BUHRIZ, Iraq — His Charlie Battery was dug in against as many as 50 insurgents, Capt. Matt Davenport remembers, and the volleys of rocket-propelled grenades and bursts of machine-gun fire were nonstop. At one point in the two-day firefight, he recalls, "there was an explosion every five seconds."
The battle was fierce enough that it could have occurred at the height of this spring's siege of Fallouja, a city that has become notorious worldwide as a hub of resistance to American and allied forces. But the fight came just a few weeks ago, in this agricultural town northeast of Baghdad.
There is only one Fallouja, but, unfortunately for U.S. forces and their allies, seething towns such as Buhriz dot Iraq's vast "Sunni Triangle." They are home to traditional tribal populations embittered by the U.S.-led forces in their country -- and suspicious of an Iraqi government installed by foreigners.
Harnessing these "little Falloujas" back into the fold of civil Iraqi society is one of the great challenges facing the new government and its U.S. allies.
A cycle of violence, distrust and radicalization has festered for a year in Sunni Iraq and will not go away easily.
The U.S. strategy has followed a variant of the carrot-and-stick approach -- crushing armed opposition but also offering millions in development funds to cooperative local governments.
"There's an inverse relationship between successful projects and American casualties," said Col. Dana Pittard, who heads the 1st Infantry Division brigade that patrols Buhriz and the rest of Diyala province. "We're going to be fighting our way out of here if that money dries up."
In the case of Buhriz and other troubled Sunni towns, town leaders call U.S. troops a provocation and demand that they stay away.
"That is exactly what should be done here," Buhriz Mayor Awf Abdul Rida Ahmad said when asked if the Americans should stay away and leave matters to town police. "The people here are very peaceful, and all they want is stability and peace of mind."
But American officials have already rejected the possibility of more security arrangements like those in Fallouja, where U.S. forces agreed to pull out of the city in April and turn it over to a collection of former Iraqi army officers with close ties to the insurgents. Fallouja has since become a no-go zone for U.S. Marines and a sanctuary for insurgent militancy, commanders acknowledge.
"One thing is for sure: It's not a template for the future," Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, operational chief of U.S.-led troops in Iraq, said of the Fallouja blueprint. "It's disappointing."
It is no coincidence that the most problematic towns are those where the Sunni-dominated Baath Party of former dictator Saddam Hussein is still held in high esteem and where many people prospered under Hussein. In insulated towns such as Buhriz, many regard the now-dissolved Baath structure as a kind of benevolent dictatorship that protected the interests of the minority Sunni Muslim population against rival Shiites and others.
"The old Baathists are everywhere in Iraq .... What do the Americans want to do with them?" said Ahmad, a 44-year-old agricultural engineer who was manager of Buhriz's irrigation plant during Hussein's regime.
"The Baathists here are very good people. They managed to maintain security and order right after the fall of the regime. They organized checkpoints in the town and prevented any theft or crime."
The mayor doesn't say so, but the former Baathists of Iraq helped organize something else: an anti-occupation rebellion that has fought the U.S. military to a standstill and thwarted the Bush administration's ambitious plans for rebuilding the country. Black-clad Fedayeen Saddam militiamen were the fanatical regime enforcers -- and the early foot soldiers of the armed opposition.
The insurgency has found fertile ground in places such as Buhriz, a town of 40,000 or so. Here, as elsewhere, armed resistance has become entangled with anti-American nationalism, religious militancy and, in some cases, U.S. officials say, fighters from other Arab nations.
U.S. Army sweeps that have resulted in tens of thousands of arrests nationwide -- including more than 200 in Buhriz, the mayor said -- have fanned the resentment.
One especially disturbing trend, from the U.S. standpoint, is the intermingling of conservative religious ideology with the insurgency. Fighters are regularly acclaimed as mujahedin, or holy warriors, their exploits celebrated in teahouses, living rooms and mosques.
The conservative Salafi, Wahhabi and Sufi teachings that have proliferated in Sunni Iraq since the fall of the regime last year provide a moral basis for the armed opposition.
