Micheal Gisick/Tribune

Lt. Sayce Falk and his team of Marines patrol the streets of Ramadi, Iraq. For Falk and his troops, shown here on Monday, rebuilding, training and forging connections with Iraqis are a major part of the mission. "It's a lot more responsibility than if you were just in a rifle company," Falk says. "It's a lot more than just, `Go guard that window.' "

Michael Gisick/Tribune

U.S. Marines patrol through the fabric section of the souk, or traditional marketplace, in Ramadi, Iraq. U.S. military commanders see Ramadi as an incubator for the strategies they hope to extend to other cities in Iraq: Clear, hold and build. The Marines patrolled this market Monday.

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RAMADI, Iraq — Marine Lt. Sayce Falk is barely out the front gate of his patrol base before he comes across two black-shrouded women pointing toward a damaged mosque nearby.

"We're working on it," he tells them, first in the smattering of Arabic he has learned during his six months in Iraq and then through an interpreter. "We know."

He listens, nodding, as the women's voices rise and quicken. Finally he tells them he has to go; they can wait for him to come back and talk then. They seem to agree.

"It was in total disrepair," Falk explains as he leads his patrol through the city Monday. "The minaret was falling over. It was shot up. Full of holes."

The same could be said about much of this city of about 400,000, the capital of Anbar Province, former stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq and now a jewel of the American counterinsurgency.

Military commanders see Ramadi as an incubator for the strategies they hope to extend to other cities in Iraq. The plan, in shorthand: Clear, hold and build.

In other words, push the enemy out, hold the area you've taken and build infrastructure and services with an eye toward winning over the populace.

Ramadi is where the rubber meets the road, they like to say, although commanders know the roads here are still lined with trash, rubble and pools of standing water and sewage.

But that's a big improvement, the Marines say - all of Ramadi looked that way when they arrived.

"It looked totally dead," says Lance Cpl. Omar Sepulveda, a 21-year-old Artesia native who has been stationed in Ramadi since March.

"There were big ... trash piles everywhere. Big puddles of (sewage). You couldn't even walk through some of the streets. Everything was closed."

Lance Cpl. Kevin Clark, a 19-year-old Roswell native, adds: "It was a war zone for a long time, and it looked like it."

The brigade combat team of Army and Marine Corps units stationed in Ramadi and parts of the surrounding province has spent $60 million on reconstruction this year, says the brigade's commander, Army Col. John Charlton. One measure of the task the units faced: $13 million has been spent just on removing rubble.

"That's fair," Charlton says. "Let's face it. You go around town and see these building that are collapsed and destroyed - that happened as a result of fighting that involved American firepower."

Cleaning up the rubble is relatively easy because it's not hard to find. The more delicate task for the Marines stationed across Ramadi is trying to understand the life that has come back to this city.

"It's like putting together a puzzle," Falk says. "We're trying to help, but we have to know what we're looking at."

So Falk, flanked by one of the city's district council members and a squad of Marines and blue-shirted Iraqi police officers, sets off into Ramadi's traditional market, or souk. His mission for the day is to find the doctors whose small practices are set back among the shoe stalls and the fruit stands.

"Why do people throw their trash in the sewers when they could throw it in this open lot here?" he says to no one in particular as he rounds a corner.

The souk is bustling, and Falk, a tall, 24-year-old Philadelphia native with a reddish mustache, turns into ambassador in battle gear.

He smiles at the children and exchanges salaam aleikums with the men. He takes off his helmet and gives an interview to one man standing on the sidewalk with a digital camcorder atop a tripod.

Through his interpreter, Falk says he's very pleased at the way the month-long religious observance of Ramadan has gone so far, at how busy the souk is. It's a sign that people are feeling safe, he says.

The pendulum of the American experience in Ramadi began to swing in late 2006. Commanders attribute much of the change to the tactics of the insurgents who had operated here through 2004 and 2005 and had declared Ramadi their capital, claiming allegiance to al-Qaida.

But then "people here began to realize that al-Qaida wasn't exactly the kind of partner they wanted," Charlton says. "Al-Qaida was using pure murder and intimidation to control the population. I mean absolute brutality. If you talk to these tribal leaders, every one of them will tell you they've lost family members."

