Tough times for US forces in new Iraq

By Paul Wood BBC Middle East correspondent

US marines near Falluja face continued hostility from the locals

On the left of the little group of US marines was the new mosque they had paid for.

On the right was the village water pump they had repaired.

And ahead of them, hostile stares and shouted insults.

Echo Company had spent some $20,000 on "civil affairs" projects in this one tiny hamlet outside Falluja - more than most of the inhabitants could hope to see in a lifetime.

Yet just a few days before, they were attacked within sight of the village. A 155 mm artillery shell was placed beside the road and rigged to explode in their faces.

Volatile

It is in villages like this one that the success or failure of the new Iraq will be determined - and it is a pretty confusing picture.

Some of the men building the new mosque waved and smiled as they laid down bricks bought by the US taxpayer.

But as the Humvees pulled away, a jeering youth flipped a finger, egged on by his friends.

"I'll be seeing you, sweetheart," said a marine lieutenant with menacing irony, patting his M16.

"One minute they're smiling at you, then they're throwing stones at you," said Lance Corporal Michael Hodshire, exasperated.

First Sergeant Brent Graham said the all-out combat of Falluja in April had been simple compared to this.

The strength of the resistance in Falluja came as a surprise

"We're out here looking for an enemy who can blend into the population," he said.

"Out here you just don't know who's who. You're left wondering who's good and who's bad," he said.

Minutes earlier I had asked the local sheikh if the village supported the coalition or the insurgents.

My question abruptly halted his flowery rhetoric and expansive hand gestures.

"We are just simple farmers," he said, refusing to look me in the eye.

"We don't see anything."

'Scared for their lives'

Midday call to prayer sounded.

Two young men passed by. They had the full beards favoured by hardline Wahhabi Muslims.

They eyed the sheikh carefully and shot dirty looks at the marines, ignoring their polite "salam aleikums" [peace be upon you].

The sheikh's evasive response was a familiar one.

The marines are used to hearing it when they ask for help in tracking down what they call "anti-Iraqi forces".

"Do I think they know who does it? Maybe. They are probably scared for their lives," said Captain Bradley Weston.

He is the commanding officer of the marine unit I was staying with: Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Regiment, part of US Marines Expeditionary Force deployed around Falluja.

"Their biggest fear is that when we show up the bad guy shows up. They just want to get on with their lives," he said.

"We need to give the country back to the Iraqi people," he added.

'Hearts and minds'

In theory, that is literally what happened on Monday. At 1026, by US military timekeeping, America and Britain ceased to be the occupying powers.

Iraq regained its sovereignty.

But on Tuesday the US marines will still be patrolling the Iraqi countryside.

Security will still be the business of the 160,000 coalition troops in Iraq.

The Iraqi police force have been targeted by militants

The marines I stayed with certainly thought the Iraqi police and civil defence forces were not up to the job.

The success of the coalition's continuing military mission will depend on winning Iraqi "hearts and minds".

It is a difficult job when Iraqis turn on their televisions at night to see news of US air strikes on targets inside Falluja itself, with ensuing civilian casualties.

'Welcome'

Still, the US marines have been using the tribal system, with some successes.

At another village we met Sheikh Ahman (his full name is withheld for security reasons).

The sheikh said that if the marines needed men to fight, men from his tribe of 300 families would volunteer.

"If I see any Mujahedeen, I will catch him and I will bring him to the marines," he said.

"We lose many things now because of what they [the foreign fighters] are doing: houses destroyed, cars burned."

Water was bubbling out of an irrigation pipe nearby - thanks to another civil affairs project the marines had funded.

The sheikh had also just found the building materials to put up a new house on his land - a coincidence the young marine officer with me found suspicious, but passed over.

The sheikh's attitude was partly thanks to the goodwill the marines have bought with the tens of millions of dollars they have spent in the villages around Falluja.

But he also forcefully rejected the insurgents' insistence that it is a patriotic and religious duty to expel "infidels" from the Muslim soil of Iraq.

"All religions are welcome here," he said, inviting the marines to join him in a chilled Pepsi as they poured sweat under the baking sun.

'New phase in long war'

Such friends of coalition forces will now be ruthlessly targeted by the insurgents.

The struggle in Iraq looks less like resistance to a foreign occupation than an incipient civil war - with the Americans backing one faction.

The divided loyalties may extend right down to the level of individual villages - like the one we visited with its mixed signals towards the marines, of cautious acceptance and open hostility.

The fall of Baghdad on 9 April did not mean the end of the conflict; neither does the handover of sovereignty.

Iraq has simply entered a new phase in a long war.