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The Great Wall of IndifferenceOn patrol inside Baghdad's tensest neighborhood.

By Bing West
Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007, at 1:03 PM ET
Adamiah raid. Click image to expand.

Combat Outpost Fort Apache, Azamiyah. The news of late has focused upon this Sunni district in northeast Baghdad, where materials for a 12-foot-high concrete barrier have been positioned along a main avenue. Of the dozens of barriers across the city being laid down—principally by U.S. military and contractors—Azamiyah was the one that caught international attention when the residents complained the government was "imprisioning and punishing them for the acts of a few" by forcing all cars to pass through check points. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, on a visit to Egypt, ordered the barrier halted, and the American ambassador agreed to comply.

On the surface, the episode is a triumph for the press in bringing to international attention an injustice, and for the prime minister in immediately responding and standing up for the rights of the Sunni minority.

On the ground, the episode is less inspiring. Here at Fort Apache in Azamiyah, Charlie Company is on the eighth month of a 15-month tour in a combat outpost along the Tigris. (It was the setting for the 2005 documentary Gunner Palace.) Six of the first 110 soldiers to patrol in Azamiyah, a stronghold for Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida operatives, have been killed. 1st Sgt. Kenneth J. Hendrix had been hoping Azamiyah would make headlines because of the valor of Spc. Ross McGinnis of Knox, Pa., who has been nominated for the Medal of Honor. On Dec. 4, while patrolling Azamiyah's narrow streets, a grenade was pitched into McGinnis' Humvee, and he fell on it, sacrificing his own life to save the lives of his fellow soldiers.

Patrols through trash-clogged streets, past shuttered shops and unemployed crowds of unsmiling young men, are the daily fare for Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 26th Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. On April 22, while Maliki was ordering a halt to the barrier, four Humvees from Charlie were careening through the back streets a few blocks north of where the barrier was supposed to be erected. The walls along the alleyways nearly scraped the sides of the armored vehicles as they swerved around tight corners and gunned down straightaways.

"We got hit here with two IEDs yesterday," Capt. Nathaniel Waggoner yelled to me. "The trigger men are outsiders. They don't give a damn what happens to the locals."

The Humvees skidded to a stop beside some rundown shops, and soldiers and a few Special Forces commandos piled out, pitching grey and purple smoke grenades into the empty, trash-strewn street.

"A sniper got one of us in the leg yesterday," the captain warned. "Stay in the doorways."

The soldiers paused, eyeing a line of padlocked shops and checking their photo maps. An interpreter spoke quickly to a startled shopkeeper, who pointed at a shoe store and then disappeared into the smoke. They snapped a lock, rushed into the small store, and rifled through the receipt drawer and several boxes of shoes, looking for a list. With a broom, they poked each wall, listening for a hollow echo. In less than five minutes, they were back in their gun trucks, swerving wildly along a main street.

We stopped in a middle-class neighborhood and knocked on a door at random. The patrols make about 15 such unplanned stops a day, in hopes of chancing on insurgents. The portly owner showed us in, and a few soldiers went upstairs and returned with an AK-47 wrapped in white plastic covered with dirt. Waggoner looked at the weapon.

"Sometimes we turn something up, like bomb-making material. We send to prison about 10 a month," Waggoner said. "This guy is probably OK."

Waggoner asked why he had buried his rifle, since every house is allowed a weapon for self-defense. The man responded with a rambling story.

"Uh-uh, no sale," Waggoner said. "Have the jundis [Iraqi army soldiers] been around here?"

When the man nodded, Waggoner handed him back the rifle, shook hands, and left.

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Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and author of two books on the war, recently returned from his 13th trip to Iraq.
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