Iraq's Death Valley
REPORTER: John Martinkus
This is the Iraqi province of Diyala. The Americans believe that Al Qaeda in Iraq has moved its base of operations here and until recently most of the province was in the hands of Sunni insurgents. I have come to see the US army's "troop surge" in action.
Since last November the troops here have suffered more casualties than any other US unit in Iraq - more than 80 dead.
COLONEL DAVID SUTHERLAND, US ARMY: Putting a number on casualties and using it as a sound bite doesn't really work, what matters is the achievements of the soldiers during their time here.
This is US army footage of the operation in Diyala last month. After an intense fire fight the soldiers arrested 8 suspected insurgents and released men they had imprisoned and beaten.
SERGEANT MAJOR RAY EDGAR, US ARMY: our task is to clear, our purpose is to destroy enemy safe haven.
Officers from the 1st Cavalry and the 82nd Airborne are now preparing a major operation to clear insurgents from the Diyala river Valley.
SERGEANT MAJOR RAY EDGAR: The hallmark of this organisation has been discipline and violence of action. That is what is gonna get us through this mission. We're not gonna abuse detainees. We're not gonna abuse civilians. We're gonna kill people that need to be killed and we're gonna frickin be decent to the rest of people who don't need to be killed, there is no in between. You either kill them or you treat them with dignity and respect.
OFFICER: We've always struck the enemy when he is least prepared, right in his heart where he thinks he's safe. And now we are resourced for the success we expect to meet. We're gonna fight this battle like we've done before... this is critical. That's all I have right now - troops need a leader. It's gonna be you.
The plan is simple. Airborne troops go in at midnight, and we follow in a heavily armed convoy. As we cautiously make our way we hear artillery. To minimise the risk of an ambush the army is firing shells on either side of the road. We're the last vehicle in the convoy and some of the shells are falling too close for comfort.
MAN: Do they know that our convoy is ahead of us dude?
We don't have far to travel but progress is painfully slow and when day breaks we are still on the road. The roads around us here are frequently mined by insurgents with Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs. The convoy includes armoured bulldozers, which plough the sides of the road in order to detonate or disable any bombs. When IEDs are found on the road ahead, the convoy grinds to a halt.
SERGEANT MAJOR RAY EDGAR: There's a bunch of wires, but they can't find the origin of the wires. So there's several different ones. They're not sure what it's exactly connected to.
Sergeant-Major Ray Edgar is with the 82nd Airborne. He and his men have been here for a year now. They know that 70% of all US casualties in Iraq are caused by IEDs.
SERGEANT MAJOR RAY EDGAR: What they found was, ah, 130mm projectile inside the covert. And they believe it's daisy-chained to other ones, which is pretty common practice. It's catastrophic when you drive over it - you'll have four or five rounds blowin' up with the covert. It creates a bunch of shrapnel, and so does the asphalt.
REPORTER: So it will basically kill everybody in the vehicle?
SERGEANT MAJOR RAY EDGAR: What's that?
REPORTER: It would kill anybody in the vehicle that hit it?
SERGEANT MAJOR RAY EDGAR: More than likely, yes.
The soldiers have to detonate the IEDs before we can move on.
REPORTER: In your time here how many men have you lost to IEDs like that?
SERGEANT MAJOR RAY EDGAR: I'd say four. Not to that specific type in a culvert, but we lost four to a deep-buried IED at a different location.
Apart from the IEDs, the soldiers also have to be on their guard for what they call VBIEDs - Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices, or car bombs. There was a deadly attack on one of the unit's bases here, in April this year.
SERGEANT MAJOR RAY EDGAR: They were in a patrol base and the VBIED broke into the patrol base. It was two dump trucks full of explosives, detonated and killed nine men.
It has taken us 15 hours to travel less than 30km, but we finally reach the village of Had Makser. The soldier whose arrived by air last night aren't answering the door. This abandoned school has become their patrol base. The soldiers are exhausted, having spent the night clearing houses in the village looking for insurgents. They've already arrested eight men and found some weapons. Our platoon heads out to continue the job of clearing the village. We have 36 houses to check before dark. The soldiers are on the lookout for booby traps. In the past, whole squads have been wiped out when houses they were searching were blown up. The soldiers identify the inhabitants of each house to make sure they are not on a black list of known insurgents. Then they mark their hands with the house number. If the soldiers find them in a different part of the village in the next few days, they will be arrested.
WOMAN, (Translation): Give him your hand. How long will I leave it for? Three days?
The soldiers find an AK-47 in this man's house. He's not on their list, but the sergeant is keen to ask him some questions.
SERGEANT MAJOR RAY EDGAR: Tell me. We know the insurgents are here, right, because we can see the graffiti - I read that outside. Did they all leave? Are they still around? What's the situation? What does he know?
The man says he doesn't know anything. He says he got back from Kirkuk in northern Iraq yesterday, just before the soldiers arrived.
SERGEANT MAJOR RAY EDGAR: OK. Hey, Fergie. Hey, did those people out there get marked? Alright. This is what I need from him. Tell him I'm going to mark him with a stamp. I need to stay him around this house for the next 24 hours. OK? We've got to see every house here. If he goes somewhere to a different part of the neighbourhood... I'll arrest him.
