Two Iraqi soldiers stumbled out of the thick, black smoke, their faces bathed in blood that glistened in the sun. They clutched their heads, mumbling "Hamdullah" -- "Thanks to God." They had survived the explosion. A third Iraqi soldier was being carried on an olive-green stretcher. He was unconscious, curled like a baby.
From the haze, Capt. Adil Muhammed also appeared, holding his long yellow bomb detector. He had just swept this section of road. But then an American armored bulldozer had rolled over the patch, detonating the deeply buried bomb. As the smell of explosives wafted across the scene on a recent Saturday, American and Iraqi soldiers shouted to others to fall back, fearing a second blast. Muhammed stared, struggling for an explanation.
"I dug here, and I found nothing," he said aloud, to no one in particular.
The offensive unfolding here in Diyala province, one of the most resilient strongholds of Sunni extremists, is proving to be one of the Iraqi army's biggest challenges. Muhammed, the bomb sweeper, is at the front lines of the conflict. He and other soldiers of the 1st Division, 3rd Battalion are examples of the army that U.S. commanders hope will one day be able to stand on its own and allow American soldiers to leave Iraq. But these elite soldiers, among Iraq's best, believe that turning point is still many years away. And the crater in front of Muhammed helps explain why.
In this conflict, insurgents, mostly members of the group al-Qaeda in Iraq, have fled villages but left behind large swaths of farmland and thoroughfares dotted with roadside bombs and booby-trapped houses. The road Muhammed stood on was among the deadliest. He'd learned quickly why local villagers dubbed it the Road of Hell. Before 10 a.m., he had unearthed and detonated 11 bombs.
After the blast, a few steps away, Sgt. Muhammed Abdullah, 28, glared at the American soldier seated inside the armored bulldozer, unharmed. Not even his window was cracked.
To Abdullah's left, the windshield of a tan Iraqi army truck was shattered. Abdullah, his forehead bloodied from flying shrapnel, was angry. "Usually the Americans are never injured," he said. "It's the Iraqis who get hurt." Minutes later, two Iraqi soldiers helped him into a Humvee for treatment.
'This is a war of cowards'
The road cuts across southern Diyala province, through areas long controlled by insurgents, and leads to the capital, Baghdad. The day before the blast, Muhammed had cleared more than a mile of it. Then the Americans told him to quit, he recalled, promising to use their better technology. But the bombs kept exploding, injuring four Iraqi soldiers and damaging three U.S. vehicles that day.
The Iraqi army brought back 42-year-old Muhammed, a sun-bronzed, charismatic former member of the Republican Guard, an elite force under Saddam Hussein. An explosives expert, he had retired in 1998 to run a taxi service, which paid better. After the U.S.-led 2003 invasion, many of his fellow officers and tribesmen joined the Sunni insurgency. But Muhammed did not, he said, because he hated Hussein as much as he disliked the American occupation.
In May 2004, he enlisted in the new Iraqi army, attracted by the salary and driven by a sense of patriotism. Sunni insurgents threatened to kill him. But he remained in the army and since then has defused hundreds of roadside bombs for the 1st Division, widely seen by U.S. military commanders as the most well trained and nonsectarian in the Iraqi military.
This year, the 1st Division took part in offensives in the southern cities of Basra and Amarah with Muhammed leading the way, clearing streets filled with bombs. The victories bolstered the soldiers' pride and spawned a new assertiveness.
"Everywhere in Iraq now, our war is against bombs," said Muhammed, whose wife is expecting their fifth daughter. "This is a war of cowards."
At 8:30 a.m., Gen. Ali Ghaidan, the top Iraqi military commander in this mixed Sunni-Shiite province 35 miles north of Baghdad, arrived. He appealed to the Americans for more helicopter support and bulldozers.
Capt. Daniel Lammers, a U.S. military transition team adviser to the 3rd Battalion, said he would get more support there as quickly as possible. The bulldozer then ran over the bomb.
Iraqis take the lead
After the explosion, at 10:10 a.m., Muhammed walked around the bulldozer, looking at its bent wheel and the crater underneath. Before the blast, Ghaidan and other senior officials had walked past this spot several times.
