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MILES O'BRIEN: And now
let's travel to the heart of al Qaeda country in
Iraq, a rural area northeast of Baghdad where
insurgents run things their way. Now U.S. troops are
trying to take it back, and CNN's Michael Ware has
been out on patrol with them.
Here's his exclusive report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A
patrol through steamy palm groves, like Vietnam, but
this is the Diyala River Valley, the DRV in central
Iraq, lush farmland laced with small villages and an
American battleground against al Qaeda.
While the surge in the Iraqi capital dominates public
attention, the DRV is at the heart of al Qaeda's
military operations. And in recent months, U.S.
forces have been battling to take this valley.
Flooding it with paratroopers, much of the fight for
the DRV now rests with this man, Lieutenant Colonel
Andrew Poppas of the 5-73rd Airborne Squadron.
LT. COL. ANDREW POPPAS, U.S. ARMY: You've got some of
the blacklist guys that they've moved out to.
WARE: Of his 300-plus men, 21 have been killed. Most
here in the valley.
POPPAS: There had not been a coalition force in that
region for some time.
WARE: Without enough U.S. troops in Iraq, the valley
was long neglected, allowing al Qaeda to flourish.
POPPAS: The intel we found is they did have Sharia
courts. They had a hierarchy both in terms of
judicial, the political. They had a police force that
maintained. They had transportation units. They had a
military wing.
WARE: Lingering in the colonel's mind, this scene
from an al Qaeda video seized in a raid.
POPPAS: The villagers themselves are all gathered to
the center. Elements come forward. They're masked.
An al Qaeda element chants out. He goes through the
list of crimes of this individual. It is a brutal
murder. They're beheaded in front of public, and the
population, they are all right there, children on
bicycles, families, chanting along.
WARE: To end the executions and oust al Qaeda, the
paratroopers launch a series of air assaults. It's
about 1:00 a.m. this night.
Artillery fire paves the way, cutting off any enemy
escape, relentless as the soldiers move among
families. Searching for weapons and fighters, they
mark each person with a number in a bid to sift
villagers from insurgents, and they detain suspects
on a blacklist.
As the operation unfolds, the cannons keep their beat
through the night. With the daylight, the hunt
continues as the Iraqi summer almost becomes
unbearable, the temperature rising to more than 120
degrees, so intense the searchers must rest.
The search resumes with orders to enter a sweltering
palm grove. The foliage intensifying the heat so
much, a number of paratroopers are treated for heat
stress.
In 48 hours, five suspected insurgents here killed,
10 captured, and two booby-trapped houses destroyed.
It's an end to one more operation on just one of many
Iraqi battlefields. Beyond the surge for Baghdad,
America's true success against al Qaeda will be
measured here in places like the DRV.
Michael Ware, CNN, the Diyala River
Valley.