Bill Ardolino - Fallujah Awakens: Marines, Sheikhs, and the Battle Against Al Qaeda

F allujah is iconic in the history of the Iraq War. For most westerners, the City of Mosques conjures images of brutal house-to-house fighting, the killing and mutilation of American contractors, and the birth of an insurgency that prefaced years of chaos. Several authors have documented the two hard-fought U.S.-led offensives in the city in 2004, colloquially known as the First and Second Battles of Fallujah. Insurgent attacks in the area peaked more than two years later, however, severely testing U.S. and Iraqi security forces before a remarkable turnaround. I decided to write a book about this Third Battle of Fallujah after witnessing the dramatic transformation during two visits there as a reporter in 2007.

In January 2007, eastern Anbar province was still gripped by violence. Despite the killing and capture of thousands of militants by coalition forces during the famous battles of 2004, and the subsequent cordoning of the city with entry control points, the insurgents still managed to infiltrate and stage daily attacks. Within days of my first visit, two Iraqi policemen were grievously wounded by gunshots, a U.S. Marine was shot by a sniper and paralyzed from the neck down, and insurgents destroyed a multimillion-dollar M1 Abrams with a firebomb. A U.S. soldier was killed while accompanying Iraqi soldiers attempting to evacuate civilians from the area around the burning tank. Roadside bombs were detonated against American and Iraqi patrols several times a day, and insurgent mortar teams and snipers prowled the area. The situation was arguably even more kinetic outside the city. A trip to the town of Ameriyah through the rural peninsula south of Fallujah was the surest way to get attacked by insurgents, according to a U.S. Army advisor to the police. In terms of sheer numbers of attacks, winter 2006 and early spring 2007 would be the most active period in Area of Operations (AO) Raleigh, Fallujah and its environs, during the war.

Perhaps most troubling, however, was U.S. strategy, which seemed at odds with the reality on the ground. American forces were stepping back to encourage Iraqi security forces to take the lead even though the local cops and soldiers were unready. The police had hunkered down in defensive positions within their stations, yet they were still being killed and wounded at an alarming pace; in addition, their families were targeted by assassins when their identities were discovered. The Iraqi soldiers, many of whom were Shia Muslims from other parts of the country, were considered outsiders in Fallujah, a Sunni enclave, and their ranks were undermanned due to a counterproductive leave policy, missed paychecks, and corrupt leadership that claimed a full roster in order to pocket the pay of nonexistent ghost soldiers. U.S. attempts to push these security forces into the lead were premature.

The situation seemed dire, but there were glimmers of hope. To the west of Fallujah, the tribes around Ramadi, the provincial capital, had awakened the previous year to fight al Qaeda insurgents and form an alliance with the Americans. Some Fallujans had heard of the development and hoped that a similar arrangement could be made in their area. In addition, the Iraqi police hired a competent new district chief, and the corrupt leader of the local Iraqi Army unit fled from his command after stories about his thievery surfaced in the Western and Arabic media. And in January 2007, U.S. president George W. Bush announced the appointment of Lt. Gen. David Petraeus to head coalition efforts in Iraq along with a surge of U.S. forces and a counterinsurgency strategy that would attempt to stabilize the burning country. When I left Fallujah at the end of that month, I thought that security progress was possible, but that it would take a major commitment from U.S. forces and a great deal of patience. In retrospect, I underestimated how quickly things could change.