Rebels Fight U.S. To Iraq Standoff
``You'll get killed on a nice day when everything is quiet.''
`A WAR OF ATTRITION' ECHOING VIETNAM CONFLICT HAS SETTLED ON AL-ANBAR
AL-FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Insurgents in Al- Anbar province, the center of guerrilla resistance in Iraq, have fought the U.S. military to a stalemate.
After repeated major combat offensives in Al-Fallujah and Ar-Ramadi, and after losing hundreds of soldiers and Marines in Al-Anbar during the past two years -- including 75 since June 1 -- many American officers and enlisted men assigned to Al-Anbar have stopped talking about winning a military victory in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland.
Instead, they're trying to hold on to a handful of population centers and hit smaller towns in a series of quick-strike operations designed to disrupt insurgent activities temporarily.
``I don't think of this in terms of winning,'' said Col. Stephen Davis, who commands a task force of about 5,000 Marines in an area of some 24,000 square miles in the western portion of Al-Anbar. Instead, he said, his Marines are fighting a war of attrition.
``The frustrating part for the audience, if you will, is they want finality,'' Davis said. ``They want a fight for the town, and in the end the guy with the white hat wins.''
That's unlikely in Al-Anbar, Davis said. He expects the insurgency to last for years, hitting American and Iraqi forces with quick ambushes, bombs and mines. Roadside bombs have hit vehicles Davis was riding in three times this year already.
``We understand counterinsurgency. . . . We paid for these lessons in blood in Vietnam,'' Davis said. ``You'll get killed on a nice day when everything is quiet.''
Most of Iraq is far quieter than Al-Anbar. But Al-Anbar is Iraq's largest province and home to the Sunni Arab minority, which dominated the government under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. It's the strategic center of the country, and failure to secure it could thwart the Bush administration's hopes of helping to create a functioning Iraqi democracy.
Vietnam tactics
Military officials now frequently compare the fight in Al-Anbar to the Vietnam War, saying guerrillas, who blend back into the population, are trying to break the will of the U.S. military -- rather than defeat it outright -- and to erode public support for the war back home.
``If it were just killing people that would win this, it'd be easy,'' said Marine Maj. Nicholas Visconti, 35, of Brookfield, Conn., who served in southern Iraq in 2003. ``But look at Vietnam. We killed millions, and they kept coming. It's a war of attrition. They're not trying to win. It's just like in Vietnam. They won a long, protracted fight that the American public did not have the stomach for. . . . Killing people is not the answer; rebuilding the cities is.''
Minutes after he spoke, two mortar rounds flew over the building where he is based in Hit. Visconti didn't flinch as the explosions rang out.
During three weeks of reporting along the Euphrates River valley, home to Al-Anbar's main population centers and the core of insurgent activity, military officials offered three primary reasons that guerrillas have held and gained ground: the enemy's growing sophistication, insufficient numbers of U.S. troops and the lack of trained and reliable Iraqi security forces.
They described an enemy who is intelligent and adaptive:
• Military officials in Ar-Ramadi said insurgents had learned the times of their patrol shift changes. When one group of vehicles comes to relieve another, civilian traffic is pushed to the side of the road to allow the military to pass. Insurgents plan and use this opportunity, surrounded by other cars, to drop homemade bombs out their windows or through holes cut in the rear floor.
• The insurgents have figured out by trial and error the different viewing ranges of the optics systems in American tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Humvees.
• Faced with the U.S. military's technological might, guerrillas have relied on gathering intelligence and using cheap, effective devices to kill and maim.
Marines raided a home near their base in Hit and found three Sudanese insurgents with a crude map they had drawn of the U.S. base, including notes detailing when patrols left the gate, whether they were on foot or in vehicles and the numbers of Marines on the patrols.
The three men also had $11,000 in cash in an area in which insurgents pay locals $50 to plant bombs in the road.
One of the two Marine positions in the city receives mortar fire almost daily. Patrols from the other base are hit by frequent roadside bombings.
Instead of referring to the enemy derisively as ``terrorists'' -- as they used to -- Marines and Army soldiers now call the insurgents mujahedeen, an Arabic term often translated ``holy warrior'' that became popular during the Afghan guerrilla campaign against the Soviet Union.
New strategy
U.S. commanders in Al-Anbar hope to fight the insurgency through a multi-pronged strategy of political progress, reconstruction and training Iraqi security forces.
