BAGHDAD — The four Stryker vehicles with 3rd Platoon of the 4-14 Cavalry’s Assassin Troop rolled out of Camp Stryker around 5 p.m. Thursday, just as the sun was beginning to set and the air was beginning to cool after a scorching day.
That night’s mission for Lt. Mateo Gross and his platoon was to patrol an eerily quiet southwest Baghdad street. The few streetlights and the scant illumination from shop windows would plunge people and corners into darkness.
It’s the kind of street where a visitor might think that danger dwells. And it does. The bodies of several Iraqis have been found on this street in the last few weeks.
In another location the next morning, soldiers from a different unit of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fort Wainwright continue their part in an investigation of the recent kidnapping of workers from a meat factory.
The workers had been placed in a refrigeration truck and driven to another location where the Sunni among them were killed, said Lt. Col. John Norris, of the brigade’s 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment. The Shiites in the group were released.
On Saturday, Norris helped one of the kidnap survivors get treatment for an injured ankle and broken tooth. The unit continued helping Iraqi and coalition forces in the investigation, which will likely point to the involvement of Iraq’s national police, an Iraqi security force different from the Iraqi Army or Iraqi local police. The 8th Brigade National Police has already been suspended for its members’ suspected involvement in the kidnapping and killings. More evidence could finally prove there is corruption among the national police.
“Right now, they’re in denial,” Maj. Clint Baker, a Texan with the 4-23, said while medics worked on the injured kidnap survivor back in the relative safety of the fortified Green Zone.
Two months ago, the soldiers of the 172nd Stryker Brigade had no idea they would be conducting these kinds of operations in Baghdad. They had no idea they would be in Baghdad.
After a year based around northern and western Iraq, the cavalry and 4-23 soldiers had become experienced in uncovering large weapons caches and in dealing with insurgents who were targeting coalition forces.
But the brigade’s relocation south to Baghdad — the reason it was ordered to stay in Iraq for up to 120 days beyond its one-year tour of duty — has brought new types of missions and a much shorter period in which to make an impact.
In northern Iraq, Baker said, the 172nd mostly focused on counterinsurgency activities, though it did help local Iraqi forces carry out some murder investigations. He said coalition forces were mainly the target of the insurgents in those areas. In Baghdad, while coalition forces are targeted, most violence is directed at Iraqis.
“It’s terrorism at it’s finest,” Baker said. “There’s really no rhyme or reason. The killing is just out of control.”
Not that the soldiers would advocate for another extension, but Baker isn’t sure 120 days is enough time to do as much as they would like. “Given the time, we could make inroads. We could stop this crap,” he said. “But I don’t know if we’re going to have time.”
Capt. Matthew Eberhart, wearing a T-shirt and desert camouflage pants after returning from more than eight hours on patrol, said his scouts in the 4-14 Cavalry and the soldiers in other units can at least pave the way for Iraqi forces to gain a foothold.
“What I hope to do is stabilize the environment somewhat,” he said inside a plywood shack that houses the Assassin troop headquarters.
While in Rawah, the 4-14 spent much of its time uncovering weapon caches throughout the eastern, rural desert. Soldiers uncovered one of the largest caches found in the country early in their deployment after they hot-wired a bulldozer on a chicken farm to uncover a stockpile of buried rockets, guns and ammunition. The unit encountered violence regularly, but its soldiers mostly felt they had the upper hand after a year in the area.
“I’m not going to say the violence was less (than in Baghdad,)” said Sgt. 1st Class Fredrick Thompson with the 4-14. “But we had control.”
They still find weapons caches, but there are differences in the types of weapons found in Baghdad. Thompson said that soldiers in Rawah were more likely to find rocket-propelled grenades, materials for making improvised explosive devices and weapons such as AK-47s. In Baghdad, Thompson said precision weapons like sniper rifles are more commonly found. Soldiers of the 4-14 and other units of 172nd recently discovered a house stocked with weapons, a workshop, tools, ammunition, detonation material and a stash of medical supplies.
A few blocks away on the same day, soldiers also discovered a group of children burying up to 1,000 rounds of ammunition for safekeeping. “Every time we think we’re getting the streets clean, you run across something like this,” he said.
Although the type of violence differs from northern and western Iraq, some of the tactics used to address it are still the same.
Soldiers from the 3rd Platoon will move around their assigned neighborhood in the coming days, making themselves known and hoping that even just a presence of soldiers and Stryker vehicles will reduce the killings.
On Friday, Gross’s platoon made an evening stop at several shops open along the street, not far from the infamous Haifa Street. Most of the owners welcomed Gross, his interpreter and an intelligence sergeant, whose name cannot be released, as the three question people about activities in area. One man is fidgety and nervous around the soldiers and tries to close up shop before they have a chance to question him. The intelligence sergeant’s demeanor turns frosty when the shopkeeper said he knows nothing about the dead bodies or violence in the area and that he does not care. The sergeant said there have been police shot on the street and left for dead with passersby simply walking over the bodies on the sidewalk.
“That’s shameful,” the sergeant said, unhappy with the man’s response that he didn’t care about the violence or bodies found around the neighborhood. “Shameful.”
It was one of the few times in the evening that any of the soldiers grew stern. Shortly after the encounter, the soldiers visited a brightly lighted sweet shop with glass cases full of freshly made cookies with jam filling, coconut and chocolate, pistachios and sesames. The shop owner has little information to offer but is receptive to the soldiers, who in turn don’t need to be persuaded to spend several dinar on cookies.
“There’s a time to be tough and time to be chill,” Gross said.
Gross, like those he came into contact with Friday, said the majority of Baghdad residents want no part of the violence. They’re kids playing soccer, mothers walking their children to school, “husbands trying to decide what to buy their wives for their anniversary,” said Gross, who calls the Midwest home.
“Ninety percent of them are just like folks back in the States.”