by Bing West
Conway’s two seniors in the military chain of command were Sanchez and Abizaid. He had informed them of his decision to organize the Fallujah Brigade. Within the MEF’s chain of command, Abizaid had provided the key endorsement verbally. That was all the MEF needed. It was Abizaid’s responsibility to consult with the Pentagon, or to inform Rumsfeld after the fact. It was Sanchez’s responsibility to inform the CPA, although Conway had not informed the CPA at the Anbar Province level.
General Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was publicly enthusiastic about the deal. “This is a microcosm of what we want to happen all over Iraq,” he told Fox News.
Abizaid cautioned Conway that Fallujah must not become a “city-state.” In his judgment, there was a high likelihood the Marines would have to go back in: “It may be necessary to have a strong fight in there.”
Abizaid, though, had endorsed the extended “cease-fire” when the Marines had wanted to attack. The Marines were no longer preparing for “a strong fight.” Three of the four battalions were decamping from Fallujah. The Marines weren’t a debating society. Once the decision was made, the word went down the ranks: the Iraqis want to take care of the insurgents, and we as Marines are going to make it work. MajGen Mattis told the Marines they had done their job, and now it was time for the Iraqis to take over.
“We did not come here to fight these people,” Mattis told the troops, “we came here to free them. We have to give them a stake in their own future.”
The battalion commanders congratulated their men on how hard they had fought and praised the decision to give the Iraqis a chance to show what they could do. “This is an Iraqi solution to an Iraqi problem,” LtCol Byrne said. “They know the populace.”
Captain Johnson of India 3/4 said it was “tough justifying a political cease-fire to 168 pumped-up Marines who kept saying we should push west.” That sentiment was prevalent at the fighting level. They had lost comrades and night after night had heard the imams’ call to arms. In the midst of the battle so personal, they didn’t want to be pulled off. Newspapers reported that the turnover “grated on many of the Marines” at the battalion level.
“Now it’s going to get worse,” Lance Corporal Julius Wright said. “We pulled out when we should have went in.” Pulling out without defeating the insurgents “was a waste of time, of resources, and of lives,” in the view of Lance Corporal Eduardo Chavez. “Everyone feels the same way, especially those who know someone who was killed.”
While skeptical that the Iraqis would live up to the agreement, overall the squads took the news with good grace and biting humor. In Battalion 3/4 a corporal answered the phone by saying: “Peace Busters: you negotiate, we instigate.”
Initially proving the skeptics wrong, Latif and Saleh moved with remarkable speed to implement the agreement. True to their word, on the afternoon of April 30 they assembled more than two hundred men, drawn up in formation, at the cloverleaf east of the city. The Marines were warned to stay three hundred meters away. Conway and Toolan met briefly with Gen Saleh, who proudly wore his green uniform and red beret. Handing over responsibility for the city was done with stiff handshakes, few words, and no smiles.
The New York Times ran a front-page, irony-tinged picture of a visibly pained Col Toolan shaking hands with the redoubtable Gen Saleh. The accompanying story, by John Kifner, reflected the caution if not outright skepticism of the embedded reporters about the sudden reversal of fortunes in Fallujah.
On May 1, when Conway met with the press to explain the Fallujah Brigade, he answered their questions directly. Tony Perry from the Los Angeles Times, noting that the deal was not in writing, asked whether the Iraqi generals were trustworthy. “I have enjoyed working with these people to date,” Conway said. “I find that words like ‘honor’ and ‘pride’ and ‘trust’ are vital parts of the conversation.”
John Kifner asked why the battle plan for seizing the city had not been carried out.
“Our orders changed,” Conway said.
“Orders from higher, like Washington?” Kifner asked.
“I don’t ask those questions,” Conway said. “We were probably going to mount up and those [orders] simply changed and that’s not uncommon.”
“But the orders that you received changed?”
“Well, there were never orders, just verbal orders.”
