U.S. combat troops are deep into nation-building a year later

EDITOR'S NOTE: Associated Press correspondent Chris Tomlinson and photographer John Moore entered Baghdad with American soldiers last April. They returned almost a year later to report on how the U.S. military is coping.

By CHRIS TOMLINSON

Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Lt. Col. Tim Ryan is the new sheriff in town - and the new city manager, and the new head of the water board, the new town planner, contracting officer and civics teacher.

The Abu Ghraib district is also the most dangerous in Baghdad for the Americans who have to hit the streets. That guy on the roof - sniper? That approaching Mercedes - suicide bomber? That pile of trash by the road - rigged to explode?

As Ryan moves seamlessly from district council meetings to combat raids, the commander of the Fort Hood, Texas-based 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment takes off his body armor and helmet only when behind high walls and sandbags.

In its first month here, his battalion has conducted 20 combat operations, jailed 71 suspects and worked on community improvement projects worth almost a million dollars.

"There are not enough hours in the day," Ryan said, rubbing his crewcut after hours of wearing his helmet.

A year ago, 200,000 U.S. and British troops stormed into Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime. Young men and women fought a three-week, high-intensity war that wound up so quickly that it created a political vacuum where anarchy temporarily took hold and much of the country was looted.

Ryan and the rest of the U.S. troops now in Iraq have a different mission: nation-building. The big question is, do Iraqis want to be an American-made nation?

A reporter revisiting an army he last encountered in a war and its aftermath is exposed to an array of conflicting images: playful kids crowding around helmeted Bubba from Texas; a sudden nighttime mortar barrage; a meeting about running water that becomes an impromptu seminar on democracy; a peaceful religious procession ripped apart by suicide bombers, and an anguished crowd turning its fury on American forces.

Roadside bombs average four a day, with a dozen more disarmed. Nine other kinds of guerrilla attacks - snipers, mortars and rockets - happen every day across the country.

The war clearly is not over.

Dozens of lieutenant colonels like Ryan have become the public face of the U.S. occupation. They organize neighborhood and district advisory councils, fund local construction projects, recruit and train the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps that is supposed to ultimately replace them, oversee the police and capture or kill anyone fighting against the Coalition Provisional Authority and the new Iraqi government.

In Abu Ghraib, attacks are more frequent and deadly than anywhere else, and to Ryan, of Glenville, N.C., the lesson is that it's time to let Iraq be Iraq. "We've been solving their problems for them for too long and we have to stop doing that."

Capt. Mike Wall has been in Iraq from the start. The 30-year-old native of Old Hickory, Tenn., was with a long-range surveillance unit when the war started on the night of March 19-20. Now an infantry company commander in the 1st Armored Division, he's getting ready to go home when the 1st Cavalry takes over his eastside sector of Baghdad.

"We are still at war. It's not an organized force where you are fighting tanks or soldiers dug into a trench, but there is still a force out there that wants to hurt coalition forces, as well as a lot of Iraqi citizens," Wall said, referring to the rising death toll among Iraqi civilians.

"You don't always see who you are fighting because they will leave a bomb and run away . . . but there is still no doubt in my mind we are still in combat operations."

More Humvees are armored, Americans spend less time outside their bases, and in recent months, the U.S. death toll has dropped from nearly one a day to one a week, though it spiked again over the weekend of March 13-14, with six deaths in less than 26 hours.

But the militants themselves have also changed strategy, targeting Iraqis who work with U.S. forces. The Iraqi death toll is up sharply. More than 180 died in a single day three weeks ago when suicide bombers targeted Shiite pilgrimages.

The Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, which will eventually number thousands, already includes hundreds of ex-soldiers from Saddam's army. Wall has been training about 200 men and women, teaching them to handle weapons deliver first aid and operate in small units.

On a chilly, star-lit night in a ramshackle neighborhood of small homes and shanties surrounded by pools of raw sewage, Wall watched his two dozen Iraqi men and women climb off their truck and fan out, dressed in desert camouflage and armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles. Curious residents watched from their doorways, while a few ventured forth to talk to the new Iraqi troops.

Thinking back a year, Wall remarked on how quickly some foes have turned into colleagues: "These guys we're dining with, training with, going on patrol with are the same guys we faced off against at the beginning of the war."

The U.S. military created the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps to fight guerrillas and terrorists. The new army, a separate force, will concentrate on guarding the borders and the police on law enforcement.

