Recruits make their way through the ‘shoot-house.’
Photo: Jeff Emanuel

Tal Afar, Iraq
THE DAY BEGINS AT 0500, when the sun is still out of sight and the weather cool. As the pickup truck pulls up to the inside of the front gate of the Forward Operating Base (FOB), the men begin to emerge from the pre-dawn darkness, dressed in various assemblages of civilian and military clothing (“they usually wear the same thing every day,” says a U.S. Special Forces soldier) and carrying AK-47s, having just been searched by the base guards.

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