BAGHDAD -- Staff Sgt. Glen Cunningham doesn't like the look of
it: three Iraqi men pulled off the side of the road, peering under the
hood of a car.
Cunningham, of North Kingstown, orders his platoon of Humvees to stop.
That morning, 10 miles south on this same dusty highway, an improvised
explosive device (IED) killed a New York MP.
Also that morning, one mile to the north, five IEDs were found buried in
the dirt along the roadside, all linked to trigger a chain explosion.
Cunningham, who has survived two IED attacks, gets out of his Humvee and
walks toward the men, pointing his M16. The men put up their hands.
Are these the IED culprits? Were they waiting to ambush the truck
convoys traveling to Baghdad or were they simply fixing their car?
Flanked by wide-open, dusty fields, the MPs are visible for miles. The
longer the MPs stay in one place, the more of a target they become. The
men tell the MPs' interpreter, Atheel Andrews from Chicago, that they
were traveling from Nasiriyah, in the south, to Baghdad when they got
lost.
An MP, searching the car, yells out. He's found an AK-47 clip in the
back seat. Two of the men hit the ground; one remains standing.
Cunningham, 43, pushes him onto the ground. "Get down, get down," shouts
Cunningham, a correctional officer at the Adult Correctional
Institutions. The man's hands are extended, his legs are spread and his
head is on the ground. Sand from the highway sticks to his sweaty face.
In the man's pocket, Cunningham finds a blue pack of cigarettes and
orange prayer beads.
A white, rusty van carrying five Iraqis passes. Two women in the back
seat smile at the men lying beneath the M16s.
The MPs find no weapons. The men are free to go. Each one hugs Andrews,
the interpreter. The men put their hands over their chests and bow their
heads at the MPs.
"It's our road, not their road," Cunningham says. "It has to be our road
for our survival."
The MPs roll on. About 100 yards south, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle marks
a drainage ditch where soldiers suspect there might be another IED.
Cunningham takes a detour through a dirt gap in median. He drives in the
farthest lane, against the flow of traffic, leaving six lanes of traffic
between the drainage ditch and his Humvee.
THE RHODE ISLAND National Guard is fighting two fronts in Iraq.
On one front, these largely part-time soldiers -- youth counselors,
police officers, production managers, teachers, and an advocate for the
homeless -- are hunting down insurgents.
On the other, they are trying to win over the Iraqi people, many of whom
shy away from the soldiers for fear of reprisals from the insurgents.
The two campaigns are related.
If the convoys cannot drive safely along the roads, then the
reconstruction effort stalls, the Iraqi population grows more alienated
and the insurgency grows bolder.
The Rhode Island Guard has been given the job of securing about 130
miles of highway that feeds into the Iraqi capital. The soldiersalso
patrol the neighborhoods on both sides of the highway.
The MPs are asked to be both soldiers and diplomats, in a world of
unpredictable danger, deception and mistrust. But there is also some
hope, however tenuous.
BACK AT the MPs' camp near Baghdad International Airport, Lt. Col. James
E. Keighley is expecting an important visitor.
The commander of the 118th Military Police Battalion, Keighley has
pushed back the cots in his cement "hooch" and installed a black leather
couch.
A sheik, who controls several villages and towns along the 118th's
sector of Highway 1, has agreed to his first face-to-face meeting with
Keighley. The sheik's family was given the land by a British officer,
when England pulled out of Iraq in the mid-20th century.
The family named his district Khashom Hillam, after the British soldier.
ndrews declined to give the sheik's name, saying he wanted to protect
his security.
A Fall River Police officer, Keighley, 49, wants to speak with the sheik
about helping rebuild a police station in his district. And Keighley is
prepared to pay contractors from the area with stacks of dollars the
military doles out for such projects. Keighley hopes the police station
will be manned by Iraqis who can help him deter the attacks on the
highway.
Keighley had arranged a previous meeting, but the sheik canceled at the
last minute.
