JELEWUR, Afghanistan -- The man in the brown robe was digging in the desert sand. He was accompanied by three teenage boys and a donkey pulling a wooden cart.

Was he scooping up sand to help make concrete? Or was he trying to bury a roadside bomb?

The soldiers in this Stryker convoy from the Fort Lewis-based 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division stopped to investigate.

This was one more imponderable among so many as these soldiers patrol a vast area of the Arghandab River valley that is a stronghold of the resurgent Taliban. Many patrols are an uneasy mix of trying to build bridges with villagers and fighting Taliban soldiers who have taken refuge in the irrigated orchards that straddle the river.

There have been plenty of firefights. But IEDs - improvised explosive devices - placed on roadways and on foot paths have been the most pervasive threat in the more than two months since the brigade arrived in southern Afghanistan.

Bravo Company, a unit of about 150 soliders, is part of the brigade's 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment. This battalion, with about 700 soldiers, has one the toughest assignments in Afghanistan. They valley serves as a staging ground for the Taliban as they infiltrate east into Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city.

Since arriving in the summer, the battalion has lost 10 men, mostly to IED blasts that have struck both vehicles and foot soldiers. The IEDs are so pervasive that the soldiers approach their base here through different routes that traverse the desert rather than stick to the road.

I joined Bravo Company over the weekend. On Sunday, we spent a long day meeting with military, police and elders in villages strung along the valley. En route, the convoy of Strykers would stop so that culverts and other locations could be checked for IEDs. At sunset, as we neared our base, Strong Point-Jelewar, we spotted the diggers and their donkey.

The soldiers piled out of the vehicles and circled the four Afghans. It was prayer time and the man in the brown robe said that they needed to leave to worship.

Mohammad Halimi, an interpreter working with Bravo
Company, questions the man found shoveling in the desert.

The soldiers had heard intelligence reports of an uncle and three nephews who had formed an IED cell. And they noted an area of ground that seemed like it was freshly dug and tamped over with footprints.

Capt. Jamie Pope, the Bravo Company's commander tried to get the Afghans to dig in
that area. But they were reluctant.

"This guy is digging right next to a major road where the have been previous IED blasts. They say they're from village 2 or 3 kilometers away, so why are they coming all the way over here for sand?," Pope said.

A decision was made to fingerprint and take iris scans of all four men with the aid of a computerized system called HIDE - Hand Held Interagency Identity Detection Equipment. That way, if those fingerprints were ever found on a roadside bomb, they would know where to look.

It took nearly two hours to enter all the data into the system. As darkness fell on the lonely expanse of desert, we loaded back into the convoy to return to Strong Point-Jelewar.

I will be spending the next week with Bravo Company soldiers and will be writing about my experiences. But much of the time I will be out in the field, where communcation is difficult. I hope people will be patient as I work on my dispatches.

These soldiers have been great hosts.

I want to share this photo of Spc. Richard Thibeault, who was hit with a bullet at close range on his very first patrol back in August. He was knocked to the ground. But his ballistic vest stopped the bullet's penetration, leaving the vest with an indentation the size of a half-dollar coin.

From kabul