seruriermarshal
05-25-2004, 07:58 PM
How Marines kept Fallujah from becoming Dresden
Destroying the city ill-conceived; Marines make a pact with
ex-generals instead
By Tony Perry,, Los Angeles Times
Patrick J. McDonnell
and Alissa J. Rubin
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The insurgents came at the Marines in relentless, almost suicidal waves. By the time the two-hour firefight in the Jolan district of this Sunni Muslim stronghold was over, dozens of anti-American fighters and one Marine were dead.
When the April 26 battle ended, Lt. Gen. James Conway, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, knew something else: It was, in a microcosm, what house-to-house fighting might look like if the Marines were forced to storm Fallujah and, possibly, level a city of 300,000 people. He didn't like the look of the future battlefield.
Conway had been given authority to cut a deal. He had long spoken about "putting an Iraqi face" on the security forces here. From unexpected quarters, a chance suddenly emerged to accomplish that goal in spectacular -- if far from ideal -- fashion. The April 26 firefight came during an uneasy, and often broken, cease-fire between the insurgents and the Marines who had laid siege to the city earlier that month. At the time, the best hope for a peaceful resolution appeared to be the negotiations involving Sunni clerics, Fallujah civic leaders and sheiks, the Marines and U.S. occupation officials.
But behind the scenes, a back-channel communication between guerrilla envoys and the Marines was showing promise. It appears that several insurgent commanders -- former generals in Saddam Hussein's regime who had joined the armed resistance -- had made an overture through third parties in the days before the battle.
"There are factions among the insurgents, and we've been talking to some of them," a Marine commander confided to a journalist a few days before news of the deal broke. "We think some would rather live than die."
With a potential bloodbath looming, Marine leaders adopted a mantra: "We don't want to turn Fallujah into Dresden," referring to the Allied firebombing of the German city in World War II that killed tens of thousands of civilians.
Three days after that April 26 firefight, the remarkable deal was cut: The Marine leadership made a pact with the ex-generals. The Marines pulled out, violence ceased, further carnage was averted, and both sides declared victory.
Top officials at the Pentagon and in Baghdad were stunned. Most appeared caught off-guard by the deal, and were denying any withdrawal was taking place even as Marines were moving out and dismantling roadblocks and checkpoints.
Today, Fallujah is for all intents and purposes a rebel town, complete with banners proclaiming a great victory and insurgents integrated into the new Fallujah Brigade -- the protective force set up with U.S. assistance to keep the peace.
At any rate, it had never been the Marines' intention to storm this restive city along the Euphrates.
Privately, Marines who began arriving here in March viewed the Army's strategy throughout Iraq's Sunni heartland as unduly confrontational.
But the grisly slayings of four U.S. contractors March 31 changed everything. Orders from a higher authority eclipsed the Marines' "no better friend" intentions for Fallujah. "When the president says go, we go," said Col. J.C. Coleman, chief of staff for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
So the Marines were pushed to do something -- a full-fledged assault on the city -- that the Army had avoided, and military strategists now say was ill-conceived. Too few Marines were marshaled to confront a dug-in urban foe that proved unexpectedly resilient, well-armed and relentless.
The fighting quickly turned ugly, as did the images of dead and maimed civilians and fleeing refugees broadcast on Arab-language television. U.S. forces called a cease-fire after several days. Three weeks later, the insurgents had benefited from the chance to re-arm, bring in new recruits and prepare ambushes, ensuring even more slaughter once the battle was renewed.
"In the end, the Americans left themselves with only bad options," said Michael Clarke, professor of defense studies at King's College, London. "They could either destroy the city, causing heavy loss of life. Or they could walk away. Both are a disaster, but the Americans chose the less disastrous of the two."
Despite the current calm in Fallujah, there are still great doubts in Washington and Baghdad about a deal that seemed to allow Saddam's men to pull their old olive-green uniforms and burgundy berets out of the closet and go back to work. One key player -- Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, who was among the first to meet with the Marines -- had to be hastily dispatched to the background after the deal was struck because of his Republican Guard past and insurgent connections.
"To bring back that officer corps, it is not by any means black and white," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a Senate hearing last week when asked about the wisdom of rehabilitating such men.
