Brute force isn't always a necessity during searches
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
KIRKUK, Iraq — Not every house search for weapons or insurgents — and there are many of them conducted by U.S. forces — requires a SWAT-team, bust-down-the-door approach.
Sgt. Patrick Gipson, left, and Staff Sgt Juan Vargas peer out a window during a raid on a house in Kirkuk. In cases of routine checks, many Iraqis agree to room-by-room searches, with a resigned understanding that a war against insurgency is still being waged.
Often with routine checks, U.S. soldiers ask if they can come in.
Many Iraqis in this northern city agree to the room-by-room searches, sometimes offering U.S. soldiers tea, and with a resigned understanding that a war against insurgency still is being waged.
"Ninety percent of your missions will go like this," said 1st Lt. Joshua Gaspard, a platoon leader with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, which parachuted into northern Iraq at the start of the war and has been in Kirkuk for more than 10 months.
"It's not (always) run your fist through the door, run your Humvee through the gate."
On a "cordon and search" this week in the southwest sector of the city, three infantry companies from the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment out of Schofield Barracks and 173rd counterparts based in Italy secured entire blocks in Kirkuk.
Charlie Company is responsible for the largely Arab southwest section of the city.
Clues from conversations
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Often, talking with Iraqis will turn up some information, and on this day, soldiers ask about rumors of a dump truck reportedly being outfitted with an SA-7 missile launcher.
Iraqi children follow Pvt. Adam Nordmoe as he keeps guard on a street in Kirkuk. Many children wave and smile at soldiers.
"Generally, it's a permissive search and to maintain a presence in the neighborhood and glean intelligence from neighbors," said Capt. Bill Venable, Charlie Company's commander.
On foot, and with Humvees with heavily armed soldiers guarding intersections, Capt. Bill Bundy, commander of B Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment with the 173rd, stops to talk with a teenage boy and young man outside a mustard-colored house with a walled front courtyard belonging to a Kurdish family.
Everywhere American soldiers go, Iraqis stop and stare. Children, many in pink or orange plastic slippers, wave and smile.
"Is this your house? How are things going in the neighborhood? Quiet?" Bundy asks.
The group of about five soldiers is invited inside and offered tea by Bahjat Sadulla Husain, 60, a bearded man in a black leather jacket who works in the market. His son has a shop in the garage.
"Who are the people not happy with us?" Bundy asks through an interpreter who accompanies the soldiers.
"We would like you to stay with us," Husain replies in Arabic. "If you go they will kill us maybe. There are some guys — they don't work. Criminals."
Bundy also asks if the man has seen any evidence of Saudis or Jordanians coming in. Foreign influence has been backing insurgents, he says.
The interpreter says Husain knows of police detaining a Yemeni.
Husain tells the soldiers "the circumstances are getting better day after day," but there are still no street lights at night.
'Arabization' of Kirkuk
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The section of Kirkuk the soldiers are in is middle class, but trash is everywhere and raw sewage flows down the dirt-and-gravel street.
Staff Sgt. Christopher Smith waits at the front gate in a search by the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment and the 173rd Airborne Brigade.
Half-built houses are testament to Saddam Hussein's "Arabization" of Kirkuk, the center of Kurdish identity, in which Arabs were moved in and Kurds forced out.
Saddam gave thousands of Arabs $10,000 each to build homes. Many started building, kept the money and moved back south.
At another home, three men are temporarily bound with flex-cuffs, hands behind their back, and sacks placed over their heads because they lied about having weapons in the house.
It's the strong arm of the law on display. Iraqis can have weapons such as an AK-47 assault rifle for protection, but soldiers want to be told about them.
No truck with a missile launcher is found, but explosives have been found in the neighborhood before.
Bundy points out a two-story house where C4 plastic explosive was found in a coal bag under a water tank on the roof. At the time of the discovery, an informant told the soldiers three insurgents with rocket-propelled grenades were waiting in the neighborhood in ambush. Four tanks, F-15 fighters and helicopters soon arrived, but there was no fire.
Elsewhere in the city, a few shots are fired at a checkpoint with another search group of Schofield soldiers, but no one is injured. There is no gunfire in the southwest sector.
"This is a success story now," said 1st Sgt. Richard Weik, a 503rd soldier who carries a wooden-handled tomahawk in his belt. "We had a lot of firefights here. Now it's kind of peaceful. We built a school."
