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Troops try to stop insurgents without alienating residents

Nov-28-2004 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

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BY KIRSTEN SCHARNBERG, Chicago Tribune

MOSUL, Iraq - (KRT) - Soldiers joke that the Iraqis see Capt. Bill Jacobson as something of a deity, an omniscient authority in desert fatigues who sits high above them judging whether they have sinned.

The scene in a poor, insurgent-plagued neighborhood of Mosul on Saturday night only added to that perception. Soldiers had rounded up more than 100 military-age men, and Jacobson stood atop an armored vehicle as the Iraqis were brought, one by one, to stand before him.

"Let that man go!" Jacobson would yell, with a dismissive wave, at the majority of the terrified men.

But for a select few, the lanky 31-year-old officer issued a less benevolent directive: "Detain that man. Cuff him."

The Iraqi men, some standing in their socks because their sandals had been lost when U.S. soldiers yanked them off the surrounding streets and into the lineup, were wide-eyed as they stared up at Jacobson when their turn for judgment came. What they did not know was that inside the vehicle, via a live video feed, a local informant was identifying those believed to be connected to the city's growing insurgency. Jacobson was issuing his seemingly arbitrary verdicts after getting instructions through an earpiece tucked under his helmet.

Things are not always as they appear in Mosul. For example, although U.S. soldiers are getting shot at far less frequently than they were a few weeks ago, the city's insurgency is rapidly gathering strength, resolve and traction.

With such regularity that troops have begun to joke that they are in the mortuary business as much as the soldiering business, the bodies of Iraqis killed by insurgents are found scattered throughout Mosul, sometimes with notes pinned to them saying that anyone seen working with the Americans or the new Iraqi government will share the same fate. The most recent count, including the bodies of four more men discovered Sunday morning, is nearly 70 victims in just over a week.

The murders are meant to intimidate the local populace - and they seem to have done that well. But in recent days, as the insurgents leave the sometimes-mutilated corpses in more and more public places, military commanders are starting to think the insurgents have miscalculated and gone too far. They say they believe Mosul's residents increasingly think they should turn against the insurgents, who in many cases may be their neighbors.

"We know a lot of people in Mosul don't like us and are much closer philosophically to the insurgents than to us," said Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla, whose troops from the Army's 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment occupy much of the city. "But we think that the killing has reached such a level that the majority of people are turning more in our direction. Where they once saw the mujahedeen as underdogs fighting the great Satan of America, now they see them as terrorists who must be stopped from destroying their city and nation and from killing their own."

Since the mass killings began a couple of weeks ago in Mosul, townspeople have been reluctant to identify the insurgents to U.S. forces. But Kurilla says that "the number of people coming forward with information in the past few days has been phenomenal."


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