"We just brought back one of those officers in Fallujah, and we pretty much had to sideline him immediately because he was working with the enemy. We need clean, new officers."
U.S. commanders in the field have long recognized the central role in the insurgency of former officers in Saddam's regime, especially those from the Republican Guard and various intelligence services. These are middle-aged, often graying men with vast strategic and personal expertise about their country -- and considerable ruthlessness gained as Saddam's henchmen. Most were left with few options in the face of the U.S. policy of abolishing the military and purging loyalists of Saddam's Baath Party.
Many Saddam-era generals and colonels are believed to have retreated to Fallujah, Ramadi and other towns in the Sunni Triangle as Baghdad fell. U.S. forces have arrested scores of ex-officers for insurgent ties, but others have been approached and recruited as U.S. allies -- helping with the organization of police and civil defense corps units, for instance. U.S. commanders are hoping to attract more to bolster Iraq's frail security services.
The fact that the Fallujah generals were military professionals made a difference. The Marines were not about to sit down and talk with hard-core jihadists with scarves around their faces and AK-47s slung on their shoulders -- the public face of what is far from a monolithic insurgency. Nor would such hard-liners be likely to seek a compromise with U.S. forces.
Conway brought Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, to make the deal work.
He's a tough combat veteran who led Marines into Afghanistan in 2001 and into Baghdad in 2003.
Mattis took over the day-to-day dealings with Saleh, who was key because he is well-respected in town and comes from a large tribe prominent in Fallujah and western Iraq. Another important player on the Iraqi side was Mohammed Latif, a former intelligence officer.
of murky provenance who, according to the Marines, had gone into exile because of differences with Saddam's regime. Once Kurds and Shiites outside Fallujah balked at Saleh's Republican Guard pedigree, Latif was made the public face of the Fallujah security force.
On April 29, when the deal was announced, Mattis smiled and patted Latif and the others on the back. For a self-described "brawler," it was a sea change in attitude.
(Begin optional trim)
Many questions remain in a place where the United States has helped organize, fund and arm a military force of unknown capability or intention -- and unabashedly hostile to the occupiers. Some worry it may be free zone for bomb-makers, saboteurs, assassins and other violent types whose desire to drive the United States out of Iraq remains undiminished.
The intentions of Latif are hard to discern. He is slick, winks at journalists, says one thing to Westerners, another thing to Iraqis.
"He's an intelligence guy," said Col. John Toolan, commander of the 1st Marine Regiment. "You never get a straight answer from those guys."
(End optional trim)
In Fallujah these days, there is little talk of the central U.S. demands -- disarming the insurgents, finding the people who killed and mutilated the four U.S. contractors and hunting down foreign jihadists. There were no foreign fighters, proclaims Latif. And if they were here, they must have escaped, he has said.
An aide to Saleh finds the very question of foreign fighters besides the point.
"The Americans brought different nationalities -- British, Spanish, Salvadorans, Ukrainians," the aide noted. "Is it acceptable for them and rejected for us? ... And If there were (foreign) Arabs, it is not a shame upon the city of Islam."
The once-obscure city to the west of the capital is now an inspirational Ground Zero for anti-Western militants in the Middle East, the place that beat back the Marines. Fresh graffiti in Arabic tells the story: "Long live the Heroic Mujahadeen of Fallujah." "Long Live the Resistance."
And at the entrance to Jolan, one of the two neighborhoods where the most violent fighting raged, sign reads: "This is the neighborhood of heroes, Congratulations."
What happened, Marines say, is that the stakes in got too big. An all-out assault, Marines say, would have caused mass casualties, further inflamed the entire region and disrupted the planned June 30 turnover of authority to the Iraqis.
Meanwhile, only a portion of the $100 million earmarked for Fallujah projects will probably be spent, officials now say, and then only funneled through local contractors. No one expects Western workers or non-government agencies to venture into Fallujah anytime soon.
"It's like sausage: ugly to watch being made," Mattis said of the deal that brought some sense of stability to Fallujah. "We'll see how it tastes when it's over."
