Violence Is the Only Certainty in Iraq

He was 17 years old and a Future Farmer of America when his mother signed the consent form for Dustin Sekula to join the Marines. They cut his hair and gave him dog tags. And the native of Hidalgo County, Texas, shipped out to a place in Iraq known as the Sunni Triangle, where he was killed in a firefight April 1.

So began the bloodiest month U.S. forces have endured since the Iraq war began -- at least 136 troops killed by suicide bombs and in ambushes, accidents and battles across the desert. More soldiers died last month than during the invasion of Iraq up to the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

One year ago Saturday, President Bush landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier and proclaimed the “major combat” phase of the war over. But Sekula’s death in western Iraq -- where 52 Marines were killed in April -- suggests there is much more fighting to be done. Insurrections elsewhere are far from resolved. Insurgents have grown bolder and U.S. forces are likely to face more ambushes and suicide bombs like the two explosions that killed 10 U.S. troops on Thursday and Friday.

“It’s calm for the moment, like eggs in the carton, but you have a feeling something could break and all the eggs could come rolling out and break,” said Sgt. Fernando Andrade, a 27-year-old Marine from Los Angeles guarding a road Saturday near Fallouja, where an uneasy peace agreement took hold after three weeks of fighting. “You just don’t know.”

Iraq is unpredictable, but its violence is certain. Anger against the U.S.-led occupation is likely to rise before the Bush administration’s scheduled return of sovereignty to Iraq on June 30. On Saturday, Arab television portrayed the Marines’ withdrawal last week from Fallouja as a victory for insurgents, a prospect that could inspire more armed resistance.

In Najaf, Iraq’s holiest city, U.S. soldiers encircling a militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada Sadr are avoiding firefights near shrines and mosques because they do not want to anger Shiite Muslims and spark another wave of unrest.

“It’s been a tough April,” said Gen. Mark Hertling, whose 1st Armored Division last month extended the service of 20,000 troops by 90 days to help quell the multiple uprisings. “But we’ll get back out in front of this.”

April has revealed that threats against occupation forces can come from virtually anywhere. Naval Petty Officers Michael J. Pernaselli, 27, of Monroe, N.Y., and Christopher E. Watts, 28, of Knoxville, Tenn., were killed by suicide attackers April 24 when their patrol boat intercepted a dhow heading toward an Iraqi oil terminal in the Persian Gulf. The officers and Coast Guardsman Nathan B. Bruckenthal, 24, of Smithtown, N.Y., boarded the wooden boat, which exploded.

The U.S. Department of Defense keeps a spreadsheet of soldiers killed in action. Listing hometowns that include obscure hamlets and big cities, it reads like a map of America. Buffalo, N.Y.; Sterling Heights, Mich.; Oil City, Pa.; Moose Lake and Eden Prairie, Minn. The oldest to die in April was 49. More than a dozen were teenagers. Seven hundred and thirty-two troops have died since the war began.

For the U.S. military, the occupation is proving tougher than the invasion. Much of the Iraqi army didn’t fight during the 19 days it took U.S. forces to reach Baghdad. American soldiers are now essentially engaged in rebuilding a country while battling increasingly aggressive guerrillas and what U.S. troops see as a propaganda war against them.

“Fighting in the streets allows the terrorists and insurgents to lessen America’s technical expertise,” said Mohammed Askeri, once a brigadier general in the Iraqi army. “This is annoying the American soldier. He is in tension. He often doesn’t know the source of the attack. A rocket-propelled grenade. A suicide bomber. Rolling ambushes. He is not psychologically prepared for this.”

Two years ago, Iraq’s then-foreign minister, Tarik Aziz, famously vowed to make Iraq another Vietnam.

“Our deserts will be our jungles and our cities will be our swamps,” Aziz declared. By being elusive and highly mobile, the insurgents have made this happen, said Charles Heyman, a senior defense analyst for Jane’s Consulting Group in Britain.

Privately, some commanders say the tumult of April may have had a silver lining: It underscored the urgent need for more troops and better equipment, and it blasted away the claim that Iraq was approaching some kind of normalcy.

