Stryker Brigade News

"The town is secure, the routes are open, the police are on the corners, the Iraqi National Guard is doing joint patrols with the police, and our forces have taken on a support role," Lt. Col. Kevin Hyneman said in an interview.

"It's regrettable that an operation like this was required, and there were people that had to leave their homes, and you never want that to have to happen," he said. "But now they're coming back."

Stryker troops have been operating in and around Tal Afar since they arrived in northern Iraq in late December. It lies along the major east-west highway that connects Mosul, the nation's second-largest city, with Syria.

It's where the brigade lost its first soldier to hostile fire, Spc. Michael Merila, who was killed by a roadside bomb Feb. 16.

The brigade trains Iraqi soldiers at a base southwest of the city, which is also headquarters for Stryker troops stationed farther west in Sinjar and at the Syrian border.

The Strykers used to have an outpost inside Tal Afar itself - it was called Rock Base, after the nickname of the infantry company that lived there. Troops conducted foot patrols around the city and worked daily with local police and government officials.

But Stryker troops pulled out of Rock Base around the time the U.S. returned sovereignty to the Iraqis in June. Attacks on Iraqi government and U.S. convoys grew more frequent after that, to the point lately that they were fired on virtually every time they passed through the city, Hyneman said.

Things came to a head Sept. 4 when soldiers conducted raids to kill or capture what U.S. officials described as a known terrorist cell in Tal Afar. Insurgents forced down a U.S helicopter in the middle of the city.

Stryker troops fought off insurgents for more than five hours while they rescued the injured pilots and loaded the aircraft onto a flatbed truck. A Stryker vehicle was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade and had to be towed away.

By Sept. 9, according to brigade officials and published reports, the Strykers amassed some 2,000 troops and more than 140 Stryker vehicles around the city. U.S. and Iraqi forces allowed no one in. Commanders called in air strikes to hit insurgent strong points and ground troops engaged in heavy fighting.

Early Sunday, Stryker troops made their final push into the city center and met with almost no resistance, according to news accounts.

Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of U.S. troops in northern Iraq with the Fort Lewis-based Task Force Olympia, told the Washington Post the enemy fighters either slipped away, or the Stryker troops killed more of them than they first thought.

Brigade officials put the number of enemy dead at 104; they estimated there were between 200 and 300 fighters in the city.

Media reports of the number of civilians killed and wounded in the fighting have varied. Iraqi hospital officials told reporters there were at least 40 killed and dozens more wounded.

Hyneman said U.S. forces made every effort to avoid injuring the innocent. He said commanders used snipers and precision weapons to target insurgents fighting in or near mosques and schools.

"These guys were hiding under every bit of shelter, both physical and symbolic, that you could think of," Hyneman said. "We didn't go at it heavy-handed. We did it with just enough to destroy these knuckleheads in these houses, in these mosques."

Hyneman said U.S. and Iraqi authorities would work up a plan to restore damaged buildings and get the city working again.

Tal Afar residents were quoted in news stories as saying the insurgents were Sunni Arabs from other parts of Iraq and from Syria. A Chicago Tribune report Tuesday quoted Stryker intelligence officers as saying the fighters were part of the network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian with al-Qaida links who is believed to lead much of the insurgency in Iraq.

Meantime, the London Independent quoted Iraqi authorities who portrayed the conflict as a case of the American occupiers getting caught up between age-old rivalries between northern Iraq's ethnic Kurds and Turkmen. Tal Afar is home to a large number of Turkmen.

It's a concern that seemed to be shared by the Turkish government, which reportedly threatened to withdraw its cooperation in Iraq if U.S. forces failed to conclude operations at Tal Afar.

The Turkish military has liaison officers that work daily with the Task Force Olympia command staff in Mosul.

"They expressed some concerns about the Turkmen that are in there, and they've got a right to do that," Hyneman said. "We assured them we are not targeting any particular cultural group there; we are targeting the criminals."

Whatever the case, it's a fight that Stryker troops - now less than two months from coming home - are glad to have behind them.

"I've been in Samarra, my battalion has been in Najaf, we've broken through barricades in Baghdad," Lt. Col. Karl Reed, commander of the brigade's 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, told the Chicago Tribune. "This was the most intense firefight I've ever been in (in) my career."

Michael Gilbert: 253-597-8921
mike.gilbert@mail.tribnet.com