Law and Order in an Alien Setting

The Humvee rolls out of camp, kicking up a thick cloud of lung-choking dust, then twists its way past small children waving and screaming, “Mista! Mista!” and heads into the largest, poorest, rowdiest neighborhood in all of Baghdad.

Lt. Ellis Gordon, 23, Sgt. Brian Nunes, 29, and Spc. Yoshi Yonemori, 21, are out to look for guns, arrest criminals and try to help restore law and order to the streets of Sadr City, the sprawling ghetto known until recently as Saddam City.

The mission will test the young soldiers’ patience -- and that of the people they are out to help. It will expose the challenging and dangerous routine that U.S. combat forces here face as they try to act as police in an alien and often unwelcoming environment.

It’s 7:15 p.m., and finally the 106-degree heat of Sunday afternoon has begun to ease. There are nearly 2 million residents in the area, and it feels like all of them are in the streets and alleys.

The Humvee is part of a platoon: four vehicles, 12 guys, all from the Army’s 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. They stop by a crowded open-air market, though “crowded” doesn’t begin to describe the chaotic scene.

Arabic music blares from a speaker. Merchants sell everything from chickens to shoes. Men, women and children -- so many children it is hard to imagine where they all live -- fill the streets.

Gordon climbs out of the Humvee, along with three other officers -- one from each of the other vehicles. With an Iraqi translator, they sprint into the middle of the market.

Children descend on the idling vehicles, again shouting, “Mista! Mista!” Yonemori mimics them. “Mista, mista,” he says, laughing to himself. The crowd presses in more. “Mista, money, mista!” Nearby, Kasim Daheem makes a big mistake.

He is trying to sell a handgun in the market when Gordon and the others advance on him. He runs, and that’s unwise. Had he put down the weapon and walked away, the soldiers would have taken only the gun. Instead, they take him too. They cuff his hands behind his back and put a bag over his head so he can’t see the maps inside the military vehicles.

It is barely 7:30. One gun, a bag of ammo, one prisoner -- and a heavy sweat. There’s no time to rest. A slug of water, and they’re off.

Gordon and the same three guys head down an alley at a brisk pace, weapons pointing down. Again a crowd follows. “Mista! Mista!” the Iraqis call.

“Be quiet!” Gordon hollers in English, turning to face them. The crowd quiets -- for a moment. The soldiers pick up the pace across a dirt soccer field. Their steps quicken, the crowd gets bigger. The chanting, catcalls and hooting grow so loud that the men can hardly hear one another. The crowd is not issuing direct threats, but it is menacing, making the officers’ jobs harder.

Down another alley, through a courtyard, into a small building and up the stairs. Iraqis especially dislike this part of the patrols: American soldiers barging into their homes, seeing the women. But the Americans say there is no other way to confiscate guns; they can’t knock on the door and wait.

Up they go, two flights, three flights, past a man reeking of alcohol, up onto the roof.

“That lady has a gun!” one soldier hollers, pointing across an alley to an old woman dressed in black on a nearby roof.

Back down the stairs, running up the alley, the crowd following, screaming, chanting. The soldiers run through a metal gate, past a man lying on the bare cement, his leg wrapped in bandages from a gunshot wound, past a startled young woman breast-feeding her child, and up onto the other roof.

The machine gun is hidden under a blanket. The soldiers take it and run back downstairs, where the shaken old woman offers them water from a bent metal bowl. They decline. “Ask her why she has this,” one soldier says to the translator.

“It’s for us,” she replies, implying it’s for her family’s safety. But the U.S.-led occupation authority that rules Iraq has banned possession of machine guns, so the Americans take the weapon.

“Tell her she can have a handgun or an AK, not a machine gun,” the soldier says as he walks away.

The soldiers can’t stop, not for a minute. They can’t allow themselves to appear vulnerable -- though they are clearly outnumbered and possibly outgunned. If the crowd were to turn on them, it would get ugly. They are huffing back across the soccer field. All this running and climbing, with weapons and bulletproof vests and helmets.

