Back to Falluja

...Finally, Marine quick reaction units arrived from two different directions only to find themselves under fire...

...Rummel, as he displayed the patience of Job in repeatedly emphasizing the need to go after and kill the enemy...

...It was, I was told, the largest enemy action in the area in the last eight months...

...Now they were shooting back from both the bridge position and an upper floor of a building near the bridge where they had more soldiers stationed...

...New structures such as schools and hospitals are regularly targeted by mortar and rocket attacks...

...Interestingly, that death was a source of pride and encouragement to the IA, in that the lieutenant died a hero—barking out orders with his dying breath...

...In Ramadi, the bad guys waited until a hospital was 95 percent completed and then blew it up...

...So this time we told the kids, "No choccolata...

...It's signed "Islamic Resistance...

...Hearts, Minds, and High-Fives What about the "hearts and minds" aspect of the war...

...Infiltration also remains a problem, and there have been local reports of the police showing up at a fire-fight and for some reason the enemy won't shoot at them...

...And he acknowledges that his troops can't do it all...

...Often there isn't...

...But he's delighted that his sector has recently been enlarged...

...number one...

...I don't doubt there's truth to what Greenwood says, but it remains the case that the enemy needs softer targets...

...Ramadi, the reputed headquarters of al Qaeda in Iraq, remained wracked with violence, but Falluja was a tame pussycat...

...They attacked with RPGs and numerous light machine guns...

...What could have been an absolute disaster became, in this war of small actions and small arms, a stunning success...

...But we've been hearing that "last ditch" stuff for the last couple of years, haven't we...

...They are not combat support—that comes from Marines at Camp Falluja and various forward operating bases (or FOBs, which rhymes with "Rob") throughout the area...

...I also questioned the IA commander at OP3 on this during an interview, asking more than once if he was ready to send his men out to kill rather than merely defend...

...an ace sniper was operating in the area...

...You need security, then stability, then reconstruction, and finally prosperity in that order," he says...

...Exact numbers are confidential...

...Greenwood, from the First Marine Expeditionary Force, is the assistant chief of staff for Marine advisers to all three branches of the Iraqi security forces: the army, the border forces, and the police...

...They could have safely aimed their weapons, but made no effort to do so...

...You'd use up every Green Beret team in the world if you were to use just them...

...Michael Fumento, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, last wrote for THE WEEKLY STANDARD about the avian flu...

...This is why, in the modern versions of the venerable M-16 rifle and its shorter M-4 counterpart, "full automatic" mode is mechanically limited to three-round bursts...

...A year ago, residents had just started trickling back to their homes...

...I asked about them...

...One fired an RPG while running, making the odds of hitting the target slightly less than zero...

...When I told them I was a reporter—"Izmi sahafi"—they kept demanding I take their photos...

...Another fired his light machine gun at a wall directly in front of him, while yet another kept tripping over the ammo belt that dangled from his machine gun and dragged on the ground...

...One of them is the commander of First Division, who has so many names he simply goes by "General Abdullah...

...While we were waiting for it to be fixed, there was, again, the thumping of outgoing artillery...

...All comprise both Iraqi Army soldiers and Americans...

...That was the happy side...

...The well-drilled Americans fire off short bursts...

...Is that because the Iraqis are softer targets...

...Choccolata...

...Throughout much of the country, not just in Al Anbar, ambitious American programs of electrification and building are often crippled, in part by attacks, but mostly by fear of attacks, causing inordinate expenditures on security...

...Or as Greenwood puts it, "I think we're making progress, but what the American people have to understand is that insurgency is essentially a political contest between both sides competing for the popular will...

...Fortunately for the residents, they don't seem to know how poor they are, and when we came through they were all smiles...

...They might be rocks, large concrete pipes, or even just piles of trash...

...On another patrol in an overwhelmingly Shiite section near Falluja's main market, I saw barriers placed across lesser streets...

...For 17 hours they pursued the enemy through the city, killing 18 and taking prisoners...

...All they got for their efforts was that most were captured after being identified from the film...

...We have informers, and because we have good relationships with people, we can do stuff the Marines can't...

...The insurgent knows if he can keep us from devoting resources to the last two, ultimately you can't win over the people—you're just using their neighborhoods as a battleground...

...It's perhaps telling that I had heard enough gunfire in the past few days that I just rolled over and went back to sleep...

...The answers are complex, and I often felt like each of the nine blind men grappling with the ele-phant—at one point feeling a trunk, at another the tail...

...I sat in an office with several IA who were in Saddam's so-called "special forces" and with Maj...

