It's not the desert of "Lawrence of Arabia," with soft sand, camels and dunes. It's more of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western variety.

And Marine Col. Stacy Clardy seems to know every inch of it.

"Out there to the right, if you look carefully at the high ground, is a combat operations post," he said from the door of a Huey UH-1 helicopter. "There's another one a few miles away, and up over there," he said pointing out the opposite door, "we built berms so any vehicle heading for Haditha has to pass by us.

"This place is so sparsely populated, if terrorists want any support, supplies as they try to transit towards Baghdad, they have to go by vehicle to places like Haditha, and if they try, we got 'em."

I smiled politely and nodded. But darned if I could find the berms.

Clardy is an intense South Carolinian, with a quick, dry sense of humor. He's commander of the Marine 2nd Regiment out of Camp Lejeune, N.C. His desert domain in western Anbar is called AO-Denver. It's located about 120 miles west of Baghdad. Parts of it touch the Euphrates River and its towns, villages and fruit and date groves. Other parts border Syria, Jordan and even Saudi Arabia, and their border communities.

In between is 30,000 square miles -- an area equivalent to South Carolina -- of desert.

According to Clardy, it's that geography, combined with demographics, Marine flexibility and the practicality of AO-Denver Anbaris that have put the region under his command in the plus side of the Iraq equation. Terrorist acts of violence have dropped from an average of 75 a week in January to about 24 a week now; tribal sheiks are cooperating with one another, Iraqi provincial authorities and U.S. forces.

You can only trust people to do what is in their best interests," he said. "The Iraqis are doing what is in their best interest. They see their success and future will be built on the relationship they have, we hope, with their own government and with us being here as well, and with the Iraqi security forces to which they contribute their sons.

"At some point they realized that was not going to happen with AQI (al-Qaida-Iraq).

"These are a practical people," he said. "But it takes trust. And we've built that trust, and so are the Iraqi security forces. People are now going to them to give tips about arms caches and terrorist presence."

The practicality Clardy referred to the importance of tribe to Iraqis and the sheik's responsibility for tribal welfare, including financial welfare. Constant conflict, constant killing, is bad for business. Bad business means lack of money and the necessities of life.

"The dominant tribes are making sure that all the tribes are moving towards peace and prosperity," Clardy said. "When they recruit for the police or army, they make sure sons come from across the spectrum of tribes.

"If they don't volunteer their sons, they aren't with us."

A major challenge to progress and cooperation remains, however -- overcoming distance and poor communications to build stronger relationships and problem solving. The solution at the moment is regular helicopter rides for tribal and municipal officials for meetings with their provincial counterparts.

"When you get them in a room together they solve problems," he said. "When you don't, they don't. And they don't always like being in a room together, but when they do, they work it out. They are a very compromising people �� they don't like personal confrontation too much."

Clardy said cooperation with U.S. forces began on a personal level, between Marines and the local communities. Negotiations, methods of accommodation, are worked out the commanders on the ground, not by those in the rear. It's part of the way the Marines approach counterinsurgency -- flexibility and small unit leadership.

"Every town is different, every group of Iraqis are different, and we have to trust our small unit leaders to be able to make decisions as long as they understand what we are trying to do," he said.

That level of personal relationship and cooperation is continued by the follow-up commander amid troop rotations at the end of tours of duty. The relationship then comes to extend beyond just one person, but to an entity, in this case, the Marines.

Clardy, who fought in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and previously served on a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, and his 6,000 Marines are not complacent, however. He realizes the situation could change but trusts in the ability of the Marines to adapt and the Iraqis to remain practical.

"The sheiks (and) others know if AQI comes back they die for cooperating" with us and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

Neither does he believe what has worked in the unique environment of AO-Denver will work necessarily elsewhere in the country. In addition to sparse populations outside of a few major towns, the Iraqis in AO-Denver are all Sunni Muslims, whereas in the south they are Shiite, and in Baghdad a mix that has spawned horrific violence.

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