The crowd following behind has swelled to easily 100 young men and children. Now they’re throwing rocks. Small white pebbles, then large stones. The rocks are dinging the four soldiers, bouncing off their helmets and chest plates.

The children chant, “Ali Baba!” -- a nickname for thieves. Flames shoot off a rooftop where someone is burning trash.

“Is that a rock?” Gordon shouts when a stone hits another soldier’s leg.

He spins on his heel and grabs the first person behind him: a boy, child, maybe 12 years old. The kid looks terrified, but the move has its desired effect. The young men in the crowd stop throwing rocks, and Gordon lets the boy go.

Instantly, the rock-throwing resumes.

The soldiers climb back into their Humvees. The crowd is thick, and Yonemori is screaming at someone to get out of his Humvee.

“If you come in my car, I’ll shoot you!” he yells. The Iraqis back off but seem to enjoy having incited him.

It’s about 7:40.

The men slug down some more water and resume their patrol. In an instant, Nunes screams from his perch above the Humvee where he mans a machine gun.

“Major gunfire, 1 o’clock, 300 meters!” The platoon responds reflexively. Yonemori stops the vehicle. Gunfire is coming from the alley. The soldiers throw open their doors, and the three of them jump out and head right into a firefight.

Everything happens fast. Nunes doubles back. His pistol is out, pointed at a young man driving an orange-and-white car. “Get out, get on the ground!” Nunes screams in English, throwing in an expletive or two. In seconds, the man is on the ground, face down, a gun to his head and plastic cuffs on his wrists.

The soldiers find six magazines of ammunition hidden in the car. He’s a weapons dealer, they say, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The other platoon members are still chasing a man with an AK-47. He was the one firing into the alley. He jumps a wall and darts back to the soccer field.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” one of the soldiers yells.

Gordon drives the prisoner’s car. Yonemori turns the Humvee toward the soccer field. Rocks pelt the American vehicles. The whole platoon is at the field now. A soldier runs up from the distance. He has recovered the AK-47. Other platoon members catch the suspected gunman.

The crowd cheers, but it sounds more like they’re mocking rather than rooting for the soldiers.

It’s about 8:15. Three prisoners, three weapons and a load of ammunition. The soldiers have to return to base to do some paperwork, before heading out again for the rest of their patrol. They are cautious as they drive out of the center of the district. It’s dusk, and they don’t stop for anything. The Humvees rumble toward camp, off the paved road, past a dead and rotting mule.

“What do we call this one?” Yonemori calls out to Gordon.

This platoon is keeping a journal of its Iraqi adventures, and every chapter has a title. “How about, ‘Up on the Rooftop’?” Yonemori offers. “Like old St. Nick.”

Gordon thinks for a minute, then offers, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” The others roar with delight as the Humvee pulls up into the thick, sticky sand outside an old cigarette factory that is their base.

The prisoners are brought out of the vehicles one at a time and questioned. There are cultural issues that apparently haven’t been explained to the soldiers. For example, they ask everyone their last name, first name and middle name. But Arabs’ names are complex, variations that often include the names of their father and grandfather, their family name and tribal name. They don’t have what Americans think of as a middle name.

The man caught with the AK-47 says he is Laith Taher -- his father’s first name and his own.

“Any tattoos?” the soldiers ask through an interpreter. They roll up the prisoner’s right sleeve to reveal a homemade tattoo that says in Arabic, “My mother is lovely.” The soldiers laugh. The prisoner gets nervous, kneels in the sand and gags.

“He’s trying to get us to let him go,” a soldier says while the others are still laughing.

The paperwork is done, and it’s time to head back out while the prisoners are taken to jail.

“Every day, this happens every day,” said Bret, a 35-year-old platoon medic who asked that his surname not be used.

But this was not one day. It was one hour.