With one awkward step over the berm, the Marines of the Military Police detachment here began their first security and reconnaissance patrol in Iraq’s northern Nineweh Province Nov. 9. The MPs with Combat Logistics Company 19, 1st Marine Logistics Group, shoulder the task of base security here, which includes presence patrols through adjacent towns and abandoned structures. Their mission Nov. 9 was to clear out and secure an old, abandoned town located just a kilometer west of Camp Sinjar. As insurgent activity continues in Mosul, a city located East of Sinjar, Marine presence in smuggler jump off points and safe havens serves to choke off possible enemy supply routes. The MPs are just one part of the first Marine Air Ground Task Force outside Anbar in Iraq since 2004. They traveled to the Nineweh province to kick off Operation Defeat Al Qaeda in the North II, an operation aimed at stamping out the insurgency just west of the restive city of Mosul.