Falluja update

When the report came out on Monday last week that curfews were called and Allawi was shutting down the airport for 48 hours and closing the Syrian and Jordanian borders as the U.S.-led assault on Falluja was officially "ratcheted up", it seemed to me that the implication was they were expecting it to be over in two days. This weekend's news looks a little different. Pehaps I was just misreading the signal, but my faith in the government's propensity to boast and then change stories or make excuses is unshaken.

The U.S. military's ground and air assault of Fallujah has gone quicker than expected, with the entire city occupied after six days of fighting, Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski said Sunday.

Natonski, who designed the ground attack, said he and other planners took lessons from the failed three-week U.S. assault on the city in April, which was called off by the Bush administration after a worldwide outcry over civilians deaths.

[...]

"Had we done in April what we did now, the results would've been the same," Natonski said during a visit to the U.S. Marines' 1st Cavalry Division's 2nd Brigade, the unit charged with isolating Fallujah under a security cordon.

[...]

Natonski described the six days of ground war as a "flawless execution of the plan we drew up. We are actually ahead of schedule."

Several pre-assault tactics made the battle easier than expected, he said.

Canada.com article

Yes, I think one of those tactics was to broadcast for weeks before the invasion that it was coming so that many of the leaders and other "bad guys" could get on out of the city, along with half the population. That was helpful. Another tactic of choking off food and water supplies and cutting off hospital access was helpful in that it debilitated many of the people still occupying the city. A third tactic of laying down daily airstrikes ahead of the ground forces' entry to bomb to rubble those who remained was also quite helpful. Goes a lot quicker if most of the people are gone.

Another key tactic was choking off the city, the responsibility of the 2nd Brigade of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division, Natonski said.

That move prevented insurgents from slipping out of the city during the assault, although many, including top leaders like Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi and Omar al-Hadid, are thought to have fled.

"We never expected them to be there. We're not after Zarqawi. We're after insurgents in general," Natonski said.

Well, that's a rich admission. We're not after the guy we continue to insist is the mastermind of all the attacks across the whole of Iraq. Perhaps because he doesn't exist. And perhaps, if he does and he was in Falluja (something the Iraqis have been denying ever since they were first attacked), the previous weeks of warnings without blocking off the city made it a stroll in the park for him to get out. Eh? Do Americans never wise up to this military drivel? Do the military commanders and officers believe it themselves? I know some don't.

On Sunday, U.S. Marines and Army units were still battling gritty bands of defenders scattered in buildings and bunkers across the Sunni Muslim stronghold. Behind them, Iraqi troops were enmeshed in the painstaking task of clearing weapons and fighters from every room of Fallujah's estimated 50,000 buildings.

U.S. forces now occupy -but have yet to subdue -the entire city. U.S. officers said that it still could take several days of fighting to clear the final pockets of resistance.

But that doesn't seem to prevent us from announcing "mission accomplished" and having all the "reporters" file stories that Falluja is a done deal.

In the central Iraqi town of Buhriz, 40 kilometers (25 miles) northeast of Baghdad, demonstrators marched to protest the Fallujah offensive and denounce Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi.

Associated Press Television News footage showed some armed men, heads covered with black hoods and brandishing Kalashnikov rifles, among the marchers. The demonstrators, estimated by police to number between 60 and 70, carried banners calling Allawi a "thug" and "traitor."

Another "pocket" to be dealt with.

After troops uproot the insurgents, contractors are supposed to swarm into Fallujah to cart away rubble, repair buildings, and fix the city's utilities, Wilson and Natonski said.

Score another one for Halliburton.

The Iraqi government has already picked leaders for Fallujah, and thousands of Iraqi police and paramilitary forces have been recruited to try to impose order.

They may be a little "ahead of schedule" on picking leaders, too. (Something I'm sure is going to go over big with the Fallujans whose sole purpose since the U.S. invaded Iraq is to remain free of occupying leadership.) Because, rosy reports of "mission accomplished" notwithstanding, the fighting in Falluja is anything but over.

On Sunday eyewitnesses reported a large explosion in Baghdad near hotels frequented by foreigners while Aljazeera reported the downing of a US helicopter near Falluja.

