Global Policy Forum

By Thomas E. Ricks and Anthony Shadid

To the troops of Bravo Company, moving through a corner of this weary capital, their morning patrol represents a benign presence. The American soldiers are here to help the locals, then go home. "Everybody likes us," Spec. Stephen Harris, a 21-year-old from Lafayette, La., said as the patrol moved through streets drenched in sun. He thinks the people want the U.S. troops to stay. "Oh, yeah," he said, taking a slug from his canteen. His assessment of the neighborhood: "I'd say 95 percent friendly."

To Mohammed Abdullah, standing on the sidewalk as the 10-man patrol passed his gated house, their presence is, as he terms it, "despicable." In a white dishdasha, a long Arab robe, the 34-year-old winced as the soldiers moved along his street, nine carrying automatic weapons slung across their chests, the 10th a medic. "We're against the occupation, we refuse the occupation -- not 100 percent, but 1,000 percent," he said. "They're walking over my heart. I feel like they're crushing my heart."

Hundreds of U.S. Army patrols were conducted in Baghdad on Sunday. On one, two reporters followed the route of soldiers from Bravo Company of a battalion in the Army's 1st Armored Division. One reporter walked with the patrol, observing the soldiers and interviewing them, while the second trailed behind, measuring Iraqis' reactions. Together, the two views convey a sense of life in Baghdad at a delicate moment when the shape of the U.S. military occupation is still emerging -- and so is the tone of the Iraqi response to it.

Some residents welcomed the troops, not least for providing security that was missing after president Saddam Hussein's government fell April 9. But many expressed ambivalence, or outright anger. The hostility ran especially deep among Sunni Muslims, who make up the neighborhood's majority. Along the streets patrolled by the soldiers, their suspicions ranged from the fate of Iraq's oil to a perceived invasion of their privacy.

To the Americans, this is "Sector 37 North," frequently marked as "hostile" on U.S. military maps of Baghdad. It is known for being a stronghold of Baath Party loyalists. Last week, on the airport highway that marks the southern boundary of the sector, a U.S. soldier died and three others were wounded when their Humvee struck a mine.

But soldiers on the patrol said they did not feel particularly threatened. "Basically, people are pretty friendly," Lt. Paul Clark, a Bravo Company officer from Baltimore, said. To residents, this is Yarmuk, a west Baghdad neighborhood of middle-class professionals, living in two-story adobe-style houses that would fit nicely into a wealthier corner of Albuquerque or Santa Fe, N.M. Its sentiments are still colored by its origins in the 1960s as a development to house military officers.

"When I see Americans, I feel like I'm looking at another country," said Zuheir Mahdi, 44, standing on a sidewalk enlivened by palm trees and red bougainvillea. "If the Americans want things to improve, things will improve. It's up to the Americans. They're the government."

Measures of Hostility

At about 10:20 a.m., it was 98 degrees when the patrol moved out through the concertina wire that protects their outpost and past two Bradley Fighting Vehicles parked out front. The patrol was configured so that one "fire team" of four soldiers was in front, and another in the back. In the middle, leading the patrol, was Staff Sgt. Nathaniel Haumschild, 26, of Stillwater, Minn., accompanied by the medic.

Just to their left was a mosque known for anti-American sermons. Capt. Gerd Schroeder, commander of Bravo Company, said that when he sent an interpreter to listen to last Friday's sermon, the theme of the day was, "if you're not killing the Americans and the Jew pigs, you're not a true Muslim."

The patrol turned right. Spec. Seneca Ratledge, the medic -- a talkative soldier from Riceville, Tenn., who said his Cherokee grandmother gave him his first name -- greeted the schoolchildren on the street. "What's up, playas?"

Haumschild's evaluation: "Maybe 10 percent are hostile. About 50 percent friendly. About 40 percent are indifferent." Residents gave different numbers -- at best, 50-50, and at worst, a significant majority holding hostile views. Sentiments often broke down along the religious cleavages that mark Iraq. Shiite residents hailed the Americans for ending Hussein's rule, which was particularly brutal toward their sect. They suspect the Baath Party lingers, ready to reemerge.

"An American dog is better than Saddam and his gangs," said Alaa Rudeini, as he chatted with a friend, Abdel-Razaq Abbas, along the sidewalk. Neither paused their conversation as the Americans passed, their neglect perhaps a sign of familiarity. Both praised the greater sense of security. One of their neighbors, Awatif Faraj Salih, whose 8-year-old daughter Rasul was among the children at the nearby Nablus Elementary School, feared what would happen if they departed.

"If the Americans left," she said, a white scarf draped over her head, "massacres would happen in Iraq -- between the tribes, between the parties and between the Sunnis and Shiites, of course."

Life along the route has gradually returned to a natural rhythm. Vendors hawked Pepsis and Miranda orange soda, and rickety stands offered sandals and fruit. To many Sunni residents, what remains unnatural is the occupation. It is a loaded word in Arabic, suggesting Israel's control of Palestinian lands or Britain's colonial rule of Iraq after World War I. "We are a Muslim country," said Ahmed Abdullah, a 70-year-old man dressed in a white kaffiyeh, or headdress. "We don't want anyone to rule us who's not from our country."

'Little Kids Tell Us a Lot'

At 10:50, the temperature was 99 degrees, and Sgt. Michael Callan, leader of one fire team, walked point. Callan, 30, of Dumfries, is in the Army, he said, "because I've always wanted an honorable job."

"Little kids tell us a lot," he said, walking at the head of the patrol. "They're not shy at all. A lot of times they'll point out UXO [unexploded ordnance] to us -- RPGs, mortar rounds, maybe stuff we fired that didn't go off." Callan stepped carefully around a discarded burlap bag on the street. "Could be mines," he explained.