“Better this happened now than on July 5,” said one U.S. general, noting that such upheaval would have likely destabilized the Iraqi caretaker government scheduled to be in place by then. “And it allowed us to expand our footprint to some areas where we clearly needed to be.”

That would be south-central Iraq, where Sadr quickly assumed control of several cities through deployment of his militia, the Al Mahdi army. That Sadr’s Kalashnikov-toting militiamen were able to rout the U.S. trained police forces was an indictment of the area’s security apparatus. A Polish-led multinational force oversaw most of the zone before some 2,500 U.S. troops were dispatched to the volatile region.

For months, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and other officials had been boasting of the huge number of Iraqis -- as many as 200,000 -- who had signed up for the Iraqi security services. These new recruits would gradually be entrusted with the nation’s security and allow the coalition to reduce its contingent.

But the standoff in Najaf and elsewhere exposed that as a mere hope. After a declaration that it would “kill or capture” Sadr, the United States has toned down its rhetoric and stayed largely outside the town. U.S. troops have set up roadblocks at strategic points near Najaf and dealt some heavy blows to Sadr’s militia. American officials are now attempting to enlist Najafis opposed to Sadr and his movement.

About 100 miles northwest of Najaf, near Fallouja, there is a small memorial made of bullets and a tiny American flag. It honors Lance Cpl. Aaron Cole Austin, a 21-year-old machine gunner from Amarillo, Texas. His fellow Marines from Echo Company of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment built the remembrance -- including a tribute written on cardboard and a Christian cross -- after Austin was killed in a two-hour fight with insurgents.

Austin was not on duty when fighting broke out. His unit was holed up in some battered homes in the northwest corner of the city. The two sides were close, at one point about 30 yards away. Austin manned his machine gun, pulled a wounded Marine out of the line of fire and then returned to his weapon. As the insurgents advanced, Austin threw a grenade at them. He was fatally shot. Lee Hampton, 21, of El Paso helped drag Austin from the gunner’s position.

“We pulled him in here, but he was gone,” Hampton said. “He was my best friend ever, and then he was gone.”

The Sunni Muslim heartland where Austin died stretches west from the capital to the borders with Syria and Saudi Arabia. From the start of the war, much of Iraq’s Sunni former elite got the impression that Fallouja and other Sunni strongholds were to be marginalized under the regime of L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator. That perception swelled the ranks of the insurgency.

The Marine assault on Fallouja in early April -- accompanied by reports of heavy civilian casualties -- seemed to harden resistance nationwide.

U.S.-trained Iraqi police and civil corpsmen refused to fight alongside U.S. forces. A cease-fire emboldened the other side. The crisis was defused only when the Marines agreed to withdraw and put security in the hands of a former Hussein general.

“When the U.S. forces agreed to leave, we celebrated in Fallouja like it was a wedding night,” said Ahmed Mohssen, a 30-year-old, U.S.-trained civil corpsmen tasked with working alongside the Marines. “The mujahedin are our sons and brothers. We cannot oppose them. What is best now is for the Americans to leave Fallouja.”

Marines express confidence that the new Fallouja security force will help disarm the rebels. But an alternate scenario suggests that Fallouja will become a haven for anti-American rebels planning strikes throughout the country.

That could mean more fatalities for the U.S.

Last week, Staff Sgt. Vic Martinez recalled how he recruited Sekula into the Marines. He was there last month to meet Sekula’s coffin when it arrived on a flight from Houston. Sekula had turned 18 before he died.

Martinez remembers a humble, skinny kid in a cowboy hat who bulked up with weights and went to war. Martinez attended the funeral, where the local newspaper, the Monitor, reported that Sekula’s mother, Lisa, had spoken about signing the consent form.

“I had to put my ‘mama’ feelings aside and do what my baby wanted me to do,” she said.

Before he left for war, Sekula wrote an essay on why he joined the Marines: “It’s not a money issue at all. Money doesn’t mean much compared to pride and happiness in what you do.

“I know I can find it in the Marines. When you die you take no worldly possessions with you, just your mind and soul. The choice I make I won’t regret.”

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Times staff writers Nicholas Riccardi and Rick Loomis contributed to this report.