But there's been less political progress in Al-Anbar than in Iraq's Kurdish north and Shiite Muslim south, because the violence has stymied progress in rebuilding towns destroyed in the fighting and Iraqi forces are still a long way from being able to secure the province.
U.S. officials hope that a strong turnout in national elections in December will turn people away from violence. They expressed similar hopes before last January's elections. While they were a success in many parts, in Al-Anbar the turnout was in the single digits.
``Some of the Iraqis say they want to vote, but they're worried there'll be a bomb at the polling station,'' Marine Capt. James Haunty, 27, of Columbus, Ohio, said recently. ``It's a legitimate fear, but I always tell them, `Just trust me.' ''
Less than five minutes after Haunty spoke, near Hit, a roadside bomb exploded down the street.
Many Sunnis in Al-Anbar say they will vote against the constitution in October, having felt excluded from the drafting of the document.
Though fighting has badly damaged many towns and precluded widespread reconstruction, Marines in Al-Fallujah are working to make that city a centerpiece of rebuilding. Al-Fallujah residences sustained some $225 million in damage last November during a U.S. assault aimed at clearing the city of insurgents, according to Marine Lt. Col. Jim Haldeman, who oversees the civil military operations center in Al-Fallujah.
Homeowners have received 20 percent of that amount to rebuild homes, and will get the next 20 percent in the coming weeks, Haldeman said. Families are walking the streets once again and shops have reopened. The sound of hammers is constant, and men line the streets mixing concrete and laying bricks out to dry.
Even so, of the 250,000 population before the fighting, just 150,000 residents have returned. And the insurgency has come back to the area.
Iraqis are still a long way from being able to provide their own security in Al-Anbar. As with much of the province, Al-Fallujah has no functioning police force. Police in Ar-Ramadi are confined to two heavily fortified stations, after insurgents destroyed or seriously damaged eight others.
The Iraqi national guard, heralded last year as the answer to local security, was dissolved because of incompetence and insurgent infiltration, as was the guard's predecessor, the civil defense corps.
The new Iraqi army has participated in all the Marines' recent sweeps in Al-Anbar, in a limited way. While the Iraqi soldiers haven't thrown down their weapons and run, as they have in the past, many of them are still unable to operate without close U.S. supervision.
By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/12498496.htm
`A WAR OF ATTRITION' ECHOING VIETNAM CONFLICT HAS SETTLED ON AL-ANBAR
AL-FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Insurgents in Al- Anbar province, the center of guerrilla resistance in Iraq, have fought the U.S. military to a stalemate.
After repeated major combat offensives in Al-Fallujah and Ar-Ramadi, and after losing hundreds of soldiers and Marines in Al-Anbar during the past two years -- including 75 since June 1 -- many American officers and enlisted men assigned to Al-Anbar have stopped talking about winning a military victory in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland.
Instead, they're trying to hold on to a handful of population centers and hit smaller towns in a series of quick-strike operations designed to disrupt insurgent activities temporarily.
``I don't think of this in terms of winning,'' said Col. Stephen Davis, who commands a task force of about 5,000 Marines in an area of some 24,000 square miles in the western portion of Al-Anbar. Instead, he said, his Marines are fighting a war of attrition.
``The frustrating part for the audience, if you will, is they want finality,'' Davis said. ``They want a fight for the town, and in the end the guy with the white hat wins.''
That's unlikely in Al-Anbar, Davis said. He expects the insurgency to last for years, hitting American and Iraqi forces with quick ambushes, bombs and mines. Roadside bombs have hit vehicles Davis was riding in three times this year already.
``We understand counterinsurgency. . . . We paid for these lessons in blood in Vietnam,'' Davis said. ``You'll get killed on a nice day when everything is quiet.''
Most of Iraq is far quieter than Al-Anbar. But Al-Anbar is Iraq's largest province and home to the Sunni Arab minority, which dominated the government under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. It's the strategic center of the country, and failure to secure it could thwart the Bush administration's hopes of helping to create a functioning Iraqi democracy.
Vietnam tactics
Military officials now frequently compare the fight in Al-Anbar to the Vietnam War, saying guerrillas, who blend back into the population, are trying to break the will of the U.S. military -- rather than defeat it outright -- and to erode public support for the war back home.
