Lost in Translation

Marines try finesse, not just firepower, in efforts to map the insurgency.

SAQLAWIYAH,

While he chats with an Iraqi man, members of his platoon notify him in his radio earphone that they have just found a site for a mortar tube in the man's house.

 Alica will keep talking like nothing is wrong right up until the moment when his men zip tie the man's hands and lead him away.

"It's all about keeping them calm," he says. "If the women or kids see this they might start crying, and that could draw other people out into the streets."

Alica and his team are searching houses in a suburb of Fallujah called Saqlawiyah. It has been a year since the pivotal battle to retake Fallujah from insurgents, and coalition forces and the Iraqi government are concerned that satellite towns like Saqlawiyah can become feeder points to move weapons and fighters back into the city.

The fact that American patrols inside Fallujah have been targets of six grenade attacks in as many days in the past several weeks reminded local Marine commanders of the city's potential volatility.

These Marines of Golf Company, 2nd Platoon, 1st Squad move through a landscape that is more reminiscent of the verdant green of Vietnam than the dusty brown of Iraq.

Saqlawiyah is an agricultural community, rich with date palms and grain fields watered through an elaborate open irrigation system fed from the Euphrates River.

As the Marines walk along pathways next to an irrigation canal, cows freeze in their tracks until they pass.

This platoon has men -- like 21-year-old Cpl. Marshal Fugate -- who are on their third deployment to Iraq. For Fugate, the first was for the initial invasion of Iraq, the second was a stint in Baghdad. And now, he's in Saqlawiyah.

"I'll go wherever they want to send me, but I'm getting out when my contract is up. I need to be able to keep a girlfriend for more than three months," he laughs. 

As they move from house to house they joke with each other, like other young men not too far out of high school. Fugate and another Marine, Lance Cpl. Brett Velardi, address each other as "Ike" and "Tina" -- as in Ike and Tina Turner of Motown fame.

 "We mix it up," says Velardi. "Tomorrow I'll probably be 'Jean Claude Van Damme'."

They talk about food they miss, pizza and Taco Bell. "Oh, man -- I would love a crunchy cheese Gordita," one says while moving down a dirt path that crosses between neighborhoods.

Despite their joking around, the Marines conduct their searches professionally, each one making the effort to acknowledge the inhabitants of the households with the traditional greeting of "Salam" (peace). But for a few Marines, it masks a thinly veiled contempt, a contempt they know must be kept in check.

It's not always an easy task in an environment often openly hostile to them. As the Marines move through the town, an imam from a local mosque uses loudspeakers to warn the townspeople the Marines are coming, telling them they must continue to resist the occupation. "We can never live in peace," his voice echoes from the mosque minaret, "while the occupiers are in our midst."

The Marines are thorough, rooting through dressers, cabinets and rooftops. They scrutinize photographs they find in houses against a photocopy of suspects' faces they carry with them.

All these infantry Marines -- grunts -- know they have now become more than just instruments of lethal firepower. They are also critical tools of counterinsurgency.

Almost everything that happens here, from vehicle checkpoints to household searches, has a subtext. What secrets can be gleaned? What will the Marines find or learn that will help their commanders draw an accurate map of the insurgency?

 On the rooftop of another house, Velardi digs through a pile of hardware.

"Wow, what do we have here?" he says dramatically, pulling out the lower, tail fin portion of a 120mm mortar minus the explosive head.

"First time I ever seen one out in the open like that," he says.

The owner of the house, a tall man with a white kaffiyeh and a confident, resonant voice, says he found it the garden after a firefight between insurgents and Marines a few months ago. He kept it to use as a hammer. Alica thinks the story sounds fishy enough to take the man in for more questioning.

The Marines photograph him holding the mortar fins, then handcuff him and place a pair of goggles over his eyes that have been blacked out with duct tape.

The Marines continue these kinds of searches for the rest of the day, but without any significant finds. They do have some encounters that make them pause for a moment.

They stop a car driven by a well-dressed middle-aged man who speaks English fairly well.

The man is polite but a little annoyed while squad leader Cpl. Joshua Jones examines his identity card.

"Why do you not speak Arabic," the man asks. "I am in my own country and I am speaking English to you, but you do not speak Arabic."

Jones just continues looking at the ID.

At the house where the mortar site was found the Iraqi man's 14-year-old son has come out into the street and asks Alica where his father is. He has a look of fear and confusion on his face.

Alica points at the armored truck. "He's going to come back with us," he says in English.

The boy raises both hands at shoulder level, wordlessly asking, "Why?" The sergeant explains they just want to talk with him. The boy's head darts back and forth searching for his father. It seems he's not certain whether he wants to shout out in anger or to cry. Instead he just turns his back on the Marines and waits until they are gone.

After being questioned back at the Marine base, the boy's father is released within an hour of being detained. The large Iraqi man in the white kaffiyeh is also released after questioning.

Apparently neither man is much help in adding lines to the map of the insurgency being drafted by grunts moving house to house in a slow and painstaking process; it's a process that will continue, Marine commanders say, until they know everything they need to know to bring the insurgency to an end.

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