Keighley sits in the shade of his cement home in a folding chair,
decorated with stars and stripes.
The morning sun reaches its peak. Flies buzz overhead. The sheik is 10
minutes late. At 11:40 a.m., Atheel Andrews, the 43-year-old interpreter
hired by the U.S. military, pulls up in a Humvee, wearing his
Army-issued flak jacket and kevlar helmet. He's an Assyrian Christian,
who grew up in Iraq and moved to Chicago in 1992. He's been working with
the National Guard since late June.
"He's not coming," Andrews tells Keighley.
A rumor had spread through the district that the sheik, a Sunni Muslim,
had invited the Americans to dinner at his house. "For now, for him to
meet with the colonel is not safe," he says.
Keighley, a stocky policeman, with fiery blue eyes, says: "I'm not happy
with him. I don't think the sheik takes good care of his people."
Andrews explains that the sheik fears reprisals, against himself and his
people. "You know those guys, they come with RPGs and they hit anybody,"
he says.
Andrews suggests that Keighley meet with the sheik's son. Keighley says
that unless father or son cooperates soon, he will spend the money in
another area.
"There are plenty of people that need it," he says later.
1ST SGT. Glen DeCecco of Cranston is spending his 43rd birthday, sitting
in the back of a Humvee in Baghdad with a shotgun pointed out the
window. It's his second tour in the Middle East. Like Cunningham and
Keighley, DeCecco was an MP during Desert Storm in 1991.
"I look at 9/11, and I think maybe we can clean this up so we don't have
to come back here, so our kids don't have to come back here."
DeCecco says the MPs are particularly suited for this kind of work.
Unlike the infantry, they are not quick to pull the trigger. His unit,
the 119th Military Police Company, spent about six months in Bosnia last
year.
A production manager at A.H. Manufacturing in Johnston, DeCecco says the
guardsmen try to act cordially to the Iraqis and not alienate them.
But in the end, MPs do not trust anyone. "It's better to be safe than
sorry," he says. On this afternoon, DeCecco helped Cunningham shake down
the three men at the car stop.
In the early morning, the unit nabbed two men on the highway with
several thousand rounds of ammunition. DeCecco says the unit is making
progress.
"You go into towns and they are waving at you," he says. "You can see
the people are willing to help you."
DeCecco has yet to find an unexploded IED or make any arrests related to
the device. Many IEDs are discovered after the blasts. Recently, the MPs
chased an Iraqi through a village off the highway.
They found him with wires and detonators. Keighley says the number of
IEDs detected in the Guard's area of control more than doubled from
August to September. They have already found a high number of them this
month.
OUT ON PATROL, the MPs rattle along the maze of dirt roads, bordering
the highway. Farmers wave from their irrigation ditches. A pickup truck,
filled with three men, their heads wrapped in the black-and-white
checkered kafias, bounces along in front of the MPs.
It's much safer on the dirt roads, than the highway. For the most part,
DeCecco says the insurgents will not kill their own people, especially
children.
"If you see children, you keep them close," he says. DeCecco, who used
to take care of foster children at his home in Cranston, hands out
orange, purple and brown Tootsie Pops to a group of boys gathered at a
dirt intersection.
The kids catch the candy and shout for more. But an older boy, off to
the side, waves his hands, back and forth. The MPs say the boy doesn't
want to be seen taking anything from the Americans.
AT CAMP Cavalaro, workers hammer nails into wooden shelves and plaster
holes in the roofs of this former antiaircraft post -- now the home of
the 118th's headquarters company. With the rainy season approaching, the
MPs are doing some last-minute renovations.
The unit has hired workers from Iraq to help them renovate. The
Qatar-based contractor, QIT, screens the workers and brings them to the
camp every morning.
Specialist Constantino Natale, a correctional officer at the Wyatt
Detention Center in Central Falls, watches the workers closely from
behind Oakley sunglasses.
