Day Patrol

near LSA Anaconda, Balad Iraq
45 miles north of Baghdad
October 13, 2005
100-442 Infantry Battalion, US Army Reserve, Honolulu HI

A vendor in a small village near LSA Anaconda, a major US base near Balad, Iraq, used to sell grilled chicken to soldiers that came through on patrol.  He doesn�t any more - the insurgents came and told him they would kill him if he sold any more chicken to an American. His stand is locked and quiet.
This is the Iraq war in a nutshell.  Set aside the problem of quelling insurgents, or those stopping the activities of those people sympathetic to them and help them.
The problem in Iraq is how to assist the Iraqis who want to help Americans.  How to let them help Americans or even interact with them without getting killed in the process.  How to help Iraqis resist insurgents that come into their homes late at night and demand help.   Or threaten to kill entire families if any of them so much as talks to the Americans.
Soldiers here say they need the regular Iraqis;  they need them to supply the information that will enable coalition forces to track down and pick up insurgents.
As it is, these soldiers face roadside bombs (called improvised explosive devices or ied's every day).  Often the soldiers find the roadside bombs lying there.  Sometimes they go off, and sometimes when they go off they hurt someone.  Sometimes when they hurt someone the soldier is hurt badly, and sometimes he (or she) is killed.
So Americans patrol the roads, tracks, villages and towns around here.  Information does come in. they do catch bad guys.  But it isn�t easy.