RAMADI, Iraq — For almost a week, American and Iraqi troops had prepared for this moment. Working through rainy days and nights, they had laid out wire, put up blast walls and set up sniper positions against another attack.
Now all they could do was wait.
A week after a suicide bomber killed two U.S. troops and scores of Iraqis outside these factory gates, would local Sunni Arabs come back to sign up for police jobs or would they stay away?
A little after 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Qassan Ashar Ali, 24, and his brother Omar made their way past three checkpoints, two bomb-sniffing dogs and an X-ray truck and became the first recruits to enter the glass factory in Ramadi after last week's bombing.
Behind them were at least 225 young Sunni men, many carrying sport bags with clean clothes, toiletries and pictures of loved ones for their trip to the police academy in Baghdad.
"We've been scared for a long time," Ali said. "We've had enough."
U.S. commanders hope the turnout of people such as Ali signifies a watershed moment in Ramadi, the provincial capital of Al Anbar, which is among the most brittle of cities in Iraq.
"The Iraqi army is important, but it's the police that will be responsible for the rule of law," said Maj. Robert Rice of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, who oversees the Iraqi police program in Al Anbar. "They're the foundation to be able to fight a counterinsurgency."
Commanders here say they garnered support for the recruitment drive through weeks of meetings with clerics and sheiks, some of them with ties to local rebels.
Americans hope to drive a wedge between local rebels and radical Islamist elements of the insurgency -- in part by recruiting locals to police the city.
The focus on the Iraqi police is part of a countrywide priority shift for the Americans, who have long worked on building the Iraqi army. Political and military leaders have dubbed 2006 the Year of the Police.
At the same time, the U.S. military has launched a strategy to combat bombings, which increased considerably last year compared with 2004.
Last week, Operation Green Trident was launched 25 miles south of Fallouja, involving hundreds of coalition and Iraqi soldiers. The sweep netted about 11 tons of munitions from 72 sites, mostly shallow holes along the banks of the Euphrates.
The military also is using bomb-sniffing dogs, high-altitude spy drones and citizen tips to curtail bombings.
