Reporting from Iraq

BAGHDAD — The young artist, sitting in a comfortable upscale home earlier this week, told Lt. Andrew Pfeiffer he didn’t feel safe in his own western Baghdad neighborhood. The home offers a nice coolness on a clear, hot day as they speak.

The man, who specializes in ceramics, bronze and glass, said the increased violence keeps him and his family living in fear.

As if on cue, a single gunshot rang out a few blocks away.

“You see?” the man said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder and speaking through an interpreter. The gunfire was just a warning shot that soldiers with the 2-1 Infantry Battalion fired when a vehicle approached them too closely.

Soldiers with the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, of which the 2nd Battalion 1st Infantry is part, have heard similar concerns in the many neighborhoods they’ve patrolled since arriving in Baghdad in August. Many residents see the presence of U.S. forces as helpful, at least while their own Iraqi forces and government struggle to gain hold over the violence.

Two days of patrolling with different elements of the 172nd offer a variety of views and sharply different images of the Iraqi capital.

On Wednesday, Pfeiffer, a 23-year-old Maine native, and the two dozen soldiers and the four Stryker vehicles of his platoon patrolled the affluent neighborhood that the young artist calls home.

The gated homes are large and well maintained and there is little trash along the streets, portraying, on the surface, no sign of unrest. Still, the soldiers are quick on their feet when going house to house, scurrying from one street corner to the next and hugging the high walls against the homes, before quickly disappearing into the gated yards.

Other platoons have encountered improvised explosive devices in this area. Even though the streets are just west of the secure Green Zone, this area is host to its share of sporadic violence. On Wednesday, residents told the soldiers there was a bomb scare at a nearby school and that two bakers and a butcher have been killed in the last few days. The attacks on shopkeepers and businesses is a way to disrupt the daily life of the neighborhoods, Pfeiffer surmises.

“Bakers, meat cutters, maintenance repair guys–it’s just somebody you depend on day to day,” he said. “Everyone needs to buy bread.”

Most residents are hesitant to give their names or have their picture taken. That includes the young artist who was speaking to Pfeiffer and who lives in his home with his siblings and some of their children. The artist told Pfeiffer he was planning a rare outing in the afternoon to attend a meeting of fellow artists nearby. Mostly, though, the family stays at home out of fear of attacks.

Pfeiffer and some of the other soldiers move on to the house next door after a short while.

Inside, Pfeiffer sits on a yellow brocade couch sipping chai tea with a large family of mostly women. The middle-aged widow who owns the house said she drives her son to grade school each day in fear, although her children, like those of her neighbors, stayed home Wednesday because of the bomb threat. When she needs to go shopping, she said she takes her sister or one of her nieces with her because she fears going alone and encountering snipers or kidnappers.

The Sunni widow, whose husband worked for the Ministry of the Interior before dying of diabetes less than two years ago, distrusts not only the Iraqi police and army but also some government officials, who she believes practice sectarian favoritism.

“People should work for Iraqi people,” she said. “Not Sunni, not Shiite, not Kurdish. Just Iraqi people.”

One of the nieces who was visiting the home Wednesday lives with her husband and daughters in another neighborhood. But her husband, a Shiite, does not feel safe coming to visit his wife’s predominantly Sunni family in their neighborhood. Nor do they feel safe going to the niece’s home. The niece said that when her husband wants to take part in family events, the entire family must meet in another area. The widow tells Pfeiffer that the family, originally from northern Iraq, hopes to have enough money to move to Syria soon.

The third house Pfeiffer and his soldiers visit belongs to an older merchant who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 20 years. He drives about 20 minutes, on a good day, to his shop. Other days, checkpoints manned by Iraqi Security Forces can hold him up longer. And he tells Pfeiffer he sees little point in the traffic stops where he said Iraqi forces routinely ask motorists if they are Sunni or Shiite.

“Checkpoints do nothing,” the merchant said. “They just make traffic jams.”

He’s wary of reporting suspicious activity to Iraqi forces because he fears for his own safety if he was to speak up. But the merchant mostly blames the Iraqi Security Forces–not for their malice but for their inexperience, he tells Pfeiffer.

“Most Iraqi police are kids,” he said. “They don’t have good experience to deal with situations and people, and they are afraid to try to protect themselves.”

The next day, Lt. Col. Al Kelly, a 45-year-old North Carolinian with the 1-17 Battalion of the 172nd, led his platoon around a much different neighborhood. But he netted some of the same sentiments.

Well more than 200 soldiers with the 1-17 were tasked with clearing hundreds of homes in this rundown, mostly Shiite neighborhood in western Baghdad in response to the mortar attack on a U.S. ammunition depot at the nearby Forward Operating Base Falcon. The attackers likely fired the mortar from this neighborhood, Kelly said. Residents told him they heard and felt the huge explosions and saw the subsequent fire that lasted into the evening.

“It rocked your world, huh?” Kelly said to a young man who was leaning against a wall, watching the soldiers roam the neighborhood. Kelly meant the phrase literally.

The heat of the day serves as an incubator for the trash and standing water and contributes to the stench filling the air. The standing water has drained from crumbling homes, which are a testament to the relationship this neighborhood had to Saddam Hussein, the leader ousted by the United States.

“He didn’t do anything for us,” one resident said from his front gate, where he and his young daughter were watching the soldiers pass by. “He had palaces all over the city, but just look at this,” he said motioning to the rancid trash strewn in an empty lot across from him.

The soldiers from 1-17 found little in the sweeps Thursday except some illegal weapons and ski masks in a few of the homes. Soldiers said the ammunition depot’s attackers likely fled the neighborhood, figuring coalition forces would soon be sweeping in.

The bright spot in many of the conversations with the residents was their cautious optimism that the presence of the Stryker vehicles and soldiers might quiet the violence. They said they hope the U.S. forces can help the Iraqi forces gain a handle on security in the neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, they said, they will continue trying to adapt to the random violence, doing what they can to minimize their risk while trying to lead normal lives.

“Even though people generally feel unsafe, they have to continue with their lives,” Pfeiffer said.