Just days before the offensive began, United Press International's Pam Hess visited the town -- and provides this unique account of the efforts by one U.S. military commander to win the complex struggle for hearts and minds.

The slanted back of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle disgorged three soldiers in full battle gear and one slim, neat 15-year old Iraqi boy onto a narrow road in Tall 'Afar one recent Friday morning. The boy was barefoot and clutching a water bottle. He was instantly surrounded by other children, dozens of them crowding the close street, all clamoring for candy from the soldiers.

The boy had been picked up with three Iraqi men who were on the wanted list.

After questioning, Lt. Col. Christopher Hickey, the Sabre Squadron commander of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, knew he'd let him go. The kid didn't know anything.

Hickey and his troopers have only been coming to this Sunni section of Tall 'Afar for the last two months; it took them that long to negotiate a way into the neighborhood, which is believed to be home to a number of the town's insurgents.

Protected by tanks and Bradley armored vehicles, Hickey could have muscled his way in.

But the military's secret weapon in Iraq is men like Hickey -- officers who take the lay of the land and figure out how to pursue their mission by means other than overwhelming force.

So close to the Syrian border and the "rat line" for foreign fighters, weapons and cash coming into the country, the small town of Tall 'Afar has assumed a disproportionate status in Iraq as a way station and safe harbor for a particularly virulent brand of insurgent.

"He's got the patience not to go in and destroy everything," explained one of Hickey's junior officers, who asked not to be named for fear of appearing to suck up to his boss.

That's not to say there hasn't been violence. There has.

Hickey has lost at least five soldiers and had 30 wounded in the four months he's been here. Over the same period the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment has lost 23 across the region, which extends from just west of Mosul, west to the Syrian border and the Sinjar mountains, and down almost to Rawah on the Euphrates River.

The regimental casualty number includes Baghdad. They have detained around 550 prisoners killed almost 200 fighters in armed engagements.

But a careful analysis of the town's resistance convinced Hickey much of the battle could be won with the careful application of shrewd diplomacy, and numerous tiny acts of kindness.

Two months ago, through an elaborate series of personal connections -- an Iraqi version of six degrees of separation -- Hickey arranged a meeting with the tribal elders of the group that dominated the neighborhood -- the Farhats -- in a hospital on the edge of town, a neutral space.

There he arranged an invitation to visit the neighborhood.

No coalition forces had been into the Farhat neighborhood since the 101st Airborne Division pulled out of northwest Iraq in 2004. The division had been replaced by a brigade about a third of its size to cover the same territory and there just were not enough troops to make their presence felt. Only when the 4,000-man 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment was assigned to the area at the last minute was a force available to police Tall' Afar.

But during the period of neglect, reconstruction efforts had stalled and the insurgency sank deep roots.

When he arrived, Hickey had been welcomed in the nearby Shi'ite Sada tribal neighborhood, but he had grown suspicious when they constantly fingered the Farhats for everything that went wrong in town.

He got the feeling he was being used to settle tribal and ethnic scores.

"It's almost like the Jets and the Sharks," Hickey said, referring to the musical "West Side Story." "As soon as I started to meet with the Sunnis, the Shi'a started to freak out."

The day after the secret hospital meeting, Hickey and his men showed up in the Farhat neighborhood at the appointed time. They hadn't announced their route for fear of ambushes.

They approached a knot of men and asked that the leaders be brought to them.

"When they invite you to their neighborhood you can go," with out much fear of ambush, Hickey said. But he added, "I was concerned. I prepared for contact."

For protection he had positioned snipers on rooftops and lined up tanks nearby.

It turns out they were not necessary for Hickey's protection. But as soon as he got out of his Bradley, unseen gunman shot one of the Farhats gathered in the street in the neck.

"It seemed perfectly calm other than the guy getting shot," Hickey said approvingly, acknowledging that in Iraq, "calm" is a relative term.

This release of the teenager from the Bradley two months later in August was all about making the local Farhat sheikh look good to his tribe and feel powerful. It was not because the prisoner was a juvenile.

"We've had 14-year-olds launch rocket-propelled grenades at us," Hickey said.

The sheikh himself is new to Hickey. He was released only a week before from Abu Ghraib prison after 10 months of confinement.

He called Hickey to ask that he free the boy. Hickey was already going to let the boy go, but he saw an opportunity to give the sheikh a public victory.

"Will you vouch for his innocence and be responsible for him?" he asked.

The sheikh answered he would.

"Then I will let him go."

The hand-off was arranged for the next morning at 9:30. The young-looking sheik - whose full mustache was matched by extremely hairy knuckles -- cut through the crowd gathered in the street.

He greeted Hickey warmly, and chastised him for failing to bring the children flocking to the American troops treats.