The children were jubilant, crowding the soldiers and calling out "zain," or "good." One shouted that Hussein was "vile." Others echoed the concerns of their parents, including that the Americans intend to confiscate their guns. "Why do the Americans take our weapons?" Rami Athil, 12, asked a reporter, as the boy ran after the patrol. "Why? Iraqis use weapons to defend themselves, to defend their homes."

'Liberate Us From What?'

At 11:03, now 100 degrees, Pfc. Kasey Keeling, of Denton, Tex., walked second in the patrol, carrying the big M-249 squad automatic weapon, a machine gun. Behind his sunglasses, he looked back and forth, up and down.

"I scan the windows, rooftops, heavy brush, looking for anything out of the ordinary," he said. The most alarming indicator of danger? An absence of children. "There are always kids around," he said. "No kids, you start to wonder." There were no children around on 4th Street in Yarmuk, where sentiments were distinctly uneasy. Abdullah, standing with his neighbors, insisted he would fight the Americans. "They said they came to liberate us. Liberate us from what? They came and said they would free us. Free us from what?" he asked. "We have traditions, morals and customs. We are Arabs. We're different from the West."

As he watched Keeling and the others pass, he called Baghdad a fallen city, a hint of humiliation in his words. It was akin, he said, to the invasion in 1258 of Hulagu, the grandson of Genghis Khan, whose destruction of Baghdad ended its centuries of glory. The Americans, he said, let the National Library burn and permitted looters to ransack the National Museum of Antiquities. "Baghdad is the mother of Arab culture," he said, "and they want to wipe out our culture, absolutely."

'Protected by U.S. Soldiers'

At 11:30, it was 103 degrees as the patrol arrived at the Rami Institute for Autistic and Slow Learners, a house on a side street with a big lime tree in its walled front yard. On a green chalkboard, written in English and Arabic, was the message, "This building is protected by U.S. soldiers. We will use deadly force to protect this building."

Bravo Company is determined to help the school, in part because it has been attacked. People who don't like the school, Callan said, "break in, pop shots, terrorize them to get them to leave." The soldiers left their weapons stacked in the yard, under guard. "It scares the kids," he explained.

They also left their grim "game faces" outside. In the small school, they knelt and talked gently with the children, encouraging them to respond. Callan put his helmet on one child's head. He visited all five classrooms. They lingered for more than half an hour.

As the squad prepared to leave the school, Pvt. Ian Hanson, who had been standing guard out front, was having a playful debate with a local teenager. "I'm not a baby, you're a baby," said the 19-year-old from the Fox River town of Little Chute, Wis. "You're two years younger than me. I'm a long way from home. You're living at home."

The soldiers looked pleased with themselves. They liked helping the school. They admired its teachers, and their hearts went out to the children. But outside, neighbors took a very different view of the troops' visit to the women who run the school. "We're not against the presence of the school, we're against the presence of the Americans," said Saif Din, 23. "We don't want them here."

He and his friend, Mohammed Ahmed, 22, said they suspected the soldiers were having sex with the women inside. "Only God knows," Ahmed said. "I haven't seen it with my own eyes. But I've heard about things."

"We don't like it," said Din, wagging his finger. "We don't like it." For a moment, they debated the occupation. Electricity was better and looting had waned. But the phones still did not work, and public transportation was a mess. The Americans dissolved the Iraqi army, depriving hundreds of thousands of a salary. And the future? "The future is obscure," Ahmed said. "Their goals aren't clear."

"Their goals are clear," Din answered. "They're here to occupy us."

Invasion of Privacy

At 12:35, it was 106 degrees. Pfc. Anthony Roszko, 22, from the Bronx, said, "I prefer the day patrol. I like the kids. On night patrol, no one is out." An Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter clattered by to the east. "There are always some out" in recent days, Roszko noted. In a change of tactics over the last week, the Army began using helicopters extensively in Baghdad to increase the visibility of U.S. forces and provide surveillance for patrols on the ground.

But many Baghdad residents find the helicopter flights offensive. During the scorching summer months many sleep in the cooler open air on their roofs and regard the overhead presence as an invasion of privacy. "They are spying on us," Mohammed Salam, 17, said. It's one of a host of complaints heard in Yarmuk -- that the treads of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles are tearing up the pavement, that soldiers use expletives at checkpoints, that their rifles are at the ready as they walk the streets.

A school bus filled with teenage girls drove by. A dozen stuck their heads out the windows, waving and giggling. The troops maintained their even disposition, nodding politely but not engaging in any banter. Because none of the soldiers on patrol spoke Arabic, their communication with any Iraqis would be limited. But even this sort of thing irked residents.

"I say to them, 'Don't do this,' but they don't understand," Salam said. "Sometimes they think they're in America. They don't know our heritage." Salam, a lean Iraqi with the thin beginnings of a moustache, said he respects the West. Beethoven, Mozart and Yanni are his favorite composers, he said. He wants to study auto design and eventually work for Mercedes, BMW or "even an American company." He said he enjoys practicing his English with the soldiers. But he remains suspicious. "They said they came here to bring us freedom. I don't think so. Most of us think they came for our oil," he said.

'They Love Us' At 12:40, the patrol turned a corner a block from their temporary home. "I love it," Harris said of Army life. "Something different every day." The men passed the two green Bradleys and stepped through the base's concertina wire. A soldier greeted them with cold cans of strawberry and cola soda. They stripped off their helmets, flak jackets and the uniform jackets called "blouses" and set down their weapons. Some eagerly quizzed the reporters about what Iraqis along the route had said about them. The lieutenant announced that after two hours, they would go back on patrol. "They love us," concluded Ratledge, the medic.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.