Melting into the City

By Bobby Ghosh/Baghdad

It looks a little spooky out here," Captain Jon Stubbs shouts above the roar of his humvee as he leads two platoons of the 3rd Battalion of the 153rd Infantry Regiment on a patrol through the heart of Adhamiya, Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhood. The cause of Stubbs' concern: it's only 7:30 p.m., and the streets around Abu Hanifa Mosque are empty and dark. "This place is usually buzzing like downtown Manhattan late into the night," says Stubbs, 32, a native of Searcy, Ark. "If people have gone home this early, they must know something nasty is about to happen."

So Stubbs orders up a show of force--"to reassure the good guys and warn the bad guys." He commands his platoons to dismount and walk through the warren of trash-strewn alleyways around the mosque, starting with the most dangerous of them all, a street the Americans have dubbed Terrorist Cafe. It is lined with lean-tos and shacks that serve as teahouses and kebab stalls, some of them patronized by leaders of the Sunni militant groups that have turned Adhamiya into a hotbed of insurgency in the Iraqi capital--a "Little Fallujah in the middle of Baghdad," in the words of a local shop owner.

Stubbs' men know these teahouses well; they have engaged the enemy on this street and have captured some of its commanders here. But on this evening a couple of nights before Thanksgiving, most of the teahouses are inexplicably shuttered. Here and there, faces press against the windows or peer out from doorways, staring at the Americans as they walk past, with their M16s pointed down the streets or up at the roofs in constant anticipation of enemy fire. To break the tension, Stubbs occasionally smiles and waves, and he sometimes gets a smile in return. But most of the Iraqi faces project a mixture of fear and hostility. "Something's going on, and these folks know it," the captain says.

As the platoons leave Terrorist Cafe and proceed down the next dark alley, some dogs begin to howl. The soldiers stiffen and point their gun-mounted flashlights in all directions. "The dogs are the Iraqi early-warning system," alerting insurgents to the approach of strangers, Stubbs says. "They're very effective." Half an hour later, the patrol ends without event. The platoons get back on their humvees and return to their forward operating base, known as Gunslinger. Stubbs is relieved to have completed the mission but can't shake his suspicion--one that is heightened when, a few blocks from the mosque, Adhamiya suddenly springs back to life, with shops and restaurants doing a roaring trade and the pavements filled with people. "There was definitely something going down back there," the captain says, shaking his head in frustration. "I'd sure like to know what."

In fact, TIME later learned from sources in the insurgency that a rebel group had planned an attack on the night of the patrol. The intended targets: U.S. snipers who were perched on rooftops close to Abu Hanifa Mosque, watching for suspicious activity. The insurgents' plan was to hit the snipers' positions with rocket-propelled grenades and then ambush the platoons that would ride to the snipers' rescue. It's unclear why the attack was called off, but the unexpected arrival of Stubbs' patrol and its show of force in the streets may have been factors.

But U.S. patrols can't be everywhere at all times, and Adhamiya offers the insurgency an abundance of targets and cover for attacks. The densely crowded district is an ideal setting for the new insurgent tactics that are evolving in the wake of the U.S.-led battle for Fallujah. Flushed from their hideouts in the Sunni triangle, many fighters have descended upon Baghdad and Mosul, taking with them a burning desire to avenge Fallujah and a style of fighting previously unseen in Iraq. The rebels, according to sources familiar with their operations, are no longer seeking small-town havens. By basing themselves in urban areas, they are more anonymous and can be relatively certain that U.S. forces won't launch massive offensive assaults, as they did in Fallujah. "We can't get into a shooting war ... inside the city," says Major General Peter Chiarelli, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, which guards the Iraqi capital. The rebels' new tactics suggest that Marine Lieut. General John Sattler perhaps spoke too soon last week when he boasted that his troops had "broken the back of the insurgency" by rolling up its Fallujah sanctuary.

Baghdad's Adhamiya got its first taste of this more brazen form of rebellion even as the Fallujah assault, Operation al-Fajr, was winding down. On the morning of Nov. 20, some 300 fighters attacked the district's main police station. For Colonel Khaled Hassan Abed, chief of the Iraqi police in Adhamiya, the sheer number of attackers revealed a change in the insurgents' tactics. In the past, rebel operations in Baghdad generally consisted of two or three attackers firing mortars from pickup trucks. The more deadly operations tended to involve explosives set off by remote control or by lone suicide bombers. The latest assault was different. "This was not a hit-and-run operation," says Abed. "These men came to fight face to face and to take over the station." It was also more sophisticated than earlier attacks, as evidenced by the ambush laid against U.S. troops racing in to help. "They knew exactly which streets we would be using, and they were waiting for us," says Stubbs. "The other side has stepped up its game."

In the end, however, the attack failed. After an initial standoff, U.S. forces were able to call in reinforcements and fight their way near the station to engage the main body of the attackers. Faced with overwhelming force, the insurgents melted away into the neighborhood, ready to fight another day. One American was killed, and several others were injured. Perhaps 30 of the insurgents were killed; the exact number can't be determined because they carried off many of their dead.

After the attack, Abed launched an investigation to gain insights into the nature of the new threat. Most of the attackers, he found, were from Fallujah but were led and guided by a small core of local insurgents. The attackers' objective, he concluded, was not just to inflict casualties but also to seize a high-visibility target. "They knew that even if they got into the station, we would eventually have killed them all," says Abed. "But they wanted to make a political statement: 'If you can take Fallujah, we can take your police stations.'"

Insurgents appear to be adopting a similar strategy up north in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city. In mid-November, at the height of Operation al-Fajr, Mosul erupted in violence as gangs of fighters attacked police stations and engaged in pitched street battles with U.S. and Iraqi forces. It took the Americans and their Iraqi partners the better part of a week to regain control, and a U.S. battalion had to be recalled from Fallujah to help. The attackers "showed a degree of local command and control we have not seen before," says Brigadier General Carter Ham, commander of U.S. forces in Mosul. "The willingness to stand and fight signaled to me that something has changed." Also, rebels in Mosul have launched an intensive campaign of hit-and-run operations, kidnappings and beheadings. The bodies of victims are being dumped around the city. At least 60 were found last week alone, many of them Iraqi soldiers'. In this instance, the insurgents' threat is what it has always been: Those who cooperate with the Americans are inviting doom. --With reporting by Maher al-Thanoon/ Mosul and Mark Thompson/Washington

With reporting by Maher al-Thanoon/ Mosul; Mark Thompson/Washington