Staff Sgt. Eric Forbes, 28, of Andover, Mass., peeks through a view port in a Bradley fighting vehicle before hitting the streets of Ramadi on foot recently. (Monte Morin/Stars and Stripes)
RAMADI, Iraq — The sun had barely risen over western Ramadi’s sprawling industrial lots and low-rise apartment blocks when the Bradley fighting vehicle clanked to a halt.
Inside the vehicle’s armored belly, a handful of Company B “Death Dealers” sat clutching their weapons. Staff Sgt. Eric Forbes, 28, of Andover, Mass., craned his neck toward the narrow, plate-glass viewing port for a peek.
What he saw in the golden light of dawn was a broad, barren intersection strewn with trash and dangling power lines.
“I got every video I ever saw on ogrish.com going through my mind right now,” Forbes said, referring to a Web site that posts propaganda clips of insurgent mayhem. The chilling videos are popular fare among U.S. troops in Iraq.
“We’re going to stick to courtyards, walls and rooftops as much as we can,” said the squad leader.
As the Bradley’s rear hatch clattered open like a castle drawbridge, sunlight flooded in. The men piled down the ramp and made a beeline to their first objective — House 277, a tiny gray block on Forbes’ laminated map.
The squad’s visit was a far cry from a house raid. Instead, Forbes and his squad had come seeking answers to a multipage questionnaire. Within moments, Forbes and an interpreter were introducing themselves to a mother and six children and asking how long they have lived in the home.
The woman said they had just moved to Ramadi from Baghdad.
“The situation is pretty bad in Baghdad, that’s why we moved here,” she said.
As troops under the command of Col. Sean MacFarland’s 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division wage a costly campaign to neutralize insurgents, soldiers in the western Ta’meem neighborhood are hoping to win the support of locals through a brand of policing that combines combat patrols and civilian outreach.
Capt. Matthew Graham, 28, of Midwest City, Okla., takes notes during a census patrol in western Ramadi recently. (Monte Morin/Stars and Stripes)
Soldiers and an interpreter conduct a census survey in an Iraqi home in western Ramadi recently. (Monte Morin/Stars and Stripes)
Spc. John Schroeder, 21, of Lancaster, Pa., examines an Iraqi family’s software CDs in western Ramadi recently to see if they contained images of insurgent videos. (Monte Morin/Stars and Stripes)
Spc. Timothy Sledge, 21, of Greenville, S.C., provides security while an interpreter translates the Friday sermon of a Ramadi mosque recently. Soldiers used a local resident’s home to monitor the speech. (Monte Morin/Stars and Stripes)
Unlike soldiers based in combat outposts within the city’s core, where almost daily skirmishes make public outreach all but impossible, soldiers with the Baumholder, Germany-based 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment have found greater opportunity.
The census patrols — created by the U.S. Marines — are intended to document every resident of a given home and gauge their attitude toward coalition troops, public services and security.
In addition to providing commanders with a wealth of valuable “atmospherics,” the polling gives Iraqis a pretext to share information without retribution from insurgents. A standard visit will also involve small gifts of candy, toys or soccer balls, and a packet of coalition propaganda.
Commanders hope that even if soldiers can’t completely win the hearts and minds of locals, they might at least prevent them from offering active aid or assistance to the insurgency.
“It allows us to interact with the locals,” said Capt. Matthew Graham, Company B commander. “If all we did was ride around in vehicles and look down our noses at them, it would breed a lot of animosity,” said the 28-year-old from Midwest City, Okla.
The survey patrols are, in part, an outgrowth of theories developed by the British military in Northern Ireland. One theory argues that the number of active insurgents — financial planners, plotters and actual guerrillas — is very small compared to the vast majority of locals who are either apathetic to the conflict or may sympathize a bit with insurgents.
By targeting these larger groups, commanders like Graham hope to keep locals from becoming estranged from coalition troops and siding with insurgents.
“The reality is, the bad guys are really hard to find,” Graham said. “And most people are apathetic. They just don’t care. They’ll pay their taxes to whoever rules them. ... We may get some of the more civic-minded people to tell us if they see something.”
Even as U.S. troops hope to gain cooperation from local residents, insurgents are doing the same, either through intimidation or more subtle means. Consequently, local residents see themselves as caught in the middle.
Others are simply fearful of U.S. troops. In numerous interviews with locals, residents told soldiers they were afraid they would be shot by U.S. snipers, even though they were told this was not the case.
There have been successes.
Residents have allowed their homes to be used by U.S. troops and interpreters to monitor sermons at local mosques for possible anti-coalition content. Others have warned troops of roadside bombs and other attacks.
And, in one episode last month, a family that was being held hostage in an apartment building attempted to signal U.S. troops with a mirror for two weeks before soldiers detected the signal and went to investigate. The visit ended with the capture of at least five insurgents.
Despite instances of cooperation, Ta’meem remains troubled.
Some of the most devastating roadside bomb attacks on U.S. troops have occurred here, and Company B, attached to the 1st Battalion, 35th Armor Regiment, has lost four soldiers in the last two-and-a-half months.
Usually, soldiers who conduct the survey will visit a handful of random houses each day, then devote the rest of their patrol time to vehicle stops and other tasks.
Such was the case recently when Forbes’ patrol shifted from polling to pursuing insurgents.
Roughly five hours after 2nd Platoon began its polling, two Humvees in the platoon were fired on by an insurgent with a rocket-propelled grenade.
The trucks were rolling slowly down a major thoroughfare when the projectile shot out of an alleyway, streaked between the two Humvees and exploded on the far shoulder of the roadway.
As the rest of the platoon dismounted from their Bradleys and scoured the neighborhood in search of the culprit, Sgt. Derrick Randall, 26, of Baltimore, sat in the commander’s seat of one of the targeted Humvees and scanned with a pair of binoculars.
“Oh boy, that’s three days in a row,” he said of the attack.
After roughly half an hour, it was clear to Randall and the rest of 2nd Platoon that the attacker had escaped.
“That guy is long gone,” Randall said. “He’s back in Syria now drinking chai. That’s what’s so frustrating here. You don’t know who you’re fighting. Your posture and your attitude here has to be ‘Don’t trust anyone.’”
