Adapting ideas tracing back from ancient history to modern Israel, US Marines have sealed off flashpoint towns with sand walls in a new counter-insurgency tactic to quell the wilds of western Iraq. Driving across the desert to Haditha, one of the war's deadliest and most infamous battlefields, the grey plain suddenly collapses into a ditch and rises into an intimidating 12-foot (around four-metre) bank of bulldozed sand.
This is bleak territory in Al-Anbar province, bordering on Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Freezing wind howls across the desert in winter. The summer sun is merciless, sand storms a constant curse.