RAMADI, Iraq — As far as Capt. Justin Michel is concerned, Entry Control Point Eight is the roughest intersection in town.

A heavily fortified checkpoint on Ramadi’s eastern edge, ECP-8 is the kind of barren, shell-pocked outpost that makes a visitor walk a double-time zigzag for fear of snipers, or clench his gut in anticipation of falling mortar rounds.

In the past four months, this key entryway into Ramadi has been struck by what Michel called two “particularly nasty” car bombs and has suffered numerous attacks by snipers, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

In the first week alone, Michel’s Company A, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment endured daily attacks as U.S. and Iraqi soldiers and engineers struggled to fortify the checkpoint with more than 30,000 sandbags, nearly 2,000 feet of razor wire and 200 concrete barriers.

“This place is something else,” said Michel, 42, of West Point, Miss. “We put an awful lot of work into it.”

As U.S. and Iraqi army troops wage a renewed campaign to rid Ramadi of insurgents, fortified checkpoints like ECP-8 have become critical weapons in the monthslong battle. By securing major thoroughfares into and out of Ramadi, U.S. and Iraqi army commanders say they have been able to isolate insurgents within the city by cutting off or substantially reducing their supply of weapons, as well as their freedom of movement.

“This has been one of the single most detrimental moves we’ve made against the enemy,” said Lt. Col. Ronald Clark, commander of the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 1-506th — a unit of the 101st Airborne Division. “He can’t get fighters and supplies into the city. We’ve isolated him.”

The checkpoints, along with daily combat patrols, raids and other operations, have significantly reduced insurgent attacks in eastern Ramadi, which until recently had been one of the worst areas of the violent Sunni Arab city.

“If this isn’t the most dangerous part of Ramadi, it’s because we’ve made it that way,” Clark said.

The tactic of choking off insurgent supply lines was begun by the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 28th Infantry Division, a Pennsylvania National Guard unit that completed its tour in Iraq early this summer. Since that time, the 1-506th and the 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division have expanded greatly on the concept.

“When we first came into this area there was no one else here. No Iraqi police. Nobody,” Clark said of eastern Ramadi districts like Ma’laab and Sofia.

In those early days, Clark said enemy attacks were constant and brazen, and the unit’s headquarters, Forward Operating Base Corregidor, was a frequent target.

“When we first got here, insurgents would walk out into the street and shoot at the FOB with RPGs. They’d launch mortars within a click of our base. That was totally unacceptable,” Clark said.

Clark’s battalion, a mix of light infantry, mechanized infantry, armor and Navy SEALS, fought back along with Iraqi army units and, according to commanders, forced insurgents to seek shelter in the south central part of the city — an area that had seen limited U.S. troop presence until the arrival of 1-1st AD several months ago.

“The insurgents are like cockroaches,” Clark said. “They go where you are not. They went to the center of the city because no one was there.”

ECP-8, which is manned by Able Company troops as well as soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Iraqi Army Division, is one of a handful of new positions established in eastern Ramadi by the 1-506th.

The battered checkpoint comprises a series of rambling city blocks and farms that have been seized and occupied by U.S. and Iraqi troops and are linked together by a network of blast walls and shining lengths of concertina wire. While the area teems with local Iraqis during operating hours, when residents are looking to get into the area or leave, or are seeking restitution payments from civil affairs teams, the outpost looks deserted much of the time.

Spc. Jonathan Thomas, 23, of Miami, said he was shocked by the desolate, rubble-strewn compound when he first arrived. Thomas served in the same sector of Ramadi at the beginning of the war when he was a member of the Florida National Guard.

“It looked like a regular road then,” Thomas said of the main boulevard that runs through the checkpoint. “There were people walking along the road and the businesses were running. Now, there are a lot more blown up buildings. It’s like a ghost town.”

The other big difference, Thomas said, was the number and quality of Iraqi army soldiers fighting alongside U.S. forces.

“These Iraqi army guys have stepped up a lot since I was here the first time,” he said.

Keeping the checkpoint operating, even under periodic attacks, has been one of Able Company’s main missions.

Able Company’s commander said that when a car bomb destroyed the checkpoint’s main gate, his company first sergeant and welders constructed a new, improved gate within a day and kept the checkpoint operating.

Michel said that it would have been a public relations victory for the insurgents if they had managed to shut the operation down for a week, preventing Ramadi residents from traveling to work, the market or the hospital because of the damage.

“We wanted to show the populace that we weren’t going to make this any more inconvenient than it was just because of the enemy,” Michel said. “If we had to close it down for six days, the enemy would have used that for its own information operations message. The population is the center of gravity in Ramadi, and we understand that.”

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