Breaking Bread

A humanitarian mission near Baghdad shows the intense complexity of the conflict, both bad and good.

BAGHDAD,

"The Army calls it 'consequence management'," says Capt. Jeff Davis, a reservist from New York City. "We've been searching a lot of houses in the area -- finding [weapons] caches. It's somewhat disruptive, so we want to go back in with food, school supplies; make sure everyone is OK."

But on the way one of the Humvees in the convoy blows a radiator hose. Steam begins spewing from the engine. The driver pulls over and lifts the hood. The image of a smoking Humvee seems ominous, too reminiscent of the deadly insurgent tactic of roadside bombs. This, luckily, is just a mechanical problem. Still, it slows the momentum for the morning's mission. The Humvee with engine problems is towed by another back to Camp Stryker near Baghdad International Airport.

Davis says these humanitarian assistance missions are as much about acclimating the troops to the Iraqis as they are about the "winning hearts and minds" cliché.

"It helps these guys to learn how to be less confrontational," Davis says. "It's about getting them to interact with the Iraqis in a positive way -- helping them, bringing gifts -- rather than just kicking in doors and searching their houses."

Some soldiers don't have to be taught. At the village of Al Assad, 23-year-old Spc. Paul Wilkes of Eau Claire, Wis. is chatting with a group of children in Arabic. He asks their names, then points to his name tag and says his.

"Sidiki," he tells them. "Friend." And the good-natured Wilkes is not just going through the motions here.

"I love these kinds of missions," he says, smiling broadly. "I tell the guys who are here for the first time that they need to talk to the people, get them to like you. We don't want them to be scared of us."

Wilkes spent his first tour of Iraq with the 101st Airborne in the northern city of Mosul. There Gen. David Petraeus made winning hearts and minds of the Iraqis the mantra of his division. He drilled it into his commanders from battalions to platoons that they needed to listen to Iraqi concerns and act on them.

The critical component of his strategic plan in the north was to get utilities up and running simultaneously with efforts to make the area secure. The initial results were touted as the biggest post-war success story in Iraq. Residents were active participants in their own sustainability rather than part of a military guardianship.

For a while, Mosul was more peaceful than many other parts of Iraq. But some theorize Mosul's success soon made it a target for an aggressive campaign of insurgent violence. The purpose, according to some experts, was to intimidate the local population from participating in coalition-sponsored post-war programs. Soon violence in Mosul rivaled even that in the so-called Sunni Triangle.

Still, U.S. military planners see the strategy as essential to future success in stabilizing Iraq.

Meanwhile, Wilkes is giving away U.S. coins to the Iraqi children.

"When I was home in between deployments I saved up all this change in a big bag. I knew these kids would go nuts for it," he says.

Wilkes also says his mother sends him large bags of candy to give away to the children as well. Unlike some of the other soldiers, Wilkes says he wanted to come back to Iraq, even though he just got married four months ago.

"It's hard that way," he says, "but my wife works for Big Brothers Big Sisters. That's how she gives back. I feel like this is the way I give back."

But Wilkes says in this tour of duty he doesn't feel like the people around Baghdad have warmed up to them as much as they had in Mosul.

While Wilkes talks with the children, Davis and some of the other civil affairs officers are talking with men from the villages after giving them bags of grain, cooking oil and some school supplies for their children.

They're asking the Iraqis about insurgent activity in the area. The men give conflicting stories about men in uniforms -- U.S. soldiers, they say -- driving by in a GMC truck and shooting their weapons.

Davis shakes his head, telling the unit's sergeant major what the men told him.

"I told them the U.S. military doesn't use 'non-tactical' or civilian vehicles," he says. He seems frustrated by the story and that the men keep telling him the local sheikh, or village leader, is dead.

"They always do that," Davis says, "because they think we're going to start some kind of trouble with him."

Davis moves on to another group of villagers, dropping his push for information and doing what he says is a 'SWEAT assessment' -- the acronym for sewer, water, electricity, academics and trash -- seeing if the people are getting these basic needs met. One of the other officers takes notes as a woman from the village says they haven't had electricity for two days.

Another complains of a sore on her leg; a man complains of a rash on his neck. Davis has his medic look at them both, handing out ointments and some advice through a military interpreter.

The team drives to another village about a kilometer away and is met with a more hostile attitude. An old man tells his children not to accept anything from the soldiers.

"Allah," he says, "gives us everything we need. I'm a very rich man."

The man's wife is even less receptive. She walks up to the soldiers, arms crossed, scowl on her face. She repeats they don't want anything, but Davis is now clearly irritated. He tells the interpreter, Joseph, to tell them the soldiers are going to leave a box of school supplies anyway, and a soldier drops it on the ground in front of them. The woman waves her hand dismissively and walks back to her house.

"OK, let's search it," says Davis, pointing at one of the two houses on the property. The soldiers quickly shift roles from bearing gifts to sweeping through the rooms, looking for contraband. They find an AK-47 with two magazines of ammunition (each house is allowed one rifle or handgun and a clip of ammunition). The soldiers take the second magazine from the house.

As Davis and his team prepare to leave, the old man is berating Joseph, the interpreter, whose face is concealed by a brown scarf to protect his identity. I ask him what the old man is saying.

"He's saying [U.S. soldiers] are bad guys," says Joseph, "and he's calling me a traitor for working with them. I tell him that he cannot talk to me like that."

The civil affairs team makes one more stop, a house where a woman dressed in black and her young children are cleaning the dishes outside after lunch. The woman and children just stare as a stocky soldier carries a large bag of lentils and props it in her doorway.

Then other soldier brings other foodstuffs, everything that is left in the Humvees: four large cans of cooking oil, six packages of dried noodles, cookies, dozens of jars of jams. Then others bring out teddy bears and hand them out to the children.

The woman still has not said anything. I ask Joseph if there's a problem. No, he tells me, she is overwhelmed -- she cannot find the words to express her gratitude.

Finally, when she does speak, she says her name is Amona Tememy and her husband was killed in a bombing during the 2003 invasion. He was on duty as a night guard in the nearby school when something struck the building. She says she doesn't know if it was a coalition bomb or the Iraqi army firing back.

She says she has four children and no money, relying on the neighbors to help her feed her family. She is so moved by the gifts of food that she invites the soldiers to stay for lunch. Davis politely declines, but she sends one of her daughters into the house with some instructions.

The girl comes back out holding dozens of round pieces of fresh, flat bread -- still hot from the oven. Amona makes Davis take it all. He accepts graciously, passing the bread -- the size and shape of large pizza crusts -- to his unit.

Gunners in Humvee turrets, drivers too, tear off pieces and gobble it down. Pretty soon everyone in the unit is eating the warm, chewy bread -- happy it seems, to share this part of Iraq -- a taste for the moment, less bitter than the war.

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