Rebels on the Run, Locals Too

In the barren streets of this dusty town, Iraqis say the U.S. Army has chased away the foreign fighters who for two weeks staged sporadic battles with the Americans.

Also gone are nearly all of the town’s 20,000 residents. The sheep munching shrubs on the outskirts appear to outnumber people.

Over the last two weeks, three out of four residents fled the town, which military strategists say was an insurgent safe haven. A few have since returned, but many have sought temporary shelter with friends and relatives across the Euphrates River in the village of Anah.

“The current situation is not good. A lot of people are leaving for nearby villages,” said Ibrahim Kassam, a resident of Fallouja who passed through a U.S. checkpoint at the bridge to tend to a small shop he owns here. “There were some foreign forces, but since the Americans came, there are none.”

Since arriving in mid-July, the 2nd Infantry Division’s 2nd Squadron of the 14th Cavalry Regiment has defeated the fighters here and will now spread out to seal the border with Syria, said Lt. Col. Mark Davis, the unit’s commander.

U.S. strategists say insurgents led by Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi have used this town and a smuggling route along the Euphrates to train and ferry foreign fighters, weapons and explosives southeast to Baghdad and north to Mosul.

Under a plan ordered by Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, American units are trying to gain control of Iraq’s ill-guarded border with Syria.

Having wrested control of Rawah, the division’s Stryker Brigade Combat Team now hopes to press westward toward the border and, for the first time, gain control of a broad swath of the land north of the Euphrates that has eluded the U.S.-led coalition for more than two years.

On Thursday and Friday, soldiers searched every one of the town’s estimated 3,000 to 5,000 homes, capturing some suspected insurgents and a bounty of weapons, including mines, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, bomb-making equipment, sniper rifles and rockets.

“Since then, there has been no enemy attack, no explosions, nobody shooting at us in Rawah,” Davis said.

The town might be quiet now, but it’s not necessarily friendly. On an outer school wall, spray painted in Arabic, is a note of defiance: “Praise the people of Fallouja” -- a former insurgent stronghold where U.S. and Iraqi forces prevailed in November.

Davis acknowledged that most Iraqis had left town but said they didn’t leave under instructions from U.S. troops.

The insurgents apparently had held the town hostage, American officials said. There were no police, a dormant city council, a compound of schools with no children and no teachers inside.

A lone firetruck and ambulance were all that was left of the governmental structure, their crews acting as repairmen more than anything else.

“It was pretty much a government on autopilot, heavily influenced, heavily guided by Al Qaeda in Iraq,” he said, referring to Zarqawi’s organization.

Moments later a gray-bearded imam approached to offer his support, saying he had urged the few remaining townspeople to cooperate.

“We need peace here. The guerrillas are all dead or gone,” the bespectacled imam said. “I am a religious leader, and I have asked the people of the city to be honest and help your forces here.”

Rawah’s streets are pocked with holes left from roadside and car bombs that targeted the Americans. Less than a mile from the Americans’ base on the outskirts of town is the site where a roadside bomb exploded near Davis’ Stryker combat vehicle.

The explosion was followed by a volley of rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine-gun fire, Davis said.

“That kind of set the tone that the enemy was not happy that we were here,” he said.

Over the next few days the soldiers also faced four suicide car bombings, two bombs in unmanned cars, mortar fire, 11 roadside bombs and six attacks with small arms.

Some of the insurgents were bold, if overmatched. On July 19, a gunman opened fire from a well-tended two-story brick house overlooking the strategic bridge. U.S. soldiers fired back, killing two men. A search of the building and a nearby car turned up explosives, weapons and ammunition, Davis said.

Near the Euphrates bridge is a new patch of blacktop that covers the site of a truck bomb.

At the base of the bridge lies the collapsed front of a cinder-block home so packed with weapons and explosives that Davis’ men opted to blow the place up rather than remove the arms.

The Army is now encouraging Rawah residents to return, raising the number from about one in four last week to one in three now, Davis said.

The guerrillas are apparently gone, but the base is not going anywhere.

When Davis’ soldiers return to their home at Ft. Lewis, Wash., in two months, another American unit will take over. Eventually, he said, the base will be occupied by Iraqi troops who now are staying at an unfinished water treatment plant.

Until then, Davis said, his soldiers will follow the insurgents. “We believe that since we arrived north of the river, a lot of activity is picking up south of the river,” he said.