Los Angeles Times special correspondent Raheem Salman in Fallujah contributed to this report.
Destroying the city ill-conceived; Marines make a pact with
ex-generals instead
By Tony Perry,, Los Angeles Times
Patrick J. McDonnell
and Alissa J. Rubin
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The insurgents came at the Marines in relentless, almost suicidal waves. By the time the two-hour firefight in the Jolan district of this Sunni Muslim stronghold was over, dozens of anti-American fighters and one Marine were dead.
When the April 26 battle ended, Lt. Gen. James Conway, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, knew something else: It was, in a microcosm, what house-to-house fighting might look like if the Marines were forced to storm Fallujah and, possibly, level a city of 300,000 people. He didn't like the look of the future battlefield.
Conway had been given authority to cut a deal. He had long spoken about "putting an Iraqi face" on the security forces here. From unexpected quarters, a chance suddenly emerged to accomplish that goal in spectacular -- if far from ideal -- fashion. The April 26 firefight came during an uneasy, and often broken, cease-fire between the insurgents and the Marines who had laid siege to the city earlier that month. At the time, the best hope for a peaceful resolution appeared to be the negotiations involving Sunni clerics, Fallujah civic leaders and sheiks, the Marines and U.S. occupation officials.
But behind the scenes, a back-channel communication between guerrilla envoys and the Marines was showing promise. It appears that several insurgent commanders -- former generals in Saddam Hussein's regime who had joined the armed resistance -- had made an overture through third parties in the days before the battle.
"There are factions among the insurgents, and we've been talking to some of them," a Marine commander confided to a journalist a few days before news of the deal broke. "We think some would rather live than die."
With a potential bloodbath looming, Marine leaders adopted a mantra: "We don't want to turn Fallujah into Dresden," referring to the Allied firebombing of the German city in World War II that killed tens of thousands of civilians.
Three days after that April 26 firefight, the remarkable deal was cut: The Marine leadership made a pact with the ex-generals. The Marines pulled out, violence ceased, further carnage was averted, and both sides declared victory.
Top officials at the Pentagon and in Baghdad were stunned. Most appeared caught off-guard by the deal, and were denying any withdrawal was taking place even as Marines were moving out and dismantling roadblocks and checkpoints.
Today, Fallujah is for all intents and purposes a rebel town, complete with banners proclaiming a great victory and insurgents integrated into the new Fallujah Brigade -- the protective force set up with U.S. assistance to keep the peace.
At any rate, it had never been the Marines' intention to storm this restive city along the Euphrates.
Privately, Marines who began arriving here in March viewed the Army's strategy throughout Iraq's Sunni heartland as unduly confrontational.
But the grisly slayings of four U.S. contractors March 31 changed everything. Orders from a higher authority eclipsed the Marines' "no better friend" intentions for Fallujah. "When the president says go, we go," said Col. J.C. Coleman, chief of staff for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
So the Marines were pushed to do something -- a full-fledged assault on the city -- that the Army had avoided, and military strategists now say was ill-conceived. Too few Marines were marshaled to confront a dug-in urban foe that proved unexpectedly resilient, well-armed and relentless.
The fighting quickly turned ugly, as did the images of dead and maimed civilians and fleeing refugees broadcast on Arab-language television. U.S. forces called a cease-fire after several days. Three weeks later, the insurgents had benefited from the chance to re-arm, bring in new recruits and prepare ambushes, ensuring even more slaughter once the battle was renewed.
"In the end, the Americans left themselves with only bad options," said Michael Clarke, professor of defense studies at King's College, London. "They could either destroy the city, causing heavy loss of life. Or they could walk away. Both are a disaster, but the Americans chose the less disastrous of the two."
Despite the current calm in Fallujah, there are still great doubts in Washington and Baghdad about a deal that seemed to allow Saddam's men to pull their old olive-green uniforms and burgundy berets out of the closet and go back to work. One key player -- Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, who was among the first to meet with the Marines -- had to be hastily dispatched to the background after the deal was struck because of his Republican Guard past and insurgent connections.
"To bring back that officer corps, it is not by any means black and white," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a Senate hearing last week when asked about the wisdom of rehabilitating such men.
