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US commander strolls streets of contested city, eating ice cream and talking progress
The Associated PressPublished: March 10, 2007


HIT, Iraq: The top U.S. commander in Iraq strolled through the streets of this dusty Euphrates River city Saturday, munching ice cream and promoting cooperation between Americans and Iraqis in a Sunni Arab community where insurgents have been driven out before — only to return.

Gen. David Petraeus visited Hit, scene of bloody fights with insurgents for the last three years, to affirm U.S. support for a nascent city administration and to deliver a message that American troops will remain here until Iraqi forces are genuinely ready to provide their own security.

To demonstrate his confidence, Petraeus, accompanied by dozens of armed U.S. troops and Iraqi policemen, strolled down the main street, stopping to buy ice cream from a vendor and wandering through the city market, where snipers were taking potshots at U.S. patrols just months ago.

"Iraq presents its own complex set of challenges and you have to do one city at a time," Petraeus said as he beamed at hesitant crowds and delivered Arabic greetings to small groups of young boys who stared at the entourage from the curb.

Few of the Iraqis returned the greeting and most kept back, perhaps intimidated by the stern-faced gun-toting Iraqi policemen who appeared keen to make sure nothing went awry during the visit.

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Nevertheless, the fact that a senior American general could walk through the public market in a Sunni city with such a bloody past indicated a degree of progress which U.S. commanders are keen to exploit.

That is key to the new U.S. strategy of clearing areas of insurgents and then remaining there to promote economic and quality of life projects. In the past, Iraqi forces failed to maintain control once the Americans were gone.

Last month, Iraqi police backed by American troops from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, swept through the city of about 120,000 people about 160 kilometers (100 miles) northwest of Baghdad, arresting suspected insurgents and establishing three new police stations in the downtown area.

Since then, the number of violent incidents — mostly bombings and shootings — has dropped from an average of five per day to about 1.3 a day, the lowest level since March 2006, according to Lt. Col. Douglas Crissman of Faifax, Va., the battalion commander.

The plan is for U.S. and Iraqi checkpoints around the city to turn Hit (pronounced Heet) into a "gated community" free of insurgents, Crissman said.

To convince the locals that better days are ahead, U.S. officers plan to fly in 20 billion dinars ($15 million) to float the local bank, which will enable retired government employees and soldiers to start receiving pensions and provide cash to bolster the economy.

The Americans are also encouraging the Shiite-run government in Baghdad to pay more attention to mostly Sunni Anbar, including authorizing funds to pay for the extra police. But U.S. forces have claimed similar successes in the past in Hit, only to see gains lost because of a lack of enough troops here in Anbar province, a vast area that stretches from the western edge of Baghdad to the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Despite a recent cleanup campaign, the city still bears the scars of conflict, including concrete barriers around a local mosque from which insurgents used to fire mortars at American positions.

"See that hole in the wall," said Sgt. Maj. Samuel Coston of Wallace, N.C. "An IED threw a Bradley" fighting vehicle "into it, and a Bradley weighs 30 tons."

In early 2004, the Marines took over responsibility for western Anbar but had to shift forces eastward when violence flared in the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi and in Fallujah.

With the remaining Marines overstretched, Hit fell under insurgent control and became a waystation for weapons and fighters entering the country from Syria toward Baghdad and other cities.

Marines worked with a local Sunni tribe, the Abu Nimur, to recruit police and Iraqi soldiers and were well on their way to establishing Hit as a model of U.S.-Iraqi cooperation.

But U.S. units were moved again from Hit to support the siege of Fallujah in November 2004. Insurgents returned, killing policemen, intimidating residents and ambushing American convoys.

The son of the current police commander, Col. Hamid Ibrahim al-Jaza, was beheaded on a soccer field. Hit has remained a flashpoint ever since.

To heal the wounds, U.S. officers are promoting community development plans, including a new wing of the local hospital, and are recruiting hundreds of police to bolster the city's 827-member force.