After temporary gains, Marines leave Iraqi cities

These sentiments echo the scaled-back expectations among troops on the ground. Gone is the talk about breaking the back of the insurgency that was floated before the November battle for Fallujah, where hundreds of militants were dug in and ready to fight.

Instead, the troops speak about a long, painstaking process of intelligence gathering, slowly constricting the corridor along the Euphrates river that has helped foreign militants move into Iraq from Syria and helped domestic militants move men and money.

And they speak about slowly finding a way to train and motivate Iraqi troops to replace the largely failed experiment with the Iraqi National Guard, which has been plagued by desertions, insurgent infiltration, and a refusal to fight because of fears of reprisals against their family members.

Patrolling Hit, a city of 100,000 people, the marines encountered no open hostility. Little boys fascinated by their guns chased after them and young men peppered them with questions in broken English. In five days in the city, one sniper was killed by the marines, and another man was killed after a drive by shooting. In Anbar Province, that's about as quiet as it gets.

But there is also little open or obvious cooperation. Just about an hour before the drive-by shooting, the owner of a house occupied by a team of marines was asked about insurgent activity in the area. "There is no resistance in the entire city of Hit,'' he said. "They left a long time ago."

In a brief meeting with marines to arrange the recovery of two insurgent bodies, a local sheikh told Maj. Derek Horst, "99.9 percent of our people are peaceful people. We don't want problems here."

Such reticence either masks sympathies with the insurgency, or more commonly fear of reprisals. Last October, insurgents moved into the city, reduced the police station to rubble, and beheaded a few locals they deemed too close to US forces. The city's police remain inactive.

Yet as marines left the meeting, another with long experience in the Hit area could hardly detain his disgust. "This guy is one of our biggest problems here. In the past, he's been whipping people up to fight."

In some cities in Anbar, civilians have been killed for simply talking to Marines, and more than a few citizens of Hit on this trip told marine officers that they should either come into the city and stay, or don't come at all, because there are no guarantees of their safety when the troops leave.

The marines say they appreciate civilian fears, but are frustrated that locals don't secure their towns on their own. "It's hard to understand sometimes why people don't stand up for themselves,'' says Sergeant Shawn Hudman of Austin, Texas.

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