Culture clash

But the initial progress has been tempered by friction between the team of elite troops and the US Army. At one point this year, the battalion8217;s commander, uncomfortable with his lack of control over a team he saw as dangerously undisciplined, sought to expel it from his turf.

The conflict in the Anbar camp, while extreme, is not an isolated phenomenon in Iraq, US officers say. It highlights two clashing approaches to the war: the heavy focus of many regular US military units on sweeping combat operations; and the more fine-grained, patient work Special Forces teams put into building rapport with local leaders, security forces and the people 8212; work that experts consider vital in a counterinsurgency.

8220;The conventional units are bogged down in cities doing the same old thing,8221; said the Special Forces team8217;s 44-year-old sergeant. 8220;It8217;s not about bulldozing Hit, driving through with a tank, with all the kids running away8230; insurgencies are defeated by personal relationships.8221; The real battles, he said, are unfolding 8220;in a sheik8217;s house, squatting in the desert eating with my right hand and smoking Turkish cigarettes and trying to influence tribes to rise up against an insurgency8221;.

Cutting Deals: Under the glittering chandeliers of his newly remodeled salon, Sheik Jubair adjusted his fine, white cotton dishdasha , or traditional robe, and lit a cigarette.

As if on cue, the American team sergeant leaned over and handed him an ashtray.

The 63-year-old sheik is the de facto ruler of the Albu Nimr, a wealthy tribe whose influence stretches from Anbar8217;s violent capital of Ramadi up the Euphrates to Haditha. Jubair knows the US military needs his tribe as much as it needs the military. Shunned in the 1990s for plotting against Saddam Hussein, the tribe backed the US-led overthrow of Hussein in 2003. But Jubair now faces threats from Anbar8217;s entrenched Sunni Arab insurgency, which he said put a 5 million bounty on his head.

Week after week, the team has spent long hours cultivating Jubair 8212; funding his projects, buying his son a PlayStation, even holding his hand during treatment at a US military hospital for an infected toe. In return, Jubair has supplied hundreds of police and army recruits, as well as intelligence targeting insurgents in the region.

Recently, Jubair pressed the team sergeant for a hospital, a gas station, a school, payment for a damaged car and a mosque. 8220;We don8217;t do mosques,8221; the sergeant replied.

One minute Jubair was unbuttoning his shirt to show off a wound acquired in the Iran-Iraq war. The next, he was pouting because the American team dared visit his nephew and rival, Sheik Hatem, aka the 8220;boy king8221;, who officially heads the tribe and lives in the same compound.

For the Americans, such engagement is as vital as it can be maddening. After the team arrived in January, it captured a former police colonel accused of stealing cars and 60,000 in pay and killing another police officer. But when the colonel was detained and sent to Abu Ghraib prison, sheiks Jubair and Hatem pleaded for his release. 8220;They said you will increase your wasta and all that,8221; the team sergeant said, 8220;so we secured a controlled release.8221;

It helped win the tribe8217;s backing for a local police force. But it also heightened frictions with the US Army battalion, whose convoy transporting the detainee had hit a roadside bomb.

The clash of military cultures was apparent from the start in late January, when the Special Forces team captain arrived at Hit and introduced his team8217;s mission to Lt Col Thomas Graves, commander of the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment. Graves, a close-shaven West Point graduate from Texas, said nothing and walked away, according to team members.

8220;We grow our hair a little longer,8221; the team sergeant said. 8220;We wear mustaches, and the conventional Army doesn8217;t want to deal with you because they look at you as undisciplined.8221;

To Graves, the problem boiled down to communication and his battalion8217;s limited, or 8220;tactical8221;, control over the Special Forces. 8220;It8217;s not that they have long hair. I don8217;t care if they8217;re from Mars,8221; said Graves in the camp8217;s chow hall. 8220;They have a responsibility to tell us what they were doing, but they refuse to do it.8221;

At a desert firing range outside Hit, a squad of Iraqi army scouts attacked a line of silhouetted targets, emptying their AK-47 assault rifles and then switching effortlessly to pistols. Next, they practiced sweeping a room, pivoting through the doorway and shouting bursts of Arabic. The scout platoon displayed an agility and confidence unusual among Iraqi soldiers. And the Americans fostered loyalty in the platoon.

But last spring, when the scouts spotted a roadside bomb during a solo mission and warned US forces about it, they were detained by Graves8217;s battalion, blindfolded and forced to sit in bitter cold for seven hours before the team could secure their release. 8220;I was livid,8221; the team sergeant said.

Later, when the Special Forces team offered to give advanced training to the entire Iraqi army battalion, Graves rejected the idea. Morale continued to drop in the Iraqi battalion, its manpower down to 60 per cent after hundreds of soldiers quit over lack of pay, poor food and duty far from home.

The Special Forces soldiers realise there are drawbacks to relying on the tribe. Every decision 8212; from firing a policeman to averting revenge killings 8212; requires the sanction of tribal leaders like Jubair. But the reality in Anbar, the captain said, is either to 8220;engage the tribes8230; or leave them to the will of the insurgency8221;.