Dan Zak: AL ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq — The dust storm swallowed the horizon and then the soldiers, who leaned into the windy blur to load rucksacks onto vehicles pointed homeward. At 3:30 a.m. the next day, their Army battalion would roll out under the cover of darkness, concluding their mission to advise and train Iraqi security forces in Anbar province.
The swath of western Iraq the battalion was leaving behind has seen the bloodiest points of the war, but also some of the most promising. Since the war began, 1,332 U.S. soldiers have died in Anbar, nearly one in three of all American fatalities; but none have been killed in action in the province in more than two years.
In 2006 alone, there were 1,129 total insurgent attacks in Anbar; this year there have been 333. The provincial police force, nonexistent five years ago, employs 32,000 officers.
Those numbers are cited by the Americans now leaving Iraq as cause for optimism. But the Iraqis who will stay in Anbar have been taking a darker view of 2012 — wondering whether the province is in the clear or merely in the eye of a storm.
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