"It's an antitank mine," Muhammed said, his voice rising in vindication. It was buried nearly two yards deep. How could he possibly have detected that? The weight of the bulldozer set off the bomb, he said.
At 10:15 a.m., another bomb exploded near the main road about a mile away. No one was injured.
U.S. commanders say that the Iraqis are taking the lead in the offensive but that they still need U.S. help. Lammers's departing team recently advised superiors that the 3rd Battalion no longer needed it. But the military decided to bring in a replacement team, anyway.
"A lot of our guys think the Iraqi army can't handle it on their own," said 1st Lt. Mikeal Stojic, 26, of Deltona, Fla. "But we're not going to have the manpower to hold the Iraqi hands all the way through." Stojic described the U.S. role as "a security blanket for a little kid."
"Just the fact we are there, it gives them the confidence to push through," he said.
The Iraqis' approach to bomb-clearing is nothing like the Americans.' "These guys are crazy. They just get an IED and snip the wick," said Capt. Ben Michaels, a burly Texan, referring to an improvised explosive device. "We collect the bombs and put them together and detonate it. These guys just blow them on the spot."
At 10:41, the Iraqis spotted the 14th bomb. It was steps in front of their vehicle. Four minutes later, after warning everyone to stand back, Muhammed detonated it. The smoke rose high. The blast was more powerful than the bulldozer's.
"I'm afraid Adil will die today," said Maj. Rafid Sobeh, a rail-thin soldier emerging from his tan Humvee, where he had taken cover.
At 11:45, Muhammed and his team drove away from the road. U.S. commanders had told their Iraqi counterparts to pull him out, said Lt. Col Sameer Radi, 43. The Americans were again taking over.
A struggle for stability
Muhammed's war was over, for a while. In the furnace-like heat of southern Diyala, Iraqi and American soldiers rested for much of the afternoon. The Iraqi soldiers ate a spare lunch of rice, gravy, grapes and soft drinks inside destroyed houses. Some sang songs, seated on piles of toppled bricks. A handful mingled with U.S. soldiers nearby. Muhammed and his two proteges, Sgt. Ahmed Said, 28, and Sgt. Hassan Shegas, 31, washed clothes and relaxed by their green Humvee under a eucalyptus tree.
Muhammed, his face gleaming with sweat, fumed about being taken off the job. After more than a decade of experience defusing bombs with the Republican Guard, he was deeply resistant to change. "I don't think the Americans can see the wires on the ground. Only with eyes," he said, pointing at his own.
Although his pride was hurt, Muhammed said he needs the U.S. military for the bomb detectors and their batteries, bulbs, lights, cameras, handguns and, most important, explosives. "I haven't received any explosives from the Iraqi army," he said. "The Americans usually provide all our needs."
He and his men had to purchase their uniforms, like most Iraqi soldiers. They fondly recall 2004, when the U.S. military ran the 1st Division and even underwear and boots were provided.
What most concerns Muhammed is Iraq's neighbors, particularly Iran, which many Iraqi soldiers fear will invade after U.S. troops leave.
"Now, the Iraqi army cannot stand on their own," Muhammed said. "As long as we don't have an air force, we'll need the Americans forever. We've cleaned up Basra, Amarah, and now we are in Diyala. But what is the point if we don't have an army controlling our borders?"
The Iraqi army's ability to become a cohesive defense force will depend on Iraq's political situation, he said. He and his men are wary that many army divisions are manned largely by members of a single sect. They haven't forgotten how portions of the mostly Shiite 14th Division refused to fight the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in Basra during a March offensive.
"They delivered their weapons to the militias, despite being supplied and trained by Americans," said Said, a skinny former truck driver from Basra. "That's because they are from there. One driver exchanged his Humvee for a bicycle, and the militiamen painted it like a taxi."
Muhammed said that if the 1st Division had not intervened, "Basra would now be controlled by Iran."
"The Americans need to be here five to 10 years," said Shegas, a wiry former shopkeeper from Nasiriyah. "Things are still not stable."