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On May 2, Gen Myers went on the Sunday talk shows to explain that the deal had been made “from the bottom up,” resulting in “a policy to catch up with what is happening on the ground.” The mission of the Fallujah Brigade, he said, was to “deal with the extremists, the foreign fighters, get rid of the heavy weapons and find the folks who perpetrated the Blackwater atrocities.” Myers then publicly fired Gen Saleh, saying his involvement had been a mistake.
At the same time Myers was speaking, armed men inside Fallujah jubilantly took to the streets. “We won,” a militiaman told Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post. “We didn’t want the Americans to enter the city and we succeeded.”
LtGen Conway had a different view. “They [the Fallujah Brigade leaders] understand our view that these people [the hard-core and the foreign fighters] must be killed or captured,” he said. “They have not flinched.”
In the view of the MEF commander, the agreement was based on trust among military men. The day of reckoning for the hard-core insurgents was soon to come.
Saleh’s firing by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff left Latif, who had been growing bananas in retirement, at the core of the brigade. Referring to the officers in his brigade, Latif, who drove back to Baghdad each night, told a reporter, “I don’t know many of these men.”
The concept was a political hope in an alternative future. Politics had prevented LtGen Conway from seizing Fallujah, so Conway had taken a political gamble to get out of the box and relieve the Marine battalions of their siege position. The hope was that Sunni Baathists and army officers would quell the rebellion by showing the Sunnis that they were included in the future of the new Iraq.
“The word ‘brigade’ is a misnomer. It was not a military organization by our standards,” Conway said. “It was an effort to split the hard-core ACF [anti-Coalition forces] and the terrorists from all those others who were fighting for their city.”
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By the beginning of May, the spotlight of national publicity had swung completely away from Fallujah and onto the Abu Ghraib scandal. The prison abuse story also pushed Sadr’s rebellion to the back pages. MajGen Dempsey had backed Sadr and his bruised militia into a corner in Najaf. Instead of arresting him, the Iraqi politicians agreed to let him go free. The reason they gave was that the Coalition could ill afford to make him a martyr at a time when the Arab press was showing the Abu Ghraib pictures as proof that Americans were the oppressors in Iraq. Sadr was allowed to leave Najaf and resume his plotting, with the warrant for his arrest abated.
On May 8, Bremer and Blackwill met with Sanchez and Conway in Baghdad. Bremer’s staff expected fireworks, but instead the meeting was civil. Conway had shown verve, and no one had had a better idea. Blackwill followed up with a visit to Mattis. Again, the meeting was collegial. Conway and Mattis stoutly defended the Fallujah Brigade concept. During the siege the Iraqi officials had lectured about how Americans misunderstood the resistance and how Fallujans wanted to control their own lives and live peacefully. Now they were being given the chance to do so.
To demonstrate that he had control, Latif urged Mattis to visit the Government Center with only a few Marines; too many Americans would be threatening. When Mattis eagerly accepted the offer, everyone in the division knew what was up. Insurgent stupidity would be their last chance of taking the city. The insurgents had attacked Abizaid; maybe they’d be dumb enough to shoot at the next visiting general.
On May 9, Mattis and Toolan drove to the outskirts of Camp Fallujah to meet with Battalion 3/4. McCoy proudly showed off a sand table his staff had built as a replica of the
city. Laid out with string and cardboard signs were the major streets, checkpoints, and phase lines. McCoy stepped over one line of twine after the other, pointing out the firing lanes and geometries of fire for his vehicles. Only seven Humvees and LAVs would go in with Mattis. Toolan would be airborne in a command helicopter, while most of 3/4’s vehicles and tanks hid behind a berm outside town. When the firing starts, McCoy explained, each of his companies knew which streets to race down.
“Bryan, I expect they’re going to shoot,” Mattis said, “but those bastards might be smart enough not to. You’re not to start World War III by yourself. If they hit me, get us out. You are not to take the Jolan by yourself. We’ll come back and finish the job. There’s nothing I’d rather do than stand on the Euphrates smoking a cigar with my new best friends, those bastards.”
