The latest US attempt to pacify Fallujah
is in its final stages and will in all likelihood
succeed, but only because the Pentagon has finally
reinstated (with little fanfare) the "overwhelming
force" doctrine of Secretary of State Colin Powell that
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other civilian
leaders had previously dismissed in favor of a
"lighter", "leaner" military, and because Washington is
finally making reasonable risk/reward judgments in its
strategic planning.
By most accounts, the US
operation in Fallujah has been highly successful. After
seizing control of 70% of the city in the first few days
of the assault, US soldiers and marines then virtually
surrounded the remaining diehard insurgents, including
members of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's notorious foreign
jihadi group. As the offensive approached the one-week
mark, US forces were poised to gradually liquidate the
pockets of resistance. While Zarqawi and other rebel
leaders are thought to have fled, any outcome that
eliminates Fallujah as an operational center for Iraq's
18-month-old insurgency, even if tenuously, will mark a
key milestone in the coalition's checkered efforts to
stabilize the country.
Commentators have correctly noted that the real challenge in
Fallujah lies in the battle's aftermath. Unlike previously,
it appears that the Pentagon leadership has
meticulously prepared to deal with this reality. A large contingent
of US troops has been slated for peacekeeping duties
in and around the city, and despite the much-touted
effort to put an "Iraqi face" on the mission, there
is little doubt that American personnel will
dominate the assault's immediate aftermath as they had
dominated the fighting itself. US leaders remember all too
well last spring's decision to form a "Fallujah
brigade" that would prove to be a disastrously ineffective
proxy for curbing insurgent activity. This time, with
reliable US forces to provide security in Fallujah,
an ambitious plan to rebuild with US money what US
munitions have destroyed might actually proceed.
Whether or not this plan will be another false
start remains to be seen, but a fundamental shift in US
strategy has already taken place, and should Washington
stick with it, it stands a good chance of at least
capping the steady upsurge of guerrilla violence of the
past 18 months and, in all likelihood, gradually rolling
it back. The Fallujah operation signifies a clean break
from the philosophy of "lighter", "leaner" military
forces coveted by Rumsfeld, and a dramatic return to the
doctrine of "overwhelming force" advocated by Powell.
The numbers alone tell a convincing story. In last
April's ignominiously aborted offensive, the US threw
some 2,000 marines against Fallujah's estimated 2,000
insurgents, resulting in a strategic setback that allowed
the city to fall under extremist control. This time,
US forces exceeded 10,000 against only about 3,000
insurgents in the area. Moreover, they advanced with a
major armored element and were backed by a huge
concentration of heavy artillery and layered air
support. Indeed, the capture of Baghdad itself - with a
population 20 times that of Fallujah - required
comparable scale of force in April 2003.
"Overwhelming force" has returned with a
vengeance, a development whose significance is easy to
overlook.
Gone are the days when US
hawks spoke boldly of a high-tech military machine that
would redefine the very nature of warfare. The lightning
advance to Baghdad in early 2003 had appeared to
vindicate Rumsfeld's doctrine that a major war can be
won lightly and on the cheap, but the sweet taste of
victory quickly turned sour. Even as President George W
Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln to deliver his
celebrated "mission accomplished" speech, events were
unfolding in the then almost unheard-of city of Fallujah
that would soon make Bush's announcement seem
presumptuously premature.
In hindsight, it is clear
that US planners had no idea of the extent of the trouble
they were inviting when they first entered Fallujah
in April 2003 with only a fraction of the forces
that would later be drawn to deal with the restive
city. Despite evidence that numerous Saddam Hussein
loyalists had taken refuge in the area, the US was
confident that staging a show of strength would be enough
to convince local tribal and religious leaders to cooperate
with the new coalition-imposed order. Fallujah's
inveterate hostility to the occupation dates from
April 28, 2003, when 15 pro-Saddam Hussein demonstrators
who defied a coalition curfew to celebrate the deposed
dictator's birthday were killed in a scuffle with US
troops. In the following weeks, as the coalition's
program of blanket de-Ba'athification left much of the
city's population with poor economic prospects, this
enmity turned increasingly violent. Cash-loaded regime
loyalists trickling into the Sunni triangle now found an
ideal spot to mingle with religious extremists and
tribes that shared their antipathy toward the US
presence. It was this mix of vengeful malcontents - with
their knowledge of where to uncover Saddam's arms caches
- that gave birth to the Iraqi insurgency.
