Word: samarra
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...Owens. "We have a provincial government that's functional. You don't want to have tribes fighting without the sanction of the government." Owens estimates that there are over 12,000 Iraqi police foot soldiers at work against insurgents in Salahuddin, which is home to the volatile city of Samarra. U.S. forces have encouraged tribal leaders to enlist their followers in existing security force. Short of that, tribes should stay out of the fight, as far as Owens is concerned...
...second briefing, in a joint U.S.-Iraqi command post in the middle of Baqubah, was less optimistic. An Iraqi general said that he was pretty certain that the al-Qaeda leadership had slipped away, north to Tikrit and Samarra, and that many of the fighters were burying their equipment before they left town, hoping to return - as always - when the Americans left. In the days that followed, it became clear that almost all of al-Qaeda's fighters had gotten out. In a guerrilla war, only the stupidest guerrillas allow themselves to be lured into set-piece battles against...
Inside the city of Samarra, the fighting has taken on a daily rhythm. In the afternoons, insurgents sling mortars, rockets and bullets into U.S. and Iraqi compounds, usually disappearing in the street before anyone has a chance to kill or wound them. At night, U.S. troops roll from their outpost on the eastern edge of Samarra and search those same streets for fighters moving about laying roadside bombs. They usually find some, and shooting erupts again...
...picture is somewhat different in the vast space around the city, where insurgents bed down, stash arms and hatch attack plans. There are dozens of tiny villages like Binat al Hasan all around Samarra, some consisting of only three or four houses. Luong says insurgents move from village to village, rarely staying anywhere long for fear of being found by U.S. forces. Luong's troops are now staging two and three air assaults per week in an effort to keep insurgents from settling in the Samarra area as they did in Diyala in the months before the ongoing U.S. drive...
Some nights bring success. On one recent raid outside Samarra, U.S. forces arrested 14 suspected insurgents who essentially surrendered when American helicopters thundered out of the night sky. Other nights turn up only cold trails in dusty towns that appear on few maps. "Any of the sleepy villages could be a safe haven or a passage point," says Luong. "The bad guys don't have any true boundaries...