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On the morning of May 10, Mattis drove at high speed down the highway from Ramadi to the assembly point east of the cloverleaf. As his LAV swung onto the side road in a swirl of dust, a four-door white Toyota approached from Fallujah and cut in front. Fearing a suicide bomber, the sentries opened fire—three short bursts from an M60 machine gun—and the Toyota bucked to a halt, steam rising from a perforated radiator and air hissing out of the front tires. Three stocky, bearded men hastily flung open the car doors and dove to the ground, arms high in the air, one of them shouting “American! Don’t shoot! American!”
Mattis climbed down as the men stood up and wiped off the dirt. Their leader was a CIA agent who earlier that morning had watched video from a UAV that showed that the insurgents were permitting cars to proceed without stopping them. So he had driven the route Mattis would soon take. He told Mattis one idiot had blown himself up trying to plant an explosive device outside the Government Center and that he had seen two trucks with mortar tubes. But he hadn’t seen a prepared ambush.
McCoy, who had walked over to listen, looked disappointed. Mattis ambled over to the Marines in their battle gear, inviting the Iraqi police, who had driven up in orange and white Toyota pickups, to join him. LtCol Hatim, in pressed chinos and a clean white shirt, was in charge. LtCols Suleiman and Jabar were nowhere to be seen. The police were startled by the friendly atmosphere. The Marines, expecting a fight within the hour, saw the police as bystanders caught in the middle, neither allies nor enemy. Mattis told a police captain he would like to visit his precinct. No, the captain said, Americans were not permitted into the city after today. Mattis shrugged and climbed into his LAV.
Primed for combat, the Marines said they didn’t have room for reporters. Shooters filled every spot in the few vehicles. Perry and Kifner, though, were plucked out of the crowd and shoved inside an amtrac. They had been with the battalions for a month and had earned admittance.
“I don’t advise this,” Mattis said, smiling at them. “You may not get a chance to file.”
At the front of the column Hatim sat in a pickup packed with policemen in blue shirts clutching AKs. An Iraqi flag on the cab roof flapped in the breeze. With four pickups in front of the half-dozen Marine vehicles, the strange parade drove into Fallujah, following the same route taken six weeks earlier by the four Blackwater contractors. On their left they passed the grungy industrial sector seized by Battalion 1/5—squat rows of repair shops, twisted piping, rusted hulks of cars, and puddles of mud and oil. On the right was East Manhattan, the middle-class residential area controlled by Battalion 3/4. At every intersection stood a blue-shirted Iraqi policeman, most looking up the empty cross streets and ignoring the armed convoy as it passed.
At the Government Center, Latif and the mayor welcomed Mattis, who sipped tea with them in the long council room. Two dozen local dignitaries in flowing robes and headdresses sat in overstuffed chairs along walls unadorned by a single picture or map. Arab and Japanese TV crews bustled to capture the scene. Mattis stayed the agreed-upon fifteen minutes, then walked back to his LAV.
Outside the courtyard Gen Saleh, with no rank showing on his green uniform, was giving orders over a handheld radio. Dozens of men, with police and National Guard soldiers among them, lined the sidewalks, arms folded, glaring at the Marines. No words were spoken. Many were holding up their two forefingers in the V for victory sign. Others turned their backs and gestured as though defecating.
In the amtrac holding the reporters, Sergeant Victor Gutierrez, a huge man who wrote for the division newspaper, sat in a corner.
“No, no,” Perry said, “you stand up here. You get your pictures, too.”
“And bring your M16,” Kifner added.
As the Marines drove out of the city, not a shot was fired. The Iraqi men stood on the sidewalks and jeered or glared. Perry bet one hundred dollars no one could get a wave from the crowd.
“That drive was a goodwill gesture that proved nothing,” BrigGen Kelly, the assistant division commander, said