Hard-line Iraq strategy mimics Israeli tactics

By Dexter Filkins
The New York Times

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ABU HISHMA, Iraq — As the guerrilla war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, U.S. soldiers have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire, demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers, imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas in hopes of pressuring the fighters to turn themselves in.

The get-tough strategy, embarked on early last month, echoes the Israeli counterinsurgency campaign in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

U.S. officials say they are not purposefully mimicking Israeli tactics, but they acknowledge that they have studied the Israeli experience in urban fighting. The Americans say that before the invasion, Israeli defense experts briefed U.S. commanders.

Writing in the July issue of Army magazine, a U.S. general said U.S. officers had traveled to Israel to hear about lessons learned from recent fighting there.

"Experience continues to teach us many lessons, and we continue to evaluate and address those lessons, embedding and incorporating them appropriately into our concepts, doctrine and training," wrote Brig. Gen. Michael Vane, deputy chief of staff for doctrine concepts and strategy at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command.

"For example, we recently traveled to Israel to glean lessons learned from their counterterrorist operations in urban areas," Vane wrote.

So far, the new approach appears to be succeeding in diminishing the threat to U.S. soldiers. But it appears to be coming at the cost of alienating many of the people the Americans are trying to win over. Abu Hishma is quiet now, but it is angry, too.

U.S.-guarded checkpoint

Here in Abu Hishma, encased in a razor-wire fence after repeated attacks on U.S. troops, Iraqi civilians line up to go in and out, filing through a U.S.-guarded checkpoint, each carrying an identification card printed in English only.

"If you have one of these cards, you can come and go," coaxed Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman, the battalion commander whose men oversee the village, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. "If you don't have one of these cards, you can't."

The Iraqis nodded and edged their cars through the line. Over to one side, an Iraqi man named Tariq muttered in anger.

"I see no difference between us and the Palestinians," he said. "We didn't expect anything like this after Saddam fell."

U.S. officers here say their new hard-nosed approach reflects a more realistic appreciation of the military and political realities faced by U.S. soldiers in the Sunni triangle, the area north and west of Baghdad that is generating the most violence against the Americans.

Underlying the new strategy, the Americans say, is the conviction that only a tougher approach will quell the insurgency and that the new strategy must punish not just the guerrillas but also make clear to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating.

"You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the 4th Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face."

Speaking in Baghdad yesterday, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said attacks on allied forces or gunfights with adversaries across Iraq had dropped to under 20 a day now from 40 a day two weeks ago.

"We've considerably pushed back the numbers of engagements against coalition forces," he said. "We've been hitting back pretty hard. We've forced them to slow down the pace of their operations."

In that way, the new U.S. approach seems to share the successes of the Israeli military, at least in the short term; Israeli officers contend that their heavy-handed strategy regularly stops catastrophes like suicide bombings from taking place.

"If you do nothing, they will just get stronger," said Martin van Creveld, professor of military history and strategy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He briefed U.S. Marines on Israeli tactics in urban warfare in September.

The problems in Abu Hishma, a town of 7,000, began in October, when the U.S. military across the Sunni triangle decided to ease off on their military operations to coincide with the onset of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

In Abu Hishma, as in other towns, the backing off by the Americans was not reciprocated by the insurgents. U.S. troops regularly came under mortar fire, the number of bombs planted on nearby roads rose sharply, and Army convoys regularly took fire.

The last straw for the Americans came on Nov. 17, when a group of guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the front of a Bradley armored personnel carrier. The grenade, with an armored piercing tip, punched through the Bradley's shell and killed Staff Sgt. Dale Panchot, one of its crewmen.

With the Bradley still smoldering, the soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry, part of the 4th Infantry Division, surrounded Abu Hishma and searched for the guerrillas. Soldiers began encasing the town in razor wire.

The next day, a U.S. jet dropped a 500-bomb on the house that had been used to attack them. The Americans arrested 10 sheiks, the mayor, the police chief and most of the city council.

"We really hammered the place," Maj. Darron Wright said.

Two and a half weeks later, the town of Abu Hishma is enclosed in a fence that stretches for five miles. Men ages 18 to 65 have been ordered to get identification cards.

"This fence is here for your protection," reads the sign posted in front of the fence. "Do not approach or try to cross, or you will be shot."

U.S. forces have used the tactic in other cities, including Awja, Saddam's birthplace.

"With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them," Sassaman said.

In Abu Hishma, residents complain that the village is locked down for 15 hours a day, meaning that they are unable to go to the mosque for morning and evening prayers. They say the curfew does not allow them time to stand in the daylong lines for gasoline and get home before the gate closes for the night.

Loss of dignity

But mostly, it is a loss of dignity that the villagers talk about. For each identification card, every Iraqi man is assigned a number, which he must hold up when he poses for his mug shot. The card identifies his age and type of car.

"This is absolutely humiliating," said Yasin Mustafa, a 39-year-old primary-school teacher. "We are like birds in a cage."

Sassaman said he would maintain the wire enclosure until the villagers turned over the six men who killed Panchot, though he acknowledged they may have slipped far away.

Sassaman is feared by many of Abu Hishma's villagers. But some said they understood what a difficult job he had, trying to pick out a few bad men from a village of 7,000 people.

"Colonel Sassaman, you should come and live in this village and be a sheik," Hassan Ali al-Tai told the colonel outside the checkpoint.

The colonel smiled, and Tai turned to another visitor.

"Colonel Sassaman is a very good man," he said. "If he got rid of the barbed wire and the checkpoint, everyone would love him."

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