BAGHDAD, Iraq – Marines staked their claim to the abandoned youth center in Husaybah last month with a Hellfire missile and two tank rounds that collapsed a corner of the building and part of the roof.
Weeks earlier, residents had forsaken the center to insurgents who were using it as an armory and a staging point for attacks. The fighters fled before the U.S. assault but left evidence that their flight had been in haste, including a half-eaten bowl of figs in a makeshift sniper's roost above the center's theater.
This was the last building in a five-day sweep of the town, a point at which the Americans, in the past, would usually have loaded up their armored vehicles, driven back to their desert bases and prepared for a new raid elsewhere, leaving the door open for a return of the rebels.
But this time the Marines immediately began digging in, and Iraqi troops joined them.
Technicians converted the theater's stage into a command center, engineers erected a perimeter of concrete barriers to guard against rocket attacks and suicide bombers, and a community relations team took over a warren of rooms near the entrance of the center to receive residents' claims for damages.
Meanwhile, U.S. and Iraqi infantrymen turned some of the remaining space into barracks and began to conduct street patrols in a town that had not had a regular security force, American or Iraqi, in months.
For months, the military has been conducting raids in Anbar province, the western desert region that has become a wellspring for the insurgency. But commandeering the youth center was one of the first steps in a new approach to taming the area: first sweep a town, then immediately garrison it and begin reconstruction – or what President Bush has called "clear, hold and build."
Iraqi forces are an integral component of the strategy.
But the challenges are daunting: The quality of the Iraqi troops is still relatively low, cooperation from local residents is scarce, and the insurgency, though damaged by the sweeps, remains strong. But by providing a continuous security presence and improvements in the quality of life, the U.S. command hopes to win support for the elected leadership and deny the insurgents the popular support they seek.
U.S. military officials in Anbar say this has always been their plan – it has already been applied elsewhere in the country – but they never had enough troops to carry it out. Since spring, the number of Iraqi troops operating in Anbar province has surged to the current level of about 16,000 from about 2,500 in March, said Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson, commander of Multinational Force West and the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, which oversees security in Anbar. The Iraqis join about 32,000 coalition troops.
The siege of Husaybah, a farming and trading town, was part of a Marine-led operation that began Nov. 5, lasted more than two weeks and cleared villages and towns on both sides of the Euphrates River near the Syrian border. Since spring, troops in Anbar have conducted at least nine major assaults and several smaller ones to disrupt insurgent networks of safe houses and smuggling routes.
Even before the security efforts were complete, construction of at least seven garrisons was under way in Husaybah, Karabilah and Ubaydi. Each will house at least two platoons of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers.
"We bought land now," said Col. Stephen W. Davis, the commander of Marine Regimental Combat Team 2. "We're not leaving the towns. We're invested in them."