At 3:53 p.m., a U.S. military tow truck pulled the bulldozer from the road. Five minutes later, American armored vehicles rolled toward the mined stretch of road. "I'll give a million dinars if they get through without me," said Muhammed, watching the convoy.
That evening he met with Brig. Gen. Adil Abbas Shimil, the division commander. Shimil told him he could not return to bomb-clearing on the road just yet. He wanted Muhammed to go in the morning to a village where insurgents had booby-trapped a school.
Then he informed Muhammed that he had been promoted to a major. Later that night, Muhammed called his wife and daughters with the news. His mind soon drifted back to the task ahead. Before falling asleep under the starry desert sky, he told a visitor, "It's going to be dangerous tomorrow."
Explosives in a school
The next day, Muhammed and his men entered the village of Hachim al-Sultan at 5:30 a.m., accompanied by Iraqi infantry troops. Dogs howled. There were only four families left in the village, all displaced Sunnis who had fled Shiite areas. They said they had seen insurgents enter the school and other nearby houses. They suspected a white flatbed truck was rigged with explosives.
"Take your family and go far away," Muhammed told Amar Saud, 61, who lived across from the school. "These houses could all be booby-trapped."
At 5:48, Muhammed and Shegas walked into the school, slowly, looking for changes in the soil or shrubbery. In the first room, Muhammed found a five-liter jerrycan, topped with a red wire, filled with explosives.
A few minutes later, an explosion echoed in the distance. Another roadside bomb.
The pair soon found two bigger jerrycans, also topped with wires. They turned out to be fake. It was unclear why.
At 6:23, the soldiers spotted two men on a nearby plain and fired at them. The men fled. Ten minutes later, Muhammed exploded the bomb in the jerrycan. Afterward, Muhammed walked briskly and inspected the other houses and the white truck. They were not rigged. One grateful family brought the soldiers tea and breakfast.
Muhammed made sure he exploded the bomb away from the school because the building "could be reopened next year." The Americans, he said, would have conducted an airstrike against it.
After their mission, soldiers from different sects and regions celebrated Muhammed's promotion. They danced along the main road, clapping and laughing. One soldier chanted:
Adil never knows what is fear.
The roadside bombs fear him.
The next assignment came 15 minutes later. Iraqi commanders ordered Muhammed and his team to join a long convoy of Iraqi and American vehicles. Three miles after they passed the turnoff to the Road of Hell, they approached another road. But just as the convoy prepared to turn onto it, they were ordered to turn around. American intelligence and technology had found that the road was littered with mines, possibly as thickly laid as the Road of Hell.
"It's a wild ride. Plans change a mile a minute," said Stojic, who was following with his men to back up the Iraqis. "A lot of missions are done at the spur of the moment. A lot of times they act on impulse."
Stojic said he was aware of the intelligence a couple of hours earlier, but Iraqi officers leading the convoy would listen only to their base commanders. "The Iraqi army have their ideas. Then you have the coalition. We have our ideas. We're not quite on the same page," he said. "If we happened to go down that way, I would have probably told my guys to stay back."
A promotion and new orders
At 1:48 p.m., Muhammed received a phone call. A roadside bomb had ripped the arm and leg off another Iraqi soldier, who died. There was still no word on whether he would return to the Road of Hell. "This should be solved with our hands," he said. Later, he went to Shimil for his orders. Shimil decided to hold his promotion ceremony on the spot. An aide took the insignias off the shoulders of another major. Shimil placed them on Muhammed, as Lt. Col. George Benson, Shimil's U.S. military adviser, watched.
As he attached the shoulder insignia, Shimil told Muhammed that he needed him to clear the way into a known insurgent haven along the Road of Hell.
The Americans had cleared almost two more miles of the road. But the Iraqis wanted their ace bomb defuser to make sure it was totally safe.
"You go walking, you go crawling," Shimil told him. "Tomorrow we need you there."
"I will be there, God willing," Muhammed said.
Special correspondent Zaid Sabah contributed to this report.