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The following article from Time magazine focuses on recent operations in the Diyala province. The Strykers are only mentioned briefly.
The insurgents took control of the Diyala River Valley outside Baqubah almost as soon as the Americans deployed elsewhere in Iraq. That was back in November 2006. The streets of Diyala province then became deadlier than ever, as the string of placid farming hamlets nestled among dense palm groves shuddered with violence. The province and its capital, Baqubah, which lies 30 miles north of Baghdad, unraveled. The once mixed villages have become sectarian enclaves; banks, stores and markets have shut down for fear of murder and bloodshed. But at the end of February, the U.S. began patrolling the valley again, and on March 24 America struck back with force. The first target: the insurgents' safe haven of Qubah, a village on the edge of the river valley.
The attack opened at 4 a.m. when seven Chinooks, four Black Hawks and two Apache gunships rose as one from the U.S. forward operating base and descended on Qubah. At the same time, a convoy of humvees and Bradleys rumbled toward the action. More than 200 troops emerged from the choppers at the edge of Qubah, and the Apaches began strafing targeted insurgent positions. Street fights broke out as insurgents caught sight of the Americans. Qubah was largely secured not long after daybreak, with U.S. soldiers marking numbers on the necks of men and hands of women to keep track of residents during lockdown. Some 16 insurgents lay dead, but the bloodshed would continue through Sunday. The Apaches would kill 12 more suspected insurgents after some of them were seen triggering roadside bombs against a U.S. convoy. As dusk settled, another bomb exploded next to a parked humvee, killing four U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi child.
The Bush Administration's buildup of U.S. forces in Baghdad has yielded some tentatively encouraging results: sectarian violence in the capital has decreased in the past month, and some displaced residents have started to return home. But in places like Diyala, the surge is having the opposite effect. The increased U.S. presence in Baghdad has pushed many Sunni and Shi'ite fighters out of the city into areas where they have found roles in ongoing battles, launched new assaults on U.S. and Iraqi troops and infected the civilian population with sectarian hate. Colonel David Sutherland, commander of U.S. forces in Diyala province, says small-arms attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces there rose from 33 in July to 98 in February. Last July had just three suicide bombings in the province; this month there were five in one week, including one at a U.S. patrol base in the valley that killed one soldier and wounded 16 others. On certain streets in Buhriz, one of the worst villages in Diyala, U.S. forces face storms of mortars and shoulder-fired rockets from Sunni insurgents intent on turning it into the next Fallujah or Ramadi. Major Jeremy Siegrist, a cavalry commander working with a Stryker battalion, says more than 20 soldiers from his battalion of 800 men and women have died fighting in the city. "We've had a very rough couple of months," he says.
It wasn't always this way. When U.S. Captain Mike Few was stationed outside Baqubah in November, tensions between Shi'ites, who make up 30% of the population of Diyala, and Sunnis were being held in check by tribal leaders. "It was manageable in the beginning," says Few. "The sheiks were working it out." But as the U.S. began shifting military resources to Baghdad, sectarian tensions erupted. Late last year the largely Shi'ite government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki choked off supplies of food and fuel to the predominantly Sunni province. Tribal violence, which has long been a source of unrest, intensified as resources dwindled. Sunni insurgents who had gathered in the area under the banner of Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, killed by U.S. forces near Baqubah last June, launched a campaign to exterminate Shi'ites, who retaliated in kind. As in Baghdad, kidnappings and gruesome murders have become everyday fare. [...]
The article continues...