By
July 2003, when US General John Abizaid declared that his
forces were fighting a "classic guerrilla war", attacks
on US troops averaged 15-20 a day. This reached a
crescendo of 30-35 in the autumn, before Saddam's capture
resulted in a brief lull in early 2004. Despite the
persistent violence, the Pentagon repeatedly denied
suggestions that there were insufficient troops to
pacify the Sunni heartland. Illusions finally died in
April when a dramatic explosion of rebel activity in
both Sunni and Shi'ite regions compelled Washington to
extend service tours for thousands of troops. Since
then, large-scale operations - first in Najaf, then
Samarra, and now in Fallujah - have assumed ever-greater
importance in the counterinsurgency campaign. Despite
its preference for high-tech precision weaponry, the US
military has learned that absent a reliable human
intelligence (HUMINT) network, there is simply no
substitute for boots on the ground. Indeed, the
counterinsurgency's previous reliance on pinprick raids
that typically snared noncombatants had been a key
factor in Iraqis' anti-coalition sentiment well before
the damaging revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu
Ghraib.
Even with the new emphasis on big
operations, the Pentagon's reluctance to raise troop
levels means that heavy concentration of force in a
single location carries its own risk. Indeed, the most
worrisome byproduct of the Fallujah assault has been the
flareup of violence in other Sunni cities, such as
Ramadi and the supposedly pacified (as of early October)
Samarra. It is only natural for guerrillas to target
areas where US forces are stretched thin, but despite
these developments, the overall situation has not
approached untenable proportions as it did in April.
Moreover, US commanders and Iyad Allawi's interim
government alike have gambled that silencing Fallujah
will outweigh the concomitant surge of rebel activity in
other cities. Their wager is that insurgents will be
unable to entrench themselves as firmly in other urban
centers as they had in Fallujah, and no other city will
become such an irritant to central Iraq as a whole. It
is also hoped that Iraqi troops and police will prove
more reliable elsewhere in the Sunni triangle, and even
if they fail to stop attacks, they can at least reduce
the burden on US troops over time. Last but not least,
occupying Fallujah will deprive the most implacable
Islamist fighters - including the foreigners thought to
be responsible for the deadliest suicide bombings - of a
central point of coordination.
Overwhelming
force was the only realistic way to pacify Fallujah, but
there is strong indication that in this instance, the US
is actually willing to commit tremendous resources to
secure peace. The people of Fallujah, returning to their
devastated city, will find thousands of US troops in
their midst and a frenzied US-funded reconstruction
program. Only a situation like this will convince them,
even if grudgingly, of the benefits - and safety - of
cooperating with US efforts instead of opposing them or
remaining passive.
Thus US strategy has finally
taken a realistic if still unproven track. Should a
widespread Sunni boycott of the January election occur,
the Fallujah assault will be branded a political
disaster. Yet if the insurgents are indeed weakened by
Fallujah's fall in the coming weeks, a brief window will
open for the interim regime to placate the Sunni
community and convince its mainstream to participate in
the election. In any case, it was always preferable to
risk a boycott than to concede that a vote is impossible
in entire cities.
It may have taken a while, but
the Pentagon has all but admitted that the insurgency
will not be defeated militarily, and fully expects rebel
attacks to continue well after the capture of Fallujah.
However, it is too early to dismiss the possibility that
the battle may reverse the tide of the guerrilla war, or
suggest that there can be no decisive single campaign in
the counterinsurgency. While the ultimate triumph over
the insurgents must be political, only military power
can create the requisite conditions for lasting
stability. Given that Fallujah has been so central to
the security crisis of the past 18 months, it may well
be that the integrity of the new Iraq will rise with the
inevitable rebirth of its shattered landscape.
