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Najaf, Iraq. August 5, 2004: US forces face an unimaginable nightmare when Mahdi Army guerrillas turn the world’s largest cemetery into a killing field.

It begins with a simple mistake. The 11th MEU, overseeing operations in Najaf for only three days, do not realize the neighborhood surrounding Muqtada al-Sadr’s house is considered a no-go zone. When a few soldiers familiarizing themselves with the city streets wander too close to al-Sadr’s residence, it is a grave error that carries paramount consequences. The Mahdi Army immediately asserts the US is on the hunt to arrest the rebel leader, breaking an implicit agreement and an all-too-fragile peace treaty. The tensions in Najaf, running high for months, now boil over. 48 hours later, the Mahdi rebels lash out.

At 3:00 a.m. on August 5th, the MEU receives a call from Iraqi security forces and learn the Iraqis have repelled two attacks on the Najaf police station. The police fended off the first ferocious rain of mortar, RPG, and machine gun fire. The National Guard joined in to defend the next attack. It isn’t until they come under fire a third time that the security forces request Marine backup. The US presence seems enough to thwart the final round of ambushes, but government officials consider the repeated assaults on the police station the defining violation of al-Sadr’s two-month-old peace negotiation. An offensive operation is immediately calculated.

Al-Sadr had backed the Army into a similar corner just four months earlier when he holed himself up in Najaf and announced there would be mass suicide attacks if the US attempted to enter the city to arrest him. Authorities decided it was best to refrain from an all-out attack on Najaf, a verdict that left al-Sadr’s fighters in charge of the city. Within a month, al-Sadr’s Basra representative told worshippers there were cash rewards for the killing or capturing British or US troops and, showing their softer side, announced female soldiers could be kept as slaves. The coalition suffered two harrowing months of attacks on police stations, HMMWV patrols, coalition headquarters, governor’s offices, and US camps.

Playing defense isn’t exactly the military’s style but the decision not to launch an all-out attack on Najaf wasn’t based solely on al-Sadr’s threats of suicide bombings. Najaf is the third holiest place for Muslims in the world, and in it stands one of the biggest considerations for US troops. The Imam Ali Shrine is in Najaf, and it’s the mosque where Ali, the most glorious Shiia saint, and Adam, the first biblical man, are both believed to be entombed. Each day, millions of Muslims make the holy pilgrimage to the sacred site. The city’s survival is dependent on the Imam Ali Mosque both financially and culturally. Damage to the shrine would surely compel the people of Najaf—along with millions of Iraqi Shiites from all over the world—to sympathize with al-Sadr.

Worldwide criticism is precisely what the insurgents hope for when the Marines arrive at the police station. The Mahdi fighters flee the scene and seek refuge in the untouchable Imam Ali Mosque. Mahdi guerrillas also establish a base of operations in the adjoining burial grounds, the sacred Wadi Al Salam cemetery. It is not the first time rebel fighters have used the cemetery as a sanctuary. The crypts were regularly exploited by fugitives from Saddam Hussein’s security forces. What the cemetery hideout lacks in originality, it makes up for in complexity.

With 5 square miles of multi-story burial chambers, caves, and clusters of tombs for millions of dead Muslims, the cemetery is the perfect insurgent haven. The enemy and their stockpiles of weapons are both well-obscured, surrounded by brick and mortar walls and underground crypts and chambers. The Mahdi army is overhead and underground, everywhere it seems, and the sense of eeriness and surrealism for US soldiers could only be paralleled by the tactical changes seen in the Mahdi army.

Once disorganized and solitary, striking at targets on the run and retreating instantaneously, the Mahdi army has transformed itself into a fierce fighting unit. US soldiers note the rebels are grouped into teams with three riflemen expertly providing coverage for two RPG operators. It is obvious the two-month cease fire provided the Mahdi militiamen an interlude of uninterrupted training. The black-clad corps moves in synch throughout the cemetery with newfound power and prowess.

There are countless snipers. US soldiers climb to the top of damaged tombs to shoot at enemy marksmen in the cemetery’s distance. The front boundary runs east-west through the graveyard, a line in the sand that separates the soldiers from hundreds and hundreds of furious fighters prepared to join their comrades underfoot in plots with “martyr” etched in stone.

Stealthily searching the tombs, soldiers find empty cans, ammunition, water basins, and RPG boosters, signs of life in the beds of the dead. Sometimes the insurgents are one step ahead of the soldiers, who stumble upon cups of still-warm tea and burning cigarettes. But many more times the MEU finds exactly what they’re looking for - the most violent guerrillas they will ever encounter. The forces clash in battles which are widespread but intimate. Eye-to-eye and hand-to-hand, the cemetery warfare is closer to an all-out street fight where the struggles are so close “you can smell a man,” explains the commander of the 11th MEU.

As the Marines and First Cavalry creep among the crypts, bats fly over their heads and powerful RPG blasts cause graves to open up beneath their feet. The pictures and descriptions of dead Muslims haunt the coalition soldiers searching for slayers among the slain. The intensity is spine-chilling, relentless. And for 23 harrowing days and nights, the US will walk through the valley of the shadow of death.