NEW UBAYDI, Iraq - The political debate
over Iraq is focused increasingly on when and how
to get US forces out of Iraq's cities and back to
the United States. But out on Iraq's border with
Syria, US marines have reopened the military
debate over how they can defeat the insurgency.
Last autumn, the marines swept through
al-Qaim, a cluster of towns and villages along the
Euphrates River, and wrested control from
insurgent groups dominated by foreign jihadis.
Throughout Iraq, the Americans have
followed up similar tactical successes by
returning to large bases kilometers away from the
nearest major town. That distance from the towns
and their people allowed insurgents to return and
regroup.
In al-Qaim, marines under
Lieutenant-Colonel Julian Alford instead
consolidated their position
by spreading out on to more than a dozen small
bases inside towns and along major roads. That
constant presence among the civilian population
has helped the Americans keep insurgents from
re-establishing a large-scale presence in the
area.
"You can't give these guys
sanctuary, and that's what the big battalion
[base] does," said Alford's successor,
Lieutenant-Colonel Nick Marano. "Wherever you're
not, that's where they are."
The
assumption in most of Iraq is that a constant US
presence in Iraqi population centers fuels the
insurgency and increases US casualties. In
al-Qaim, the result has been the opposite.
Lieutenant John McClellan, who was
deployed in the area before the battle positions
were established and returned this year, described
a striking difference.
"[If] you walked
out in town, you'd get an IED [roadside bomb] or
shot at or something," he said of his previous
deployment. "Now you can go have tea on Market
Street."
Colonel Blake Crowe, who commands
the marines in western Anbar province, called
al-Qaim "the model for where they want us to go".
New counter-insurgency strategies seemed
beside the point earlier this year as speculation
mounted that the US military would begin
substantial troop withdrawals. But the insurgency
has proved its resilience in Ramadi and an
additional brigade is on its way to reinforce the
Americans in western Iraq.
In al-Qaim,
Marano's marines are expanding a strategy they
believe is working. Targeting an area the marines
said was a staging ground for insurgent attacks in
al-Qaim's larger towns, Marano, 43, has begun
moving men into small villages that are seeing an
American presence for the first time.
Jones said the insurgent response - a
string of attacks with rockets, car bombs and
improvised explosive devices (IEDs) - meant he and
his marines were looking in the right place.
"In my opinion, are the hardcore guys out
here? Yes. That's where we've been shot at, that's
where we've been IED'd," he said.
Marano
said: "The increase in activity definitely spiked
with us starting to move out there."
Marano said he expected the violence to
decline as the marines settled into the same
routine of patrols and engagement with Iraqis that
they employ in the rest of the area. More than
three-quarters of the battalion's marines live in
battle positions named for famous Marine Corps
fights, like Iwo Jima and Tripoli.
At most
big US bases in Iraq the view is either of a wall
or of desert stretching off in all directions.
Lieutenant Ritch Cannici's battle position
provides a virtually unobstructed view of the town
of Sadah.
"I was here last year and the
whole battalion was at al-Qaim," said the
26-year-old New Jersey native. He said that
without a constant presence in the area, the
battalion was unable to keep insurgents out.
Now his marines are among Sadah's people
the moment they leave their base. They move
through town on foot or in Humvees several times a
day. "We have a presence out in the zone the
majority of the day," he said. "All day and
night."
Insurgents still operate in the
area, but they have not entrenched to resume the
constant threat they posed last year. "There's no
space for insurgents to come back in and set up
any kind of coordinated attack," Cannici said.
"It's all hasty work."
Cannici said his
men, who divvy up the area so the same marines
patrol the same areas regularly, have gotten to
know the Iraqis who live and work along their
routes. He said they had learned which Iraqis
would not help the Americans and whom to go to for
information.
"After a few weeks patrolling
the zone you make some friends," he said.
In the small towns and rural areas of
eastern al-Qaim, locals are quick to notice
anything out of the ordinary. The marines are
trying to use that to their advantage.
"We're trying to get them to think more
like policemen on the beat," said Ralph Morten, a
Los Angeles Police Department detective who spent
several months advising Marano's marines.
Looking for small changes in relatively
peaceful neighborhoods is second nature to police
officers, but comes less easily to men trained for
combat. Morten also stressed the importance of
taking a more laid-back approach to questioning
civilians, treating everyday interactions as
conversations instead of interrogations.
"What Ralph has done is, 'What do you look
for as far as [what is] suspicious?'" said Captain
Todd Pillo, 30, the battalion's intelligence
officer. "How do you talk to individuals, how do
you do tactical questioning, all that stuff a cop
on the beat, street cop, would do."
Pillo,
who was in al-Qaim in 2004, said that during his
previous deployment virtually all of the marines'
intelligence was garnered from suspected
insurgents detained by the battalion.
"We
were always finding dead people's heads cut off,
just shot in the back, shot in the head," Pillo
said. "If [insurgents] even thought you were
remotely involved with helping the Americans you
were getting killed. So nobody talked to us."
Now, he said, about 80% of the
intelligence he sees comes from marine
conversations with Iraqi civilians.
Captain Jones, echoing other marines, said
he did not believe the US military could
completely eliminate the insurgency. In al-Qaim,
one marine battalion cannot maintain a constant
presence in the towns and simultaneously secure
the highway that runs through Jones' expanded area
of responsibility.
"The marines are out a
lot," he said, "but the amount of time they're on
that stretch of road isn't going to deter
[insurgents]."
The goal, though, is not to
crush the insurgency utterly but rather to hand
over responsibility for fighting it to Iraqi
government forces. Keeping the level of violence
down is a vital element of recruiting and training
Iraqis as a counter-insurgency force.
"That's what we're looking at. Keep the
area secure enough," Jones said. "As long as the
insurgency is at that level, I think the [Iraqi
police and army] will be fine."
Marines
here differed over whether the same strategy would
work elsewhere in Iraq. In al-Qaim, the insurgency
became dominated by foreign fighters whose
brutality and imposition of conservative Islam
alienated powerful local sheikhs.
In areas
where the insurgency enjoys more local support -
or where, as in Ramadi, the insurgency is strong
enough to terrorize and assassinate local leaders
- putting Americans out among Iraqi civilians may
be impossible.
In any case, the kind of
large-scale offensive that paved the way for
smaller bases in al-Qaim would be hugely
destructive and bloody in Ramadi, a city of
400,000 people. Allowing the city to fester may be
the only political option for both the US
administration and the new Iraqi government.
It may be that the US has found a viable
counter-insurgency strategy, but found it too
late.
"I personally think it would work in
Ramadi," Marano said. "It would take a lot more,
but I think the concept is valid."
Charles Crain is a freelance
journalist based in Iraq.