One worker, Mohammed Adaili, 55, is a professional carpenter. But
another worker, a political science professor at Baghdad University,
wearing shiny leather shoes covered in saw dust, is having trouble.
Natale worries that the professor will hurt himself with the power saw.
"They would never make it in the unions back home," jokes Sgt. 1st Class
George Huddleston of Glocester. At first, Sgt. Jay Caetano says there
was a "buffer" between the workers and the National Guard. But with
time, the soldiers and locals have built up a trust, he says.
"You get to understand that there are goods and bads," says Caetano of
Seekonk.
When one of the workers needed new tires for his bucket-loader, the
battalion gave him the cash to buy them.
"Hopefully, [the Iraqis] go back to their town and say these are good
guys, not because they give us money, but because they are good guys,"
he says.
The least skilled worker hired by QIT earns $5 to $10 a day -- a hefty
salary in postwar Iraq. Others are paid up to $50 a day.
But according to an Army intelligence officer, an Iraqi can earn $300 to
$500 from the opposition for planting one IED.
STAFF SERGEANT Cunningham spent much of the summer in Fallujah with the
115th Military Police Company. There, the dangers were obvious:
firefights, rocket-propelled-grenade attacks, mortars.
In Baghdad, the dangers are deceptive. The National Guardsmen have
helped open a clinic for women and children and developed contacts in
the villages. Then, they find another IED on Highway 1.
"Sometimes, it feels like you are banging your head against the wall,"
he says. But Cunningham believes the U.S. forces are achieving the
long-term goals. "We are picking this country back up," he says.
On this gray, humid afternoon, Cunningham drives in the center lane of
Highway 1, as a precaution. He swerves around a crumpled metal can in
the roadway. As the Humvee passes, a passenger in the back seat leans
away from his door.
"You cringe every time you see something like that," says Cunningham.
Traffic is stopped ahead. There's a pile-up of green, red and orange
freight trucks. They've been there since the morning, when some MPs from
California discovered the five IEDs and blocked the road.
Cunningham pulls off onto a dirt road and into a village near a
tan-colored mosque. Andrews, the interpreter, wants to see a local
teacher about bringing clean water to the area.
The teacher, Khalid Rasheed, greets Andrews and the MPs. He tells them
he needs a water pipe extended to his village, but he can't get anyone
in the municipal water company to listen. The project will cost about
$14,000.
Andrews takes notes. Children swarm the Humvees. The MPs hand out candy,
pens and a football. Others guard the perimeter.
Khalid says he likes working with the Americans and doesn't worry about
reprisals.
"My relatives will back me up," he says. A crowd of men gathers around
him. When asked why others in his village will not cooperate with the
Americans, Khalid changes the subject. He's still in earshot of his
neighbors.
Andrews needs to make one more stop -- at a farm just outside the
airport gate. He promised the farmer, who is blind in one eye, a
flashlight to help him see at night. The farmer, carrying his baby son
wearing only a dirty fleece shirt and no pants, thanks Andrews.
Seeing the soldiers, the farmer's brother, Adil Hamid, walks over from a
nearby field. Adil complains that no one has jobs in Iraq and that he
can't get his license renewed in Baghdad because the government office
is closed. He says his cousin is in a comma after a U.S. tank smashed
into his car near Abu Ghraib.
When asked whether the Americans are improving the situation in Iraq,
Khalid says, "The picture is not clear."
Khalid asks Andrews if he can help him remove a sand mound from his
property. It was left over from the Iraqi army. Andrews takes more notes.
Cunningham said earlier in the day that he worries about the effect this
war will have on his platoon. One of his most optimistic soldiers has
become a pessimist, he says. A once easygoing sergeant has little
patience anymore. The Guard members rely on humor to defuse the constant
tension.
And they've learned one more thing, Cunningham says. In Iraq, "all we
can trust is each other."
Digital extra:
Recap previous Journal dispatches and photos featuring Rhode Island
National Guard military police units, post messages to the troops and
more, at:
http://www.projo.com/extra/2003/iraq/
