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Showing the flag

Oct- 6-2006 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

By Margaret Friedenauer

BAGHDAD–Pfc. Michael Hoyt of Texas had a simple answer when asked what was so important about the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team that it be sent to the Iraqi capital, the site of heavy sectarian violence.

He rapped his knuckles on the roof of the Stryker vehicle he and his fellow scouts from the 4-14 Cavalry were riding in. The Strykers are a show of force by their mere presence.

Most Baghdad residents, unless they had traveled to Mosul or Rawah in the last few years, had not seen a Stryker vehicle until the 172nd arrived in the city last month. On Thursday, the cavalry made an impression on locals hoping to feel safer in their neighborhoods, some which haven’t seen the presence of multinational forces for months.

A troop of the 4-14 began its morning Thursday on and around Haifa Street, long considered one of the more dangerous main routes in the city. It’s an area of steady traffic, date palms and tall apartment complexes offering any number of vantage points for snipers, the prime source of attacks on coalition forces in Baghdad.

The neighborhood for months has been under the control of the Iraqi security forces, said Capt. Michael Eberhart, commander of this troop, which carries the nickname Assassin Troop.

But now, even many of the Iraqi Army and police are afraid of the violence in the area. Eberhart said his troop’s mission is to determine who’s responsible for the violence and to act as a deterrent. But curbing the ongoing strife between Sunni and Shiite is difficult, he said, because it consists mostly of retaliatory acts.

“It’s just a never-ending cycle,” he said.

Thursday, one of Eberhart’s platoons, headed by 2nd Lt. Mateo Gross and Sgt. 1st Class Curlee Kelley and consisting of four Stryker vehicles, patrolled an area several blocks from Haifa Street accompanied by Iraqi police. The officers joked with the U.S. soldiers as they got out and mingled with the crowd, seemingly at ease with the soldiers nearby. But Gross took charge of questioning local shop owners about the neighborhood violence.

The biggest challenge for the cavalry scouts is gaining the trust and confidence of residents in the area. While in Rawah and Mosul in the last year, soldiers were able to foster communication with residents over longer periods of time to get an idea of which people were dangerous and who could help the soldiers with information about violence.

As Hoyt, the private from Texas, said of Rawah, “We knew the people that blew us up.”

Now, Gross and the other soldiers have to learn a new area in a new town and in a far shorter period of time. And it’s difficult to get a handle on just how much goes on in this area until the soldiers got out to talk with people...


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