``If it were just killing people that would win this, it'd be easy,'' said Marine Maj. Nicholas Visconti, 35, of Brookfield, Conn., who served in southern Iraq in 2003. ``But look at Vietnam. We killed millions, and they kept coming. It's a war of attrition. They're not trying to win. It's just like in Vietnam. They won a long, protracted fight that the American public did not have the stomach for. . . . Killing people is not the answer; rebuilding the cities is.''
Minutes after he spoke, two mortar rounds flew over the building where he is based in Hit. Visconti didn't flinch as the explosions rang out.
During three weeks of reporting along the Euphrates River valley, home to Al-Anbar's main population centers and the core of insurgent activity, military officials offered three primary reasons that guerrillas have held and gained ground: the enemy's growing sophistication, insufficient numbers of U.S. troops and the lack of trained and reliable Iraqi security forces.
They described an enemy who is intelligent and adaptive:
• Military officials in Ar-Ramadi said insurgents had learned the times of their patrol shift changes. When one group of vehicles comes to relieve another, civilian traffic is pushed to the side of the road to allow the military to pass. Insurgents plan and use this opportunity, surrounded by other cars, to drop homemade bombs out their windows or through holes cut in the rear floor.
• The insurgents have figured out by trial and error the different viewing ranges of the optics systems in American tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Humvees.
• Faced with the U.S. military's technological might, guerrillas have relied on gathering intelligence and using cheap, effective devices to kill and maim.
Marines raided a home near their base in Hit and found three Sudanese insurgents with a crude map they had drawn of the U.S. base, including notes detailing when patrols left the gate, whether they were on foot or in vehicles and the numbers of Marines on the patrols.
The three men also had $11,000 in cash in an area in which insurgents pay locals $50 to plant bombs in the road.
One of the two Marine positions in the city receives mortar fire almost daily. Patrols from the other base are hit by frequent roadside bombings.
Instead of referring to the enemy derisively as ``terrorists'' -- as they used to -- Marines and Army soldiers now call the insurgents mujahedeen, an Arabic term often translated ``holy warrior'' that became popular during the Afghan guerrilla campaign against the Soviet Union.
New strategy
U.S. commanders in Al-Anbar hope to fight the insurgency through a multi-pronged strategy of political progress, reconstruction and training Iraqi security forces.
But there's been less political progress in Al-Anbar than in Iraq's Kurdish north and Shiite Muslim south, because the violence has stymied progress in rebuilding towns destroyed in the fighting and Iraqi forces are still a long way from being able to secure the province.
U.S. officials hope that a strong turnout in national elections in December will turn people away from violence. They expressed similar hopes before last January's elections. While they were a success in many parts, in Al-Anbar the turnout was in the single digits.
``Some of the Iraqis say they want to vote, but they're worried there'll be a bomb at the polling station,'' Marine Capt. James Haunty, 27, of Columbus, Ohio, said recently. ``It's a legitimate fear, but I always tell them, `Just trust me.' ''
Less than five minutes after Haunty spoke, near Hit, a roadside bomb exploded down the street.
Many Sunnis in Al-Anbar say they will vote against the constitution in October, having felt excluded from the drafting of the document.
Though fighting has badly damaged many towns and precluded widespread reconstruction, Marines in Al-Fallujah are working to make that city a centerpiece of rebuilding. Al-Fallujah residences sustained some $225 million in damage last November during a U.S. assault aimed at clearing the city of insurgents, according to Marine Lt. Col. Jim Haldeman, who oversees the civil military operations center in Al-Fallujah.
Homeowners have received 20 percent of that amount to rebuild homes, and will get the next 20 percent in the coming weeks, Haldeman said. Families are walking the streets once again and shops have reopened. The sound of hammers is constant, and men line the streets mixing concrete and laying bricks out to dry.
Even so, of the 250,000 population before the fighting, just 150,000 residents have returned. And the insurgency has come back to the area.
Iraqis are still a long way from being able to provide their own security in Al-Anbar. As with much of the province, Al-Fallujah has no functioning police force. Police in Ar-Ramadi are confined to two heavily fortified stations, after insurgents destroyed or seriously damaged eight others.
The Iraqi national guard, heralded last year as the answer to local security, was dissolved because of incompetence and insurgent infiltration, as was the guard's predecessor, the civil defense corps.
The new Iraqi army has participated in all the Marines' recent sweeps in Al-Anbar, in a limited way. While the Iraqi soldiers haven't thrown down their weapons and run, as they have in the past, many of them are still unable to operate without close U.S. supervision.
By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/12498496.htm
posted by R7 | 8/29/2005 01:52:00 PM
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