squad's jovial leader, deemed a "good cat."

After a conversation about training, emergency response and Flaih's need for whiteboards, Gurney jokingly asked whether Flaih would host a going-away party for the unit at his house, with whiskey and beer. Flaih did not laugh.

"I'd love to, but you know what the consequences would be," Flaih said. Making a stabbing motion, he whispered: "Militia."