Aljazeera article

The American-led assault on the city is in its fifth day.

A BBC correspondent in the city centre says US marines are still under sniper attack at their main base.

BBC article

[T]he main European military hospital of the US military said US soldiers wounded in Iraq have been arriving for treatment since the Falluja offensive at more than double the previous rate.

Aljazeera article

Keep in mind that the hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, is not the destination of lightly wounded soldiers.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Iraq...

US helicopter and tank fire blasted a building harbouring suspected insurgents near the restive city of Baiji, also north of the Iraqi capital, killing several rebels, a US military spokesman said.

I Africa article

As American marines have blasted their way through Falluja, another insurgent outpost has grown stronger 30 miles down the road in Ramadi.

Insurgent attacks against American troops here have markedly intensified in the past two weeks, and enemy combatants are now conducting a more determined battle, commanders say.

"My personal take is that Ramadi is a less-publicized Falluja, in the sense of the combat you face every time you go into town," said Capt. Ben Siebold, a company commander in an Army battalion stationed in the downtown at a small and aptly named base, Combat Outpost. "In the time I've been here, the nature of the enemy has changed," he said. "He's more determined, more organized and a little bit better shot."

According to commanders in Ramadi, the heightened violence here is an outgrowth of the siege of Falluja and the holy fasting month of Ramadan. They say some insurgent fighters from Falluja have migrated to Ramadi, a city of 400,000 on the Euphrates that is the capital of the sprawling Anbar Province, which covers most of western Iraq.

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"Ramadi is really out of control, and they needed another infantry battalion in the city," said Lt. Col. Justin Gubler, commander of the First Battalion, 503rd Infantry, at Combat Outpost. Up to 150 foreign fighters are in the city, he said. "We've seen an increase in their proficiency and their will to fight."

NY Times article

Middle East expert Juan Cole has today's AP roundup....:

AP rounds up Saturday's events in Iraq. Explosions went off in Baghdad and at the Green Zone, apparently not far from caretaker Prime Miniter Iyad Allawi.

Guerrillas at Mosul detonated a car bomb as an Iraqi national guard unit from Kirkuk went by, injuring seven of them.

Guerrillas at largely Turkmen Tel Afar also clashed with US troops.

The US arrested 4 Sunni clerics from the Association of Muslim Scholars.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that a Communist representative in the 100-member National Council in Iraq, which serves as a sort of interim parliament, was assassinated while traveling in the north near Kirkuk on Saturday. This would be like a senator being assassinated in the United States.

...and news from Mosul in yesterday's post:

Az-Zaman reports that telephone calls with residents of Mosul reveal that the guerrillas who took control of the city's streets the day before yesterday have burned all the police stations in the city and have released from jails all the criminals that had been incarcerated in them. In the center of Mosul, eyewitnesses said, the offices of government service agencies and economic targets had been set ablaze. A number of shops were attacked and/or looted.

Armed men roamed the streets and manned checkpoints between city quarters. Mosque preachers called on Mosul residents to flood into the streets to protect their quarters and government offices and shops. The main streets seemed deserted. American troops had withdrawn from the center of the city, but maintained control of bridges.

All signs of Iraqi national guardsmen and police had disappeared. The police chief of Ninevah province resigned (other reports say he was fired by the Allawi government).

US military spokesmen denied that guerrillas were in control of the city, and maintained that US troops and Iraqi national guardsmen continued to advance into it. US warplanes repeatedly bombed suspected safe houses of the guerrillas. Guerrillas had killed one American serviceman in Mosul on Thursday.

A troubling bit of ethnic politics emerged when it became apparent that the remaining Iraqi troops fighting alongside the Americans against guerrillas in Mosul were mostly Kurds. Mosul, a city of about 1 million, is largely Sunni Arab but is up north near the Kurdish areas. Arab-Kurdish relations hit a new nadir at the news, and AP reported that "Gunmen attacked the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party in an hourlong battle that a party official said left six assailants dead." This attack on the PUK HQ was probably in revenge for the Kurdish national guardsmen cooperating with US troops.

Little Fallujan girls
Photo courtesy Aljazeera