RUSHDI MULLAH, IRAQ — A man with his hand blown off. A soldier's equipment strewn across a field. A child's vague recollections. They are pieces of a puzzle that U.S. military officials are working with as they search for three missing soldiers and the people responsible for their disappearance.
By Thursday, the sixth day of the hunt, the wear was showing, not just on the soldiers obsessed with finding their comrades but also on the hamlets that dot the region southwest of Baghdad, which is blessed with groves of elegant date palms and riddled with pro-Al Qaeda insurgents.
Hundreds of local men have been detained for questioning, leaving women, children and legions of ferociously barking dogs in charge of Iraqi towns such as Rushdi Mullah, a community of 86 households under a virtual siege by troops looking for their buddies. At the U.S. military posts throughout the region, thousands of soldiers have vowed to hunt until the missing are found, even though the task has diverted troops needed to enforce a U.S.-Iraqi security clampdown in Baghdad.
"It's not about resources. It's about an ethos. It's about who we are as people," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Avanulas Smiley, commander of a Stryker brigade that has been drawn into the search. "It's about never leaving a fallen comrade. That may sound cliche, but it's true."
Smiley was speaking from a patrol base in Yousifiya, a market town of about 5,000 people 10 miles south of Baghdad. The small base has become the staging point for the search and is struggling under the weight of hundreds of extra troops flying in by helicopter and devouring food as quickly as cooks in the mess hall can dish it up.
Day and night, they head out by air or road, passing through a town whose charm vanished long ago behind blast walls topped with razor wire and piles of broken concrete and trash.
Beyond Yousifiya lie the bucolic farming villages that are the focus of the search.
This region, known as the "triangle of death" because of the high level of insurgent activity, has a sinister past. A year ago, in a case grimly reminiscent of the current one, three U.S. soldiers were ambushed in the area. One was killed, and two vanished. The bodies of the missing were found mutilated and booby-trapped three days later on a riverside road dubbed Route Malibu by U.S. soldiers.