...Although about 2,000 rounds had been fired off (300 Marine, 1,700 Iraqi), nobody was hurt...

...My soldiers only have AKs and PKCs [light machine guns, essentially an AK-47 with extra kick], and my soldiers ask me why the Army has no heavy machine guns...

...Any small victory they score helps them...

...The insurgents are lazy and don't like to walk, so usually stopping their cars stops them...

...The IA recruits come here fresh from basic training (formerly a scant three weeks, but now eight) for further instruction in tracking down, detaining, and killing the enemy...

...There was no place we patrolled where we didn't at least collect prodigious amounts of smiles and greetings from both children and adults...

...Shortly after, I went back to Camp Falluja to be handed over to another unit when our Humvee broke down...

...A couple of insurgents with a couple of mortar rounds that widely miss their mark can nonetheless scare off construction crews...

...But this is what I saw and heard...

...So the IA and the Marines had to hold on for 45 minutes for relief, in a war in which many firefights are over in just a few minutes...

...This was my second visit to Al Anbar, a hotbed of enemy activity that stretches out west of Baghdad all the way to the Syrian and Jordanian borders...

...Exhausted, I fell asleep in seconds, only to be awakened by four large explosions that sounded awfully close...

...The tape had fallen into coalition hands when the cameraman dropped his equipment and ran...

...Suddenly I heard the brat-brat-brat of machine gun fire perhaps two miles away...

...These MiTT units may have less than a dozen men in them, including a few Marines attached for extra firepower...

...Now it has sprouted long nails and sharp teeth...

...These people were exceptionally friendly to us, so clearly the barricades weren't intended for Americans or IA...

...It also remains true that the IP and IA provide softer targets...

...They were...

...Further, there's absolutely no evidence the insurgency is growing, while the IP and IA in Falluja clearly are...

...But "we don't have enough SF to do what we're doing now, in the magnitude and at the pace we want to do this," explains Col...

...Finally we got to Third Battalion at Camp India at 2 a.m...

...One IA officer was killed, a lieutenant, along with five Iraqi soldiers...

...Then all hell broke loose out there...

...Greenwood says no...

...The IA, paying no attention to the color of the Marine tracer rounds, assumed they were bad guys and fired back...

...The IA are clearly superior to the IP in terms of ability and weapons, yet the "jundi" (pronounced "joon-dee"), as the IA like to be called (although strictly speaking it refers to the low rank of private), simply lack the aggressiveness of American troops...

...but they didn't seem to care...

...Everyone understands that the IA will never be up to the level of American soldiers...

...Rather, these soldiers form "Military Transition Teams," or MiTTs...

...Their commanders are adamant that they need heavier weapons, especially large-caliber machine guns, but for various reasons the U.S...

...The enemy will and do attack the Marines...

...Normally, what the MiTTs are doing would be the job of the Army Special Forces, the vaunted Green Berets who performed so brilliantly in leading the Northern Alliance to victory in Afghanistan...

...In Al Anbar, as well as in Iraq as a whole, while it's common to hear that time is on the side of the enemy, it's really not...

...military isn't ready to supply them yet...

...Cell phone towers are blasted so that civilians can't call in tips to American and Iraqi forces...

...MiTTs and the IA I rotated among three different battalions of the Iraqi First Division based out of Camp India, just east of Falluja...

...Normally, both IA and American forces can get air support—helicopters or fighter-bombers—within 20 minutes, assuming there's enough space between good guys and bad guys to prevent fratricide...

...The Marines, he later told the Iraqis, were about to call in a helicopter gunship to spray the bridge and probably rocket the building...

...on the morning of April 13...

...One was in Falluja proper, one in Karma, and one at Camp India itself...

...I watched a video of an attack on a Falluja police station with a surrounding wall...

...It also wastes vast amounts of ammunition...

...Manned by about 80 IA and three Marines, OP3 was stealthily enveloped on three sides by about 50 to 80 enemy firing from buildings that were anywhere from several hundred yards away to practically across the street...

...Guerrilla conflicts are political, and the best Iraqi commanders know that...

...More encouraging was the response to an attack on Observation Post 3, which I visited two days after the attack...

...It's basically an open-air toilet, with sewage collecting in large puddles...

...Others would simply hold their weapons above their head and fire over the wall...

...The men are proud that the Marines trust us to give us more space...

...We couldn't afford distractions...

...Greenwood explains it, there are four phases to defeating the enemy...

...He complains that he's outgunned by the bad guys...

...The "actors" in the film were no more competent...

...But civilians are fair game for shootings, bombings, and intimidation...

