ASSOUAD BARZANI, Iraq (AFP) - Four men are lined up along an earthen wall in a Sunni village north of Baghdad as US soldiers quiz them about Al-Qaeda. "There is no Al-Qaeda here," says one suspect. "But I can give you the names of Shiite militias" in a neighbouring village.
Around 40 US soldiers arrived by helicopter early in the morning in the poor village of Assouad Barzani, around 80 kilometres (50 miles) northeast of Baghdad.
The hamlet is in the heart of territory infiltrated by fighters of the Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and has been caught up for more than a year in sectarian violence pitting Sunnis and Shiites against each other.
Another 100 or so troops have taken up positions around the village of mud houses, which lack running water or electricity, close to where a large cache of weapons had been discovered a few days earlier.
Captain Mike Stinchfield of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment leads a suspect in his 20s through the courtyard of a house where hens roam freely into a room with bare and dirty walls.
Questioned about Al-Qaeda, the suspect, Salah Mahdi, swears he knows nothing. There is "nobody" from the extremist network in the village, he says gesticulating with his arms.
"The problem is the Mahdi Army," he says, referring to the militia of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Assouad Barzani, according to its inhabitants, is regularly the target of rocket attacks and automatic gunfire from a nearby village dominated by the Mahdi Army. And people can't leave the village without fear of being attacked.
But a vantage point on an embankment overlooking the neighbouring Shiite village shows that the residents of Assouad Barzani "can also fire," says Stinchfield.
Just then, small arms fire targets the US troops. In angry reply, they send some mortar rounds into the field from where the firing came.
"Do you know why we are here? To ensure your safety," Stinchfield, 37, tells the four suspects.
"We are happy with the presence of the Americans. It is when you leave that the Mahdi Army attacks us," says Salah Mahdi, his head lowered. Like most men in the village, he is illiterate and without work.
Stinchfield sighs. "It is really very complicated. We are in the middle of a sectarian conflict here benefiting Al-Qaeda, which poses as a defender of the Sunnis."
As for the Iraqi police force and the army, Sabah Kifah, another of the suspects, asserts they are "controlled by Mahdi Army."
He asks the captain to create a village anti-Qaeda "Awakening" group similar to those being formed by the US military across the country, comprising locals on the American payroll who patrol the streets and control checkpoints.
The deserted village of Assouad Sadrani, a few hundred metres (yards) away, testifies to the combat which rocked the area. Scores of houses have been gutted by shells or by fire. None is left intact.
Stinchfield says the village was destroyed after its occupants fled.
"According to the report that I have, the Iraqi army last summer fought Al-Qaeda here. The civilians had already left the village. There was some air support from our forces," the captain says.
Graffiti on a wall, signed by "the Islamic State of Iraq", accuses Moqtada al-Sadr, whose militia has been observing a ceasefire since the end of August, and Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of having "destroyed" Iraq.
The four suspects are released and now it is the turn of the mayor of the nearby Sunni village of Kadir, suspected of supporting Al-Qaeda, to be questioned by the US soldiers.
They march into the bedroom of 58-year-old Dakhil Mansour with their muddy boots.
"There is no Al-Qaeda here. If there are caches of weapons, I don't know about them. I may be the mayor but I am not responsible for what happens outside my home," Mansour says pleadingly, closing his eyes.