Taking Fallujah
U.S. forces strike Iraq's hard-core insurgents
FALLUJAH, IRAQ--The sky lit up in orange flames, twinkling with ribbons of red tracer fire last week as the U.S. military, trailed by a modest contingent of Iraqi forces, pushed to reclaim this insurgent stronghold. Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles ground into the pavement shattered by artillery fire, leaving behind them clouds of translucent orange dust. Across the city, the thump and thud of artillery and tank fire reverberated in an eerie soundtrack that played throughout the week. "That will be the last sound they ever hear," Lt. Col. Peter Newell told the 1st Infantry Division's Task Force 2-2, as it swept into Fallujah.
The mission: to rout a stubborn insurgency from a city that had become the symbol of Islamic fundamentalist resistance to the U.S.-backed government in Iraq. Fallujah had stood as an important symbol for Sunni extremists--evidence that the Americans could be defeated. And control of Fallujah by insurgents allowed them to present themselves to Iraqi Sunnis as an alternative to the interim government.
American military leaders believe their best chance at restoring stability and security to Iraq lies in winning over a majority of the Sunni minority and enticing them to join the political process. By taking Fallujah, the interim Iraqi government and the American-dominated coalition forces want to show that the insurgency faces inevitable defeat--and that supporting the resistance to the Iraqi interim government is a loser's bet. "I think because Fallujah has been the cancer, that when the cancer is removed it will impact other places," said Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, who oversees the day-to-day operations in Iraq.
But the healing was not to begin immediately. As the assault got underway, uprisings and terrorist strikes broke out elsewhere. In Baghdad, a car bomb killed 17 people in a commercial district, and kidnappers seized Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's cousin and two other relatives--vowing to behead them if the Fallujah assault was not called off. Insurgents fired mortars and staged attacks in a number of Sunni-dominated cities. The most dramatic and sustained assault was in Mosul: Opponents of the interim Iraqi government seized six police stations, looting them of weapons and ammunition after many policemen fled. The fighting was so fierce it forced an Army battalion of Stryker light armored vehicles, which had been helping to prevent insurgents from escaping Fallujah, to break off from that fight and return to Mosul.
While significant, those attacks didn't appear to be synchronized. "This is not a coordinated national uprising," said Mike Vickers of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. "This is more local insurgents who read the news like everyone else and think this is a good time to do something."
Death toll. In Fallujah, the resistance initially was less than expected. Some of the insurgents refused to fight; many seemed to have fled before the assault began. Military officials estimated that during the first four days of fighting they killed 600 insurgents, while only 22 Americans and five Iraqi troops were killed. An additional 24 Iraqis and 178 Americans were wounded--though at least 40 of the injured Americans were patched up and sent back into battle. As the American forces pushed into the southern part of the city, where the insurgents had been cornered, the fighting grew fiercer.
The fight began on Sunday, November 7, with U.S. special operations forces, aided by Iraqi fighters, taking the city's main hospital as marines secured two bridges over the Euphrates River into the city. Military officials felt it important to control the hospital to prevent fighters and doctors there from issuing misleading reports on civilian casualties. (Military officials say hospital personnel overstated civilian casualties from earlier U.S. bombing raids.) Although the military attempted to limit civilian casualties, at week's end officials from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society complained that civilians lacked access to medical facilities.
The main assault began on Monday night, as some 10,000 marines, soldiers, and Iraqi national guardsmen assaulted the city from the north. The mission was to push south, toward Iraq's Highway 10, which slices Fallujah in half from east to west. Taking the highway would deny the insurgents a major supply route and allow the military to use the road to more easily resupply its own troops.
The marines entered from the northwestern and north-central parts of the city, reinforced by elements of the 1st Cavalry Division. The northeastern sector, given to the 1st Infantry Division, looked like a desolate maze of leveled villas, burning houses, and buildings pockmarked with bullet holes. Soldiers said they saw no civilians in their quadrant. "I've seen three stray dogs," said Newell, the task force commander. After the 1st Infantry Division secured the sector, they swept through it again to eliminate remaining insurgents--usually solitary snipers--missed on the initial offensive. They found small-weapons caches in bunkers fortified with concrete blocks, as well as in abandoned houses. Insurgents' defensive positions were rigged with explosives, and there were abandoned rockets, mortars, land mines, and AK-47s. "They may talk a lot about martyring themselves, but when it comes down to it, there are few people who want to fight a force this big," said Newell, eyeing a map of the city.