"The last time you didn't bring them anything," he said.

"Tell them I will bring soccer balls next time," Hickey responded.

There are now dozens of men and boys in the tight street -- not a single woman was to be seen all morning. The sheik leads Hickey from man to man, pausing at a paralyzed ex-soldier in a wheelchair.

The young colonel is greeted with both hushed excitement and respect, something between a celebrity and a potentate. He is one of the many modern day "pashas" the coalition force has dotted around Iraq, upon whose shoulders victory in this struggle rests, town by town.

Hickey, the handsome father of two girls with an appealing if rare gap-toothed smile, touches the hand of a tiny boy not 18-months old. His father, he is told, is a taxi driver who has been taken to Abu Ghraib.

The sheikh leads Hickey and his men into a long, narrow room with a resplendent plastered ceiling; the walls are lined with a single row of plastic chairs.

It is a common arrangement for official business in the Arab world that stems from a violent past. It gives each man a sense of physical security: back to the wall, no one can sneak up behind him.

The room is dark and cool from a fan overhead and quickly becomes crowded with more than 30 men and boys -- including one smiling child on crutches who is missing most of his right leg.

He was caught in a cross-fire. The freshly bandaged stump of his leg is seeping a few drops of blood. His crutches are too short.

Hickey begins the meeting by giving the sheikh credit and responsibility for the release of the boy.

"Based on your word, he is innocent," Hickey says.

The sheikh inclines his head.

"God bless you, my whole tribe thanks you," he says, through an interpreter.

Cold drinks are handed round by a small boy, and Hickey's work begins.

He will settle in for three hours of polite but pointed discussion, allowing the tribe to get to know him and gleaning what he can from them about their problems -- what kindnesses he can offer to win their loyalty -- and what they know of the insurgency.

"What is new with you today?" Hickey asks.

"We have problems and some requests," the sheikh says.

Hickey retrieves his omnipresent green notebook and a pen.

"Don't you think the situation is calmer now?" the sheik asks rhetorically.

Hickey nods.

"We are willing every day to improve the situation, step by step, but there are people in the middle who won't let us reach higher steps. These people are standing in our way..." the sheikh says.

And then he gets to the meat of the matter.

Arabic television is reporting out of Baghdad that the government is planning to send the Iraqi Army to clear out Tall' Afar the way Fallujah was cleared last fall.

"To Fallujah" has now become a verb for Iraqis, Hickey explained later, synonymous with the violent leveling of a recalcitrant city.

In mid July, in fact, Baghdad ominously announced that there would be a "solution" to the Tall 'Afar "problem" within 10 days. Three dozen men from Tall 'Afar and Mosul went to Baghdad to meet with the government to circumvent "a Fallujah."

(Among the delegates was the elderly Mullah Dakhil, a white-bearded Farhat sub-tribal sheikh who had been working closely with Hickey and has since disappeared. He is feared killed, and members of his own tribe are suspected of the murder.)

Word from Baghdad again is that "a Fallujah" is coming.

Operational security as the American military knows it is something of a distant dream in Iraq.

"All the people are ready tomorrow to leave the city. We know there will be military action. Tomorrow there will be forces here from Baghdad to raid our houses.

"So please be honest with me the way I am honest with you....if God is willing and (you) are very honest, and say you won't use force, we would like that word today," the sheik said.

"If the Americans would like to search or raid our homes they can, but we won't let any dirty hands of Iraqi Shi'a coming from Baghdad to search our homes."

Hickey stared forward impassively, knowing more than he could let on about future military operations in Tall 'Afar: 10 days hence, around September 3, the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment would execute a "clear and hold" operation on Tall Afar, with special attention to this neighborhood.

The regiment had already built a berm around the city to cut off escape routes, except for those that moved through traffic control points, and erected air-conditioned tents for refugees to live in while the operation was carried out. While there, they would be allowed to register to vote.

Hickey could assure the sheikh, however, that nothing was planned for the next day, and certainly not with an army of Shi'ites from Baghdad, as the sheik feared.

Last week's operation is meant to clear the neighborhood, search out and destroy weapons caches, establish a patrol base there, get the insurgents out or on the run, and begin preparing for the election.

The "clear and hold" is meant to do that peacefully: empty the neighborhood, clean it up, screen the residents, and allow them to move back in.

"We've all looked at Fallujah and said, 'here's what I'd want to change,'" an officer in Hickey's squadron said.

Ten months after the clear and hold operation in Fallujah, only half the normal population has returned. There were some 1,500 killed there and an extraordinary amount of damage done. Perhaps satisfying in the near-term, such violent clashes can have long-term repercussion on local attitudes and the amount of reconstruction done.

It is unclear what the outcome will be there, letalone in Tall 'Afar

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