Pfc. Thomas Laramore, a 21-year-old from Noonan, Ga., provided cover with his heavy machine gun mounted on a Humvee. He said he looked forward to going home in two weeks but felt he had made a difference, helping to train troops, kill or capture insurgents and reopen schools.

"It was the greatest experience of my life. I wouldn't change it for the world," Laramore said, admitting he that hadn't always felt that way. ". . . but the best part will be leaving."

As he spoke, the thump of a mortar launch echoed down the street to his right and a few seconds later the bright white flash of the impact lit up the sky to his left. Three more rounds quickly followed, flying over his head. Within minutes, the Iraqi and U.S. troops were back in their trucks and racing through the narrow streets in search of the attackers.

As they often do, the poorly aimed shells had detonated harmlessly in an open field. By the time the troops reached the launch site the attackers were gone. But the Americans managed to find the site in just 30 minutes, guided by civilians who were questioned by the Iraqi troops.

The Americans are increasingly dependent on their Iraqi trainees, said Lt. Col. T.C. Williams, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment. "They can interact with the people in a way that we can't," he said.

Williams, in Baghdad since April, spends about a third of his time handling combat operations, a third running his district and the rest managing his battalion.

In working with Iraqis, "the most important thing is trust and I think we're beginning to develop that," Williams, of Potomac, Va., said during a break in a two-hour meeting with neighborhood leaders in Baghdad.

"We're all learning. They're learning what we are trying to do. We are learning about their culture and what is important to them."

"We're winning this war, but it's ours to lose," the Gulf War veteran added. "If we don't treat people with respect and dignity, we will lose this."

Elsewhere in Baghdad, Spc. Lonnie McManners stood by an Abrams tank searching bags at a checkpoint. He also watched in fascination as black-clad Shiite pilgrims marched in the Ashoura religious rite, beating themselves across the back with chains.

Children crowded around the soldiers shouting: "Mister, mister, what's your name?"

"Everyone calls me Bubba," McManners said in a soft southern drawl.

"Bubba?" The children giggled. It sounded like "baba," an Arabic word for dad.

McManners, a few weeks in Iraq, said it wasn't what he expected. "The people are friendly. I've already made friends with the people at the restaurant over there."

The next day, though, the Ashoura bombings killed 58 people in Baghdad alone.

U.S. medics and troops of the 1st Cavalry rushed to the scene at the request of Iraqi police, but suddenly found themselves pelted with stones and pursued by an angry mob after a Shiite imam blamed "occupation forces" for the blasts.

The soldiers pulled back into their base and slammed the gate, threw smoke grenades and fired warning shots. At least two soldiers suffered broken bones in the melee.

Many U.S. officers complain that the violence that grabs the headlines obscures the good work they do. Many Iraqis say they appreciate their new freedom, but that compared with the shortages and violence they suffer now, life was better under Saddam.

One of the officers' most challenging - and, they say, rewarding - duties has been teaching democracy to people who have known only dictatorship.

Ryan recently met with Sheik Saud el-Shibly, a tribal leader and deputy head of the Iraqi Farmer's Union, about construction projects in the Abu Ghraib district. It soon became an exercise in civics.

El-Shibly, wearing a checkered headdress and gold-trimmed robe indicative of his status, was trying to talk Ryan into making a decision about a water project. Ryan wanted the sheik to make his case before the local council.

"Let them know your wishes and they will at least know your vote," Ryan told the sheik, who has become something of a friend in their frequent meetings.

No, el-Shibly said. "YOU must look at their priority list and then YOU decide. Don't let them decide," he insisted. "The councils are useless . . . everyone is looking out for their personal interest."

Ryan tried a different argument: "If we don't make the new government work, we'll never make progress. The only way a bird learns how to fly is when its mother pushes it out of the nest."

The discussion, through an interpreter, continued.

"The Ministry of Agriculture is supposed to help farmers," el-Shibly said. ". . . But the minister of agriculture has told the farmers to join the Communist Party or they will get nothing."

"During the time of Saddam, the Iraqi people were living better than they are now. Now the Iraqi people are beginning to miss the time of Saddam. The USA is our only hope right now, we have no hope in the new Iraqi government."

Ryan tried to move the conversation back to Abu Ghraib: "Working together, we will keep the local government going in the right direction."

El-Shibly patiently smiled: "For 35 years, they were taught to kill and steal. After only one year, how can you expect them to change?"

Ryan had heard that argument before, but was insistent that the council would have to decide for itself in the weeks to come.

"If I don't get out of the business of making decisions, then I don't get to go home," he said jokingly.

At that point el-Shibly smiled and invoked a higher force: "God willing, you will get to go home."