...As Col...

...That's not particularly surprising...

...Nasser Wa Salaam is like Sadr City in Baghdad—a ghetto into which Saddam herded the Shiites...

...they are not yet up to the job of defeating these Keystone Kop "warriors...

...Nevertheless, Greenwood and others told me, it's the Iraqi Police that will really make the difference...

...I think it's because they can have a huge psychological effect...

...The commander of the unit I was embedded with, Maj...

...The more the people trust the government, the easier my job becomes," he says...

...William Rummel, worked his walkie-talkie furiously to get both sides to cease fire...

...The shells flew over the tiny camp and landed just outside...

...Insurgents would fire mortars into the camp and invariably a sizable number [of workers] wouldn't return the next day," Third Battalion commander Lt...

...They go to a police academy, we train them, give them gear, and give them leadership...

...In other words, apparently they've cut a deal: "You leave us alone...

...Nevertheless, said Anderson, "this camp was going to be built no matter what the insurgency wanted...

...But clearly, around Falluja at least, they prefer Iraqi targets...

...I think the insurgents target the Iraqis not because they're lesser fighters...

...He believes the linchpin is a strong government...

...In any case, it prevents drive-by shootings...

...forces to Iraqi Security Forces going in the Falluja area...

...They'd filter back, but you had significant delays as a result...

...And if so, what does it say about the "grab and hold" strategy underway to secure this huge Sunni province, without which the war cannot be won...

...Doug Anderson told me...

...The Americans attached to the Iraqi First Division are from the 80th Division, an Army Reserve unit based in Richmond, Virginia...

...Just as the Marines are turning larger and larger swaths of Falluja over to the Iraqi Army, the IA will one day have to start turning those areas over to the police...

...But now the Iraqis and Americans switched to the offensive and got helicopter support...

...But workers died, workers were wounded, Iraqi soldiers were wounded...

...From Falluja all the way west to the Syrian border, Abdullah acknowledges, there is much sympathy for the enemy and many hiding places, including farms and caves...

...Did we seize Falluja in November 2004 only to slowly cede it back to the enemy...

...Further, shortly after the Battle of Falluja in November 2004, U.S...

...The Iraqis went after one mortar team [with a patrol] and got it...

...They're terrified of the insurgents," a soldier told me...

...Nobody had the heart to start over...

...We have over 50 adviser teams just in Al Anbar...

...Friendly Fire How is the transition from U.S...

...Iraqis just pull that trigger and hold it...

...There was lots of nodding, but I saw no evidence he got his point across...

...The IA had nothing more than a few light machine guns and their AK-47 automatic rifles...

...It puts a damper on recruiting and allows the local populace to see insurgents have strength...

...Further, "we have about 18,000 Iraqi soldiers in Al Anbar and had only half of that last year...

...Once the police network is up and operating, it's the swan song for insurgents...

...they spend all too much time sitting in their reinforced stations and often require protection themselves...

...A big challenge is building the Iraqi Army, but that's not a permanent solution," says Greenwood...

...It's almost entirely Sunni and was heavily Baathist before Saddam's overthrow, and it's also the pipeline into Iraq for jihadists from the rest of the Islamic world...

...In Ramadi, where every daytime patrol is a matter of life and death, the IA performed considerably better and more autonomously...

...troop strength in the area was somewhere north of 3,000 and was still high when I arrived in May 2005...

...Says Greenwood, "One high-ranking Iraqi officer told me 'Al Anbar is worse than the devil!'" But Greenwood disarmed him...

...In addition to lack of aggressiveness, the IA seem incapable of exercising fire control...

...He simply evaded my questions, although he did say there was a value in grabbing prisoners...

...The bad guys had hit us with 122-millimeter mortars, the largest size they normally use, and large they are (about 5 inches in diameter and a couple feet long...

...A recon patrol through a Falluja neighborhood known as Nasser Wa Salaam was instructive...

...On patrol with the IA in Falluja, they repeatedly needed to be urged to fully perform their jobs, such as stopping suspicious cars and interrogating the passengers...

...The next day, on a two-hour foot patrol, we heard another firefight and saw flares go up and smoke rising, though buildings blocked our view...

...I later learned they were illumination rounds, probably called in to light up the area around the Iraqi Army's Observation Post 3 (OP3) in Karma, just northeast of Falluja...

...Guns pull up as you fire them, and before you know it you're shooting at the clouds...

...It's unfair to say there's constant fighting in the area, but when you hear several firefights in a day, you know it's busy...

