Trained for War, 12 Green Berets Keep the Peace in an Iraqi Town
By JAMES DAO
IWANIYA, Iraq, April 17 — They were trained in the art of war and came to Iraq to fight. But now that the regime has been toppled, Army Special Forces soldiers in Diwaniya have found themselves on an entirely different and, in many ways, more difficult mission.
They are trying to rebuild the city.
It is a battle against chaos instead of bullets. The Green Berets have had to wade into angry crowds. They have mediated between rival tribes locked in blood feuds. They have tried to hold together the city's thin threads of social order, not always with success.
Today, a man was killed when the bodyguards of a sheik from another city fired into a crowd of 200 men who were protesting the sheik's presence at a community meeting. Soldiers arrested 16 of the bodyguards and detained the sheik, drawing loud applause from the crowd. But it was a setback for the team, which had worked closely with the sheik, a leader of the Jabour tribe.
"Just when things looked like they were going good, we have a power struggle in town," said the Special Forces team leader, a 32-year-old captain. Rules imposed by the military bar identification of the leader, or any members of his team.
There is a crisis like this almost every day. The team has become the de facto center of Diwaniya's government, which has all but ceased to function. It is a role the Green Berets have played before, in villages and towns in Vietnam and elsewhere.
Each morning, tribal leaders, businessmen and regular citizens in Diwaniya stream into the compound to complain about the spotty electricity, the rampant looting, the lack of jobs and commerce. They come because several of the Green Berets speak Arabic, though none are fluent. But they come also because there is nowhere else to turn.
The 12-man team is doing what it can. In the last week, it has started a police force, recruited a city manager, located offices for a municipal government and begun holding meetings where community leaders discuss Diwaniya's problems. The goal is to create an administrative council consisting of tribal leaders, government bureaucrats and academics that can take control of Diwaniya, a city of more than 400,000 people 120 miles south of Baghdad.
"Ten days ago, we were taking mortar fire at a bridge outside town," said the team sergeant, a 12-year Special Forces veteran who has become a favorite of the locals. "Who would have guessed we would have come this far? Each day is a baby step forward."
But the problems facing Diwaniya are immense. Though it was not a major battleground and not severely damaged by American bombs, Diwaniya has ground to a halt. Businessmen have kept their shops shuttered. Government workers are staying home. The sewer treatment plant is not operating. Fuel supplies are low. Television and radio are silent. Only the phones seem to work.
After decades of having their lives directed by an iron-fisted government, many Iraqis, including some of Diwaniya's most prominent families, do not seem ready to take control of their city's destiny.
"The Iraqis want us to secure every business, turn on every light, solve all their problems," the team leader said. "But I tell them: `We are only 12. You must start to do it yourselves.' "
One thing has made their work easier: the city has welcomed them as heroes. Working with the leaders of three major tribes and a former Iraqi Army colonel who defected before the war, the Green Berets were able to pinpoint fedayeen and Baath Party headquarters inside Diwaniya and the nearby town of Hamza.
During 24 hours of airstrikes that started on April 8, American warplanes obliterated nine targets with satellite-guided 500-pound bombs, including a building where more than a dozen Baath officials were meeting.
Unlike other southern Iraqi cities where the paramilitaries stood and fought, in Diwaniya they turned and fled, or melted back into the populace. On April 10, the tribal sheiks led a parade of their own fighters, accompanied by the Green Berets and a squad of marines, into Hamza and Diwaniya. Over loudspeakers, the opposition leaders declared the cities free and the Americans their friends.
Within minutes, hundreds, perhaps thousands of people poured into the streets. They hung from windows and rooftops shouting "welcome" and "Bush good." They wept and kissed the soldiers' hands.
"It was the most gratifying day in my career," the team sergeant said.
Then the hard part began.
