3rd ACR in Tal Afar

BY TOM LASSETER, Knight Ridder Newspapers
TAL AFAR, Iraq - (KRT) - U.S. Army officers in the badland deserts of northwest Iraq, near the Syrian border, say they don't have enough troops to hold the ground they take from insurgents in this transit point for weapons, money and foreign fighters.
From last October to the end of April, there were about 400 soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division patrolling the northwest region, which covers about 10,000 square miles.
"Resources are everything in combat ... there's no way 400 people can cover that much ground," said Maj. John Wilwerding, of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is responsible for the northwest tract that includes Tal Afar.
"Because there weren't enough troops on the ground to do what you needed to do, the (insurgency) was able to get a toehold." said Wilwerding, 37, of Chaska, Minn.
During the past two months, Army commanders, trying to pacify the area, have had to move in some 4,000 Iraqi soldiers; about 2,000 more are on the way. About 3,500 troops from the 3rd ACR took control of the area this month, but officers said they were still understaffed for the mission. [...]
When an attachment of 25th Infantry soldiers, doing a sweep in tandem with the 3rd ACR, came across a house near Rawah last week, they were expecting to sit down and talk with the locals about water quality.
In June 2003, American troops had destroyed an insurgent training camp in the area, killing more than 70 suspected fighters with helicopter strikes and a large ground offensive. It was one of the biggest camps discovered in postwar Iraq.
Last week, when the ramp of an armored vehicle began to open outside the house near Rawah, an insurgent shot a rocket-propelled grenade at it and other insurgents let loose with machine-gun fire.
The 25th Infantry soldiers responded first with .50-caliber machine-gun fire and then two shoulder-launched rockets. Four insurgents - three from Saudi Arabia and one from Morocco - were killed, Maj. Denny said. After the house caught fire, four more insurgents surrendered. They were from Syria, Jordan and Algeria.
"They'd come to Iraq to kill Americans; they were looking for jihad" - or holy war - Denny said.