When US civilian authorities were rooting out Saddam Hussein loyalists, Colonel Dana Pittard recruited 41 of them as advisers and encouraged them to stay in contact with the very insurgents who were fighting his men.
Discovering that a respected Muslim cleric had been in prison for 10 months, Pittard and a small contingent helicoptered 480km to the lockup in full battle gear, and confronted military police guards, demanding that they free him.
PHOTO: AFP
"We made it very clear we wouldn't leave without him," Pittard said. Otherwise, he added jokingly: "I think we would have kidnapped him."
Pittard, commander of an American infantry brigade in the once insurgency-rife province of Diyala, is outspoken and uses tactics that don't always go by the textbook. But he believes they have produced a "recipe for success" at Baghdad's vital northern gateway.
It includes everything from driving wedges between rebel factions to forbidding his troops to be rude to Arabs.
A Harvard-educated military aide to former US President Bill Clinton, the colonel from El Paso, Texas, also believes that contrary to what some military analysts think, a conventional US Army unit with the right training, tactics and mind-set can defeat the rebellion.
While Pittard and others acknowledge the insurgency remains active and could again worsen, he points to evidence of a sharp decrease in attacks in the largely agricultural region of some 1.7 million people.
Roadside and car bombings, while still a serious threat to his 6,000 troops, fell 60 percent from their June peak while direct attacks plummeted by 85 percent, according to the military. As mortar and rocket strikes on Camp Warhorse, headquarters of Pittard's Third Brigade, First Infantry Division, have subsided, body armor no longer has to be worn at all times and outdoor volleyball and basketball courts have come into use.
Pittard, 45, believes it's important to project toughness.
"The fact that we allowed ourselves to pull out of Fallujah was a mistake," he says, referring to the insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad. To prevent any such backsliding in his territory, Pittard has troops continuously stationed inside Baqouba, the provincial capital.
"We don't allow even the slightest sign of open resistance," he said.
When the Diyala province town of Buhriz flared up over the summer, Pittard threatened to destroy it and a sizable US-Iraqi force went in to kill or wound some 50 insurgents. But at the same critical moment -- as leaflets circulated demanding U.S. troops stay out -- Pittard drove into the center of town, held a news conference for Iraqi media and asked: "What do you need in Buhriz?"
"We realize we can kill the enemy 'til kingdom come and still not be successful," Pittard says. "You need a full-spectrum, balanced approach ... the right balance between lethal and non-lethal action."
Pittard says his staff studies counter-insurgencies going back to the 1899-1902 Philippine Insurrection and holds regular "free-thinking" sessions during which anyone, regardless of rank, can come up with ideas.
Crucial, he says, was the nine months the brigade spent as peacekeepers in Kosovo not long before coming to Iraq in March.
"I think we got to know how important it was to relate to people, and how to separate the bad guys from the population," he says. "We have not scooped up people in a big net to find the rotten fish."
"We deconstruct who is who," he said. "If a guy feels he's a nationalist fighting the occupier of his homeland we can deal with that. It's the hard core that has to be killed or captured."
Not long after the Iraqi national elections planned for January, the brigade is scheduled to leave Iraq and the replacement unit may pursue other tactics. A Western civilian official, interviewed on condition of anonymity, speaks positively about Pittard's overall approach, but cautions that the successes in Diyala may prove only momentary.
And while the insurgents appear to have lost ground in Diyala, Pittard's intelligence officer, Major Kreg Schnell, says 13 to 15 cells are still operating and elusive.
A unit can be just "three men with a rocket launcher on a pickup truck," he says, and Diyala's unemployment rate of up to 70 percent among males makes it fertile recruiting ground.
On Saturday, busloads of about 50 Iraqi soldiers heading home on leave were ambushed and killed execution-style by insurgents in eastern Diyala province in an attack the Iraqi government believes was a set up.
In his favor, Pittard says, is a solid provincial governor and police chief, US$560,000 for weapons buybacks and an amnesty program which Assistant Governor Ghassan Abass Jassim says has attracted more than 400 militants.
Jassim claims the province has become the safest in central Iraq.
"In the future maybe there will be zero terrorists in Diyala, especially as projects that bring more employment come on stream," he said.
Ex-generals and colonels, who Pittard says had been fired in "a rabid de-Nazification campaign," now sit on a Military Advisory Committee and are encouraged to negotiate with the insurgents. The Americans pay them a salary of US$250 a month.
The gamble, Pittard says, is paying off. He says the advisers have weakened links between the hardcore fighters and less militant rebels. Some of the rebels were once soldiers under the command of the officers-turned-advisers and still respect them, and have persuaded several others to surrender.
An insurgent leader, Ahmed Hamid Jassim, recently laid down his weapons and pledged in writing to the committee he wouldn't take them up again, Pittard said.
"If he breaks his promise, they'll probably kill him," he said.
Pittard spends up to three days a week with Iraqis, expanding their security forces and development projects. He's clearly displeased with the funding coming from Washington.
"If people don't see progress right there in their villages, they will turn," he says.
Pittard doesn't rule out that such a turnabout may occur, but says: "I think we do have irreversible momentum."
Then he adds: "We're staking our reputation that elections will go well in Baqouba."
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