A welcome calm in Ramadi

Life in Ramadi has been so calm recently that Fort Carson soldiers there are getting nervous.

On their second tour to the insurgent bastion southwest of Baghdad, troops in the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment know that things can change quickly.

“Myself and my battalion are in no way declaring victory,” said the unit’s commander, Lt. Col. Charles Ferry. “We’re declaring a break right now.”

In Ramadi since October, Ferry’s unit faced daily firefights until last month, when the insurgents faded away. He spoke to The Gazette last week in a telephone interview from his headquarters in Iraq.

“We did a series of operations across our sector and since about two months ago we have beaten the insurgency down,” he said.

Ferry said much of the credit for grinding down the insurgent groups goes to veterans who make up about half the battalion and are serving this tour in the same Iraqi neighborhood they left in 2005.

“We recognized the people we were dealing with,” Ferry said. “The experience paid off real big.”

The battalion is part of Fort Carson’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, which has the bulk of its 3,500 soldiers guarding the streets of Baghdad.

Ramadi, in Iraqi’s restive Anbar province, has proved nearly immune to American efforts to calm it. Some of the first work there was done by Fort Carson’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which kept the city under control for nearly a year.

But Ramadi was again raging when the 2nd Brigade arrived in 2004.

The brigade rebuilt the city’s police department and installed an elected government but lost 68 soldiers along the way.

And what was built didn’t last. Ramadi’s police department and other local government agencies fell apart and insurgents moved back in after the brigade left.

Ferry’s battalion found itself having to exterminate the insurgency while rebuilding civil institutions.

“We have killed a lot of insurgents. We have also detained a lot of insurgents, and we probably chased the rest of them off for right now,” Ferry said. “I don’t think they have given up though. The survivors, the smart ones, have moved into other areas.”

Ferry said his soldiers are reveling in the calm as they adjust to a longer tour in Iraq. This year, the soldiers were told they would stay in Iraq for 15 months, 90 days longer than their planned tour.

“We don’t like it, but we know its necessary,” Ferry said of the longer stay.

Ferry said a key difference in this tour is the seamless relationship his battalion has developed with an Iraqi sister unit.

“They’re like my own soldiers,” he said.

Ferry said that as his soldiers patrol a calm city, they’re having to adjust to what Iraq could become if American and Iraqi troops are able to defeat the insurgents.

“You kind of get used to fighting,” he said.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0240 or tom.roeder@gazette.com