"Kill zone." By week's end, what appeared to be the decisive final phase of the fighting began to unfold with the military squeezing the remaining fighters in a "hammer and anvil." The seizure of the bridges over the Euphrates, combined with the positioning of forces to the south of the city, was designed to form the anvil and prevent fighters from escaping. Thursday night and Friday morning, the hammer swung down from Highway 10, as U.S. soldiers and marines pushed south to flush insurgents toward a "kill zone" in south-central Fallujah.
There, the battle intensified. The 1st Infantry Division tanks initially had to retreat after they encountered an insurgent stronghold where a group of fighters had bunkered down in a large building equipped with escape tunnels and fortified by berms. The fighters fired a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades at the advancing American forces. After pulling back, the tanks waited for fighter planes and helicopter gunships to attack the building.
Crushing the insurgent groups based in Fallujah is a first step to improving security in Iraq, but it alone won't persuade former supporters of Saddam Hussein and other hostile Sunnis to join the political process. "Military victory is only the prelude to a broader campaign," says Anthony Cordesman, a scholar at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Economic development and personal security are far more important."
Even as the fighting continued in the southern part of the city, Marine commanders and Iraqi government officials said they were intent on beginning humanitarian relief and reconstruction efforts in the northern sectors of the city (story, Page 23). To persuade Fallujah residents and other Iraqi Sunnis to participate in the scheduled January elections, American officials believe it is vital to quickly prop up the interim government's operations here.
American commanders hope that Iraqi police and National Guard units can provide much of the security in the months ahead. During the assault, the Iraqi forces trailed behind the American forces, clearing houses and sensitive sites like mosques and hospitals. After the 1st Infantry Division swept through the northeastern Askaki neighborhood, so-called Iraqi Intervention Forces took up a defensive position in a hospital and a nearby house. Regrouping there, the Iraqis said they were in Fallujah battling not fellow countrymen but foreign fighters. "There are pockets of resistance, but they are foreigners--Yemenis, Egyptians, Afghans," says Col. Ahmed Ali, a commander of the intervention forces fighting with the 1st Infantry Division.
That may or may not be true. American commanders say there are some foreign fighters in the city, but they believe that most of the insurgents are Iraqi Sunnis. For Ali's men, though, there is far more motivation in the idea of ridding Fallujah of foreign fighters than there is in killing fellow Iraqis. Nadwan Waed, 22, a soldier with brown eyes and gelled black hair, cut an invisible dagger through the air and boasted that he had slit the throat of a Saudi, after the man declared, "Allah akbar" (God is great).
Consuming U.S. military "meals ready to eat," Waed and his fellow soldiers appeared as charged up as their American counterparts to be in the middle of the action. "It's good the Americans are here because we need someone strong," he said. "I hope that someday we can do it ourselves."
Defeating the insurgency will eventually require Waed and his counterparts to do just that. Only when the Iraqis shoulder the heavy security work, U.S. officials say, will the insurgency truly begin to melt away. The assault on Fallujah is necessary to reasserting Iraqi control, but it's just a first step. "This is a long-term problem to snuff out the insurgency; it is not something you achieve in a battle," says Vickers, the military analyst. "We still have too much of an American face on the counterinsurgency. We need to build up the Iraqi forces."
[ Fallujah - Satellite imagery]
Sunday, November 7:
Navy SEALS seize the hospital while marines gain control of the main bridge and the green trestle bridge (site where four U.S. contractors were hanged in April).
Monday, November 8:
U.S. and Iraqi troops begin the southward advance, taking control of the northern half of the city.
Tuesday, November 9:
By 8 p.m., forces reach the center of the city, gaining control of the main access through the city.
Friday, November 12:
Troops advance south of Highway 10, attempting to force insurgents into a "kill zone" southwest of the industrial area.
[CITY LABELS]
Fallujah General Hospital
Green trestle bridge
Main bridge
INDUSTRIAL AREA
JOLAN DISTRICT
RESALA
JEGHAIFI DISTRICT
OLD CITY
Euphrates River
[TROOP MOVEMENT LABELS]
Blue arrows-Marines
Brown arrows-Army 1st Cavalry Division (1st from left of map), Army 1st Infantry Division
Army Stryker and Marine Reconnaissance blocking force*
*On Thursday Stryker force was redeployed to Mosul to help fight an uprising there.
INSET MAP
FALLUJAH
Blocking force
Euphrates
Highway 10
North
Source: Satellite imagery: DigitalGlobe
USN&WR
This story appears in the November 22, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.