Word: grimness
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Captain Adam Grim readies his men for a nighttime raid in Mekanik, a gritty neighborhood in southern Baghdad. The target: a suspected militia safe house. Grim's platoon won't be leading the raid, however. Instead, the Americans will be supporting Iraqi forces led by a wiry police commander named Colonel Salih Hashim. Hashim knows the neighborhood well and chose the target himself. Together the two men discuss the plan one last time. Hashim and his men will storm the house while Grim's platoon secures the street outside and provides cover...
...raid should be a model of U.S.-Iraqi cooperation, capturing bad guys while building the confidence and skills of the Iraqi police. But there's a problem. Grim has reason to believe that in the daily struggle between U.S. forces and the armed Shi'ite groups suspected of carrying out most of the executions in the area, Hashim "plays both sides." Grim certainly doesn't trust Hashim and suspects him, at the very least, of giving ammunition to Shi'ite gunmen and sometimes even letting them sleep in the same Iraqi police compound where U.S. troops meet with Hashim during...
That leaves the job of cajoling good behavior from Iraqi police largely in the hands of junior officers like Grim, 28. The square-jawed West Point grad from Orange Park, Fla., is on his second tour in Iraq. He says his job is something equivalent to "armed social work." He feels responsible not just for making arrests and advising Iraqi soldiers but also for protecting the civilians of Mekanik. So while he says he trusts most of the officers, it's clear that he lives uneasily with the possibility that at least some of the Iraqis may be accomplices...
...raid with Hashim--the first such joint operation since Iraqi police were allowed back into the district--was typically disquieting. The house, it turns out, was empty. Grim and the other U.S. soldiers walked away uncertain about what had happened. It could have been an honest mistake, but the Americans couldn't help wondering whether Hashim was really looking for "terrorists," as he claimed. Maybe he was looking for a Sunni family to rough up, Grim says. Or perhaps the raid was just a diversion to keep U.S. troops busy while crimes were committed elsewhere in the neighborhood...
Still, the level of mistrust between U.S. and Iraqi forces runs so high that some U.S. soldiers speak openly about the possibility that they could be led into an ambush or attacked directly by the same police officers they have armed and trained. Grim says he doesn't share that concern because Hashim and his men know that Grim's platoon is ready for any situation. "It goes back to trusting your fellow American soldier to watch your back and keep you out of trouble," says Grim. "If the police did turn on us during a patrol, it would...