Backed by a growing coalition of disaffected local sheiks, American forces swept into Ramadi in January. During the first month, Charlton's brigade weathered an average of 30 to 35 attacks a day. Ten soldiers and Marines were killed.

"There's this misconception that al-Qaida just declared peace and left Anbar," Charlton says. "That's not the case."

As the brigade fought its way into the city, it came with a new strategy grounded in the mistakes many commanders saw in American tactics during the early years of the war.

"What happened is that you had al-Qaida starting to insert itself more and more and create violence," Charlton says, looking back on the birth of the insurgency in 2004. "In some cases, U.S. forces overreacted to that violence, and so you started to get that split that occurred."

Now that the citizenry of Ramadi, alienated first by the United States and then by al-Qaida, seems to have come back into the arms of the Americans, commanders say they are determined not to lose it again.

So this time, while some of the Marines still live in large, fortified compounds with flush toilets, showers and food service workers in bow ties, many others are fanned out across the city in ramshackle stations, living alongside Iraqi police and soldiers.

Instead of sallying forth silent and menacing, the Americans wander the streets asking questions, finding a city of many needs.

"We have a lot of deficits," an ophthalmologist tells Falk in careful English, his small, hot office off the souk lined with patients. The lights flicker off and then throb uncertainly back to life.

Falk says his men have brought some supplies and asks if the doctor needs any.

"What we need is an argon laser," the eye specialist says. "There is not one in the whole city."

One of the Marines pulls a few small packages from his pack. They have brought some gauze and forceps.

This is not, Falk says back at his patrol base, exactly what most Marines signed up for. It's a balancing act for his men, trying to be open while remaining careful and alert.

Although he doesn't think insurgents could re-establish themselves in the city with any permanence, he worries that a single operative with a suicide bomb vest could have a devastating effect amid the crowds again gathering in the market.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi police officer has just backed a Humvee into a 10-ton truck. A running argument has broken out between some of Falk's Marines and the Iraqi police officers, who the Marines say aren't cleaning up their own trash.

A police commander points angrily at a few sunflower seed shells and part of a plastic package under one Marine's desk.

"What is this?" the commander yells.

"It's a lot more responsibility than if you were just in a rifle company," Falk says. "It's a lot more than just, `Go guard that window.' "

Shortly afterward, Falk and the rest of the Marines on patrol gather for a debriefing. They enter the names of the three doctors they met into a computer database, part of an ongoing census of important people in the community. They talk about what they noticed, what seemed different. A few new shops open in the souk. A new water leak adding to the fetid, greenish pool along Edge Street.

"I had two women come up to me in the souk and say hello," one Marine says.

Falk says he sees steady progress in the Iraqi forces.

"When we got here, they would just sort of go out in a mob," he says. "They were like; `We've got guns. I guess we should go out in the street.' Now they're a lot more organized."

Later that night, a group of senior Marines and Iraqi dignitaries heads out for the championship match of the Ramadi soccer league at what was once another "big ... pile of trash."

"It was bigger than you and me," says Lt. Kelby Breivogel, 25, who oversees the area around the soccer field. A district council member suggested the field as a way to give young people something to do.

Wearing yellow Pirelli jerseys, the team representing the Katana area scores early and dominates the action throughout but can't add to its lead. Katana, Breivogel notes, is Arabic for cotton, the crop grown here long ago.

Breivogel is so impressed with the Iraqi police officers in his sector that he believes they are ready to take over. They set up security for the game on their own, he says.

"If we pulled out tomorrow, I think they'd be fine," he says.

The Americans are served water and soft drinks, sticky baklava and cigarettes. A 6-year old boy wanders up and sits between Breivogel and 1st Sgt. Scott Schmitt, a 17-year Marine Corps veteran with a 6-year-old of his own back home.

"That was kind of nice," Schmitt says later, "the way that kid was playing."

In the final minutes of the match, a player from the Ashrin, or 20th Street, team steals the ball at midfield and rushes on goal. At the last moment he passes to a teammate, who stuffs the ball in past the goalie. The game goes to penalty kicks, and the Ashrin underdogs win.

The Marines in Ramadi might not go home with war stories, exactly, and many say they're not sure how they'll relate their experiences to friends and family. It's not the war on TV.

"We didn't blow anything up or shoot anything," says Sepulveda, the Artesia native. "We just tried to help."