The heat is taking its toll on the soldiers. It's around 50 degrees Celsius, and some of the men are suffering from heat exhaustion. This soldier has been throwing up, and medics have given another two men some saline solution through an intravenous drip.
SOLDIER: What happened, man? You just had an IV?
SOLDIER 2: Yeah, just dehydrated from walking too far. Ha-ha. Heat's pretty crazy out here. We're carrying a lot of gear. So sometimes you just can't drink enough water. Just gotta lay down until the light-headedness clears away and you can push on.
The searching and marking continues.
SOLDIER: Why did you wash the marker off your hand? OK, come here. Tell him that he's got to be careful. Tell him he cannot wash this off.
As the day wears on, the soldiers start to lose their patience. The troops are exhausted. As night falls, they head back to their makeshift base. The village is not yet secure, and they need to be up before dawn.
Today, the soldiers are going to search palm groves along the Diyala River.
SOLDIER: Yeah, well, it's different. A bunch of troops and we all generally get on line. Don't push together with an asset covering us as we move. Stuff like that. So... if anybody's out here, hopefully we can get 'em.
They believe that any insurgents who fled yesterday's searches could be hiding out here.
SOLDIER: Usually not this close. But... terrain dictates how close you are sometimes.
Mines, booby traps and IEDs are often placed in the palm groves. The rough terrain makes the search more difficult. Because of the surge, this whole unit and nearly all of the 160,000 US soldiers in Iraq have had their tour of duty extended by at least three months.
REPORTER: How long till they keep you in the army?
SOLDIER: Oh... guess until my contract's up. After this is over, I'll have, ah, 17 months.
The average soldier spends 15 months here, when they talk about their time in the army it sounds a little like jail.
REPORTER: Do you reckon they will deploy you again?
SOLDIER: No, no when I get back they'll hold me in for 90 days and then I'll be released, I'll be able to get out. I dunno, we got extended that three months, that extended everything. Three more months. But I guess you've always gotta do your time.
After several hours of searching the soldiers reach a dead end. Later tonight the US troops will leave the village in the hands of these Iraqi soldiers. They are being briefed by the operations commander, Lt Colonel Poppas.
LT COLONEL ANDREW POPPAS, US ARMY: The feedback we got from the villagers throughout the whole area of Had Makser is that their very excited about you being here, they see you as a fair, impartial and unbiased and supportive of the safety and security of the area.
The further up the chain of command you go, the more positive the soldiers seem to be.
REPORTER: So Colonel are you happy the way things have gone?
LT COLONEL ANDREW POPPAS: Oh very happy, as you know with this operation the attempt was to clear, to start the genesis of what you saw in other villages, Al Qaeda were starting to come in and force out the Shia population, start to impose their own law. As we caught it at it's inception, we forced them out as you saw yesterday and working with both the route up here, the IED's and tried to isolate it. All the things our intel had told us. In clearing the village itself, the villagers came forward and identified those Al Qaeda that had remained here, those who had been left behind to also inform for them.
Back in the relative safety of the soldier's makeshift headquarters, I interview Captain Jesse Stewart. He has spent most of his tour living in patrol bases in the Diyala River Valley.
REPORTER: Do you think, ah, there is the political will to sustain this level of troop numbers to carry out successfully this counterinsurgency program?
CAPTAIN JESSE STEWART, US ARMY: Well, obviously I'm not back in the United States right now, so I can't accurately gauge the political will. But I can tell you that the people that are over here, especially my paratroopers, they do understand what we're doing, and they do understand that regardless of the decision was right or wrong to come here in the first place, we can't just leave it like this - we've got to fix it. And to stop now would negate everything good that every soldier had done who has died over here thus far.
REPORTER: Here in Diyala, you say your main enemy is al-Qaeda.
CAPTAIN JESSE STEWART: Correct.
REPORTER: And what, um- what evidence do you base that on?
CAPTAIN JESSE STEWART: I mean, they're very public about it. They're very good at their IO campaign and they're very public about it. They have, in this area, it is a somewhat Shia-dominated government. So al-Qaeda has kind of run with that to try and tell people, the Sunni minority that is in the area, that the Shias are against them and the government's against them.
This is the propaganda campaign the captain is talking about. An al-Qaeda video found by soldiers in a recent house search in Diyala. It shows an Iraqi soldier being beheaded in public as a traitor, as villagers stand by watching. It's what the US Army says was happening here before it arrived.
In September, the US military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, will return to Washington and report on the progress to the surge. Colonel David Sutherland commands the 1st Cavalry, which oversees operations in Diyala.
REPORTER: What do you think will happen to the situation here in Diyala?
COLONEL DAVID SUTHERLAND: Well I support my chain of command. And if they make the decision to draw it down, then the Iraqi security forces, the Iraqi Government, will have to react to that. But I will do what I'm told. Right now, I have a fight. The fight is in Diyala, and the fight is against al-Qaeda. And that's what I'm focused on right now.
A massive military operation involving 16,000 soldiers is now under way in Diyala. Its stated goal is to finally deny the Diyala River Valley to al-Qaeda as a safe haven. But in the blistering heat of an Iraqi summer, this is a last-ditch strategy by an army being pushed to its limit.
Feature Report: Iraq's death valley
Reporter/Camera
JOHN MARTINKUS
Editors
WAYNE LOVE
DAVID POTTS
Translations/Subtitling
DALIA MATAR