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The United States assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in November 2004, launched just after the American presidential election, was intended to break the back of the insurgency in Iraq. It was heralded by assertions that Fallujah was out of control, that it had become a central logistics base for the insurgency across much of central and northern Iraq, and not least that the subjugation of Fallujah would be an essential prerequisite to the Iraqi elections planned for 30 January 2005.
The Fallujah operation was followed almost immediately by vigorous military action against insurgents in other towns and villages in central Iraq. United States strategists, while not persuaded that the taking of Fallujah would bring the insurgency to an immediate end, believed that these actions as a whole would be a decisive turning-point in a war that would otherwise soon be heading towards its third year.
Routes of turmoil
It is now clear that the reality in central Iraq is radically different from these American projections and expectations (see last weeks column in this series, No direction home, 25 November 2004). There are five recent indicators of this, which together seem almost to model the developing dangers of the insurgency as a whole.
The first is an apparently minor change of policy reported on 3 December, concerning the route between Baghdad airport and the heavily-protected "green zone" that houses the Iraqi government and the thousands of American officials attached to the US embassy and other agencies. This twenty-kilometre road has now been deemed too dangerous for US government personnel to use. In future, they will be flown to and from the airport by helicopter (see Bradley Graham, "US Embassy Bans Us of Airport Road", Washington Post, 3 December 2004).
The airport highway is nowhere near Fallujah, Ramadi, Samarra, Mosul or any other centre of insurgency; it runs through the heart of Baghdad. Yet it has been rendered unsafe, although around 1,000 troops from the US army's 1st cavalry division have been guarding it.
Around six months after the termination of the Saddam Hussein regime in April 2003, small-arms fire along the airport road began to make travel insecure. The US military responded by deploying armoured vehicles and checkpoints. These initially seemed to have an effect, but the insurgents quickly adapted by exploding bombs planted on the roadside. The frequent military checks deterred these to some extent, but in the last two months the insurgents have started to use suicide bombs concealed in ordinary cars. The only sure answer would be to close the entire highway to all but official vehicles, but the negative symbolic impact of this for the United States would be considerable.
Instead, flying to and from the airport has become the only option. Thus, the highway that connects possibly the two most significant American locations in Iraq is now considered too precarious for US forces to use.
The second indicator of the failure of the Fallujah assault to have its intended effect is the level of US casualties. The US armed forces lost 136 troops in November, the worst death toll of any month since the war started in March 2003. Almost half of these deaths occurred in incidents away from Fallujah; indeed, there are indications that the rate of attacks on US and Iraqi security forces increased from sixty-to-seventy a day before Fallujah to nearly double that number during the assault.
The number of US troops wounded was also exceptionally high; from 4-30 November, 1,265 US soldiers and marines were wounded again the worst month since the war began. Almost half of the injuries were serious, involving mass airlifts from Iraq to the Landstuhl military hospital in Germany for later evacuation to the United States.
The third indicator is the continuing level of violence across much of Iraq. In the past week alone, attacks on US and Iraqi security forces (and especially the Iraqi police) have been at an almost unparalleled intensity. More than ninety people were killed and scores more 100 injured in the three days to 5 December. A particular feature was the persistent raiding of police stations, many of them resulting in the seizure of large quantities of weapons and ammunition to replenish insurgents own stocks.
In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here
Indeed, an important aspect of the violence is the high level of intimidation being applied to those working for the Iraqi regime or for United States forces. According to US military sources, 338 Iraqis linked to the government or American forces have been killed since 1 October. These include thirty-five police chiefs, mayors and middle-ranking appointed officials; in the northern city of Mosul alone, 136 people have been killed in the past month.
In a single town, Abu Ghraib, five members of the town council have been killed in recent weeks and two kidnapped; reconstruction projects are consistently destroyed, sometimes within days of their being completed; and the local commander of the Iraqi national guard battalion has survived six assassination attempts within ten days (see Josh White, "Town Reflects Rising Sabotage in Iraq", Washington Post, 9 December 2004).
A fourth indicator is the decision to bring in to Iraq an additional 12,500 US troops. Almost all of these are frontline combat troops, including two battalions from the 82nd airborne division, currently held in reserve in the United States to respond to emergencies overseas.
The fifth and perhaps most telling indicator is a report from the CIA's bureau chief in Baghdad, about to return to Washington after a year in Iraq. This speaks bluntly of a deteriorating security situation, with no prospect of improvement in the near future. According to the New York Times, the bureau chief was highly regarded in intelligence circles and headed a bureau of some 300 people, making it the largest overseas CIA station since Saigon at the height of the Vietnam war (see Douglas Jehl, Iraq deteriorating, CIA warns (International Herald Tribune, 8 December 2004).
Whose turning-point?
In the midst of this turmoil, and despite the increasing number of Iraqi political voices within Iraq calling for a delay in the election timetable, the Bush administration insists that the nationwide vote will go ahead in January. This is both part of a wider process of public denial in Washington that the situation in Iraq is becoming untenable, yet also evidence that excuses are already being found for the developing failure.
A component of this denial is the belief that much of the insurgency is being directed by Ba'athists based in Syria (see Thomas E Ricks, Rebels Aided by Allies in Syria, U.S. Says, Washington Post, 8 December 2004). This puts more of the onus on Syria, a situation certain to be welcomed by the Ariel Sharon government in Israel. It is also a return to the idea that the insurgency is organised to a considerable extent on a hierarchical basis, and that it should therefore be possible to destroy or detain its leadership in Iraq and possibly even in Syria.
The problem with this mindset is that it replicates the approach to Fallujah, which has signally failed to crush or even diminish the insurgency. Some analysts believe that US military intelligence simply does not understand the nature of the insurgency, and that it is far more dispersed and organic than is normally recognised.
As dangerous to US plans is the wider impact of its military operations across the middle east. The cumulative effect of the persistent and detailed reporting in the region of civilian casualties in Fallujah and many other Iraqi urban centres, and of the numerous instances of torture and other forms of violence against detainees in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan, is further to increase the bitter anti-American popular mood. This is an invaluable aid to al-Qaida and its affiliates, and encourages more recruits to the insurgent cause within and beyond Iraq.
A month after the start of the latest assault on Fallujah, it is now apparent that it has been counterproductive within Iraq and the wider Arab and Muslim world. What was expected to be a turning-point for the United States could even turn out to be a turning-point for the insurgents.