...He also says the "increased spike in violence is an act of desperation," a last ditch effort to win before the coalition grows any stronger...

...On safer patrols, we might carry and hand out candy, but not on this one...

...At some point the insurgents slipped out, but in the meantime a Marine quick reaction force had arrived...

...It won't be easy, but if it can be accomplished in Al Anbar it can be done anywhere...

...When there is a political solution with them," he says, "they will help stop the foreign guys...

...But we can share information with Marines as well...

...We only have about 3,000 IP now," says Greenwood, "but we expect to break the 10,000 point by next fall...

...Now it's down to about 300, with a few thousand IA and IP (Iraqi Police) filling the vacuum...

...So I'd pretend, and they'd be delighted...

...Is the Iraqi Army (IA) that we are training up to the job...

...At Second Battalion in Karma, the unit proudly displays a sign reading: "Go out of our country saveges [sic...

...Even without being able to distinguish the sound of an American weapon from an Iraqi one, you can often tell the difference in an instant...

...The Marines, unfortunately, were unaware that there was an IA post on the bridge and took them under fire...

...Further, in what may have been a coordinated attack, fighting was raging in Ramadi at the same time and tying down air support...

...George Bush number one...

...They wanted high-fives, handshakes, head rubs, and conversation, notwithstanding that we barely knew anything they said...

...They always accompany the IA on patrols and raids "outside the wire," as leaving the camp is called...

...The round went into his neck and tore a path right into his lungs," a Marine told me, perhaps providing more of a forensics report than I needed...

...Thomas C. Greenwood...

...When I was in Camp Falluja a year ago for about a week, I heard no outgoing fire, and there was no incoming fire...

...Is beating off enemy attacks somehow better than not having them at all...

...we'll leave you alone...

...I said with your help, we're going to make it too nice for the devil to visit...

...Unless a good sniper is at work, it takes a lot of bullets to kill a man...

...On the other hand, judging by the even more woeful performance of the enemy, they'll hardly have to be...

...This makes it almost impossible to aim...

...U.S...

...And yet it must be reiterated that a year ago this area was quiet...

...Ultimately the war isn't going to be decided just by killing lots of bad guys, as important (and satisfying) as that can be...

...No sooner had I lain down in my bunk than I heard the "thump, thump, thump" of outgoing artillery, five rounds in all...

...Street urchins followed us around in packs, initially begging for "Choccolata" and money...

...The IA were already jumpy from having three rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) fired at them earlier in the day, two of which hit the bridge...

...Now the people have returned and, à la Mao Zedong's rules for guerrilla warfare, have become "the sea" in which the enemy can swim...

...While reports of individuals taking to their heels during a firefight are rare, the IA often seem to think that merely breaking off an enemy attack is the equivalent of victory...

...That was a tactic used to try to prevent the building of Camp India...

...We're still somewhat between the first and second...

...Judging by the amount of hostile activity, it might seem not very well...

...Iraqi commanders tend to talk in circles—one was a bigger gas bag than the Hindenburg—but Abdullah is relatively straightforward...

...It wouldn't seem so unless you consider the major demographic changes during that time...

...The police are still woefully undertrained and undermanned...

...Yet they appeared to be taking almost no return fire from the police...

...He succeeded just in time...

...Before I left the city and its environs, I would hear outgoing artillery on all three nights I spent time at Camp Falluja, withstand a mortar attack on one of the small outposts I stayed at, and hear more firefights in the distance, either from the outposts or out on patrol, than I could count...

...their job is to transition the IA into an independent fighting force that eventually can operate with no American help...

...Another was too scared to take the safety off his RPG and just stood there looking like an idiot...

...Why the Increased Violence...

...It wasn't good...

...It's not like in the movies where it usually only takes one or two rounds to bring down a soldier...

...The enemy is known by several nicknames including "Ali Baba," "Wahhabi" (the strict form of Islam to which many of the terrorists adhere), "the bad guys," and "Mooj," for mujahedeen...

...If you don't we shall kill you all because you are terrorists and killers...

...But after decades of intermarriage, it's now about 60/40 Shiite/Sunni...

...That slowed the attacks...

...I listened for awhile, then went inside to find out what was happening...

...He'd already plugged several Marines, including one who was shot while lying prone, the best defensive position if you're caught in the open—an incredible shot...

...Seven insurgents had attacked a checkpoint at a vital bridge over the Euphrates that I would later visit...

...On my second night in the area, at Second Battalion in Karma, I was enjoying a beautiful moonlit evening, watching the Iraqi soldiers excitedly prepare for the arrival of a captured suspect...