"We just brought back one of those officers in Fallujah, and we pretty much had to sideline him immediately because he was working with the enemy. We need clean, new officers."
U.S. commanders in the field have long recognized the central role in the insurgency of former officers in Saddam's regime, especially those from the Republican Guard and various intelligence services. These are middle-aged, often graying men with vast strategic and personal expertise about their country -- and considerable ruthlessness gained as Saddam's henchmen. Most were left with few options in the face of the U.S. policy of abolishing the military and purging loyalists of Saddam's Baath Party.
Many Saddam-era generals and colonels are believed to have retreated to Fallujah, Ramadi and other towns in the Sunni Triangle as Baghdad fell. U.S. forces have arrested scores of ex-officers for insurgent ties, but others have been approached and recruited as U.S. allies -- helping with the organization of police and civil defense corps units, for instance. U.S. commanders are hoping to attract more to bolster Iraq's frail security services.
The fact that the Fallujah generals were military professionals made a difference. The Marines were not about to sit down and talk with hard-core jihadists with scarves around their faces and AK-47s slung on their shoulders -- the public face of what is far from a monolithic insurgency. Nor would such hard-liners be likely to seek a compromise with U.S. forces.
Conway brought Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, to make the deal work.
He's a tough combat veteran who led Marines into Afghanistan in 2001 and into Baghdad in 2003.
Mattis took over the day-to-day dealings with Saleh, who was key because he is well-respected in town and comes from a large tribe prominent in Fallujah and western Iraq. Another important player on the Iraqi side was Mohammed Latif, a former intelligence officer.
of murky provenance who, according to the Marines, had gone into exile because of differences with Saddam's regime. Once Kurds and Shiites outside Fallujah balked at Saleh's Republican Guard pedigree, Latif was made the public face of the Fallujah security force.
On April 29, when the deal was announced, Mattis smiled and patted Latif and the others on the back. For a self-described "brawler," it was a sea change in attitude.
(Begin optional trim)
Many questions remain in a place where the United States has helped organize, fund and arm a military force of unknown capability or intention -- and unabashedly hostile to the occupiers. Some worry it may be free zone for bomb-makers, saboteurs, assassins and other violent types whose desire to drive the United States out of Iraq remains undiminished.
The intentions of Latif are hard to discern. He is slick, winks at journalists, says one thing to Westerners, another thing to Iraqis.
"He's an intelligence guy," said Col. John Toolan, commander of the 1st Marine Regiment. "You never get a straight answer from those guys."
(End optional trim)
In Fallujah these days, there is little talk of the central U.S. demands -- disarming the insurgents, finding the people who killed and mutilated the four U.S. contractors and hunting down foreign jihadists. There were no foreign fighters, proclaims Latif. And if they were here, they must have escaped, he has said.
An aide to Saleh finds the very question of foreign fighters besides the point.
"The Americans brought different nationalities -- British, Spanish, Salvadorans, Ukrainians," the aide noted. "Is it acceptable for them and rejected for us? ... And If there were (foreign) Arabs, it is not a shame upon the city of Islam."
The once-obscure city to the west of the capital is now an inspirational Ground Zero for anti-Western militants in the Middle East, the place that beat back the Marines. Fresh graffiti in Arabic tells the story: "Long live the Heroic Mujahadeen of Fallujah." "Long Live the Resistance."
And at the entrance to Jolan, one of the two neighborhoods where the most violent fighting raged, sign reads: "This is the neighborhood of heroes, Congratulations."
What happened, Marines say, is that the stakes in got too big. An all-out assault, Marines say, would have caused mass casualties, further inflamed the entire region and disrupted the planned June 30 turnover of authority to the Iraqis.
Meanwhile, only a portion of the $100 million earmarked for Fallujah projects will probably be spent, officials now say, and then only funneled through local contractors. No one expects Western workers or non-government agencies to venture into Fallujah anytime soon.
"It's like sausage: ugly to watch being made," Mattis said of the deal that brought some sense of stability to Fallujah. "We'll see how it tastes when it's over."
Los Angeles Times special correspondent Raheem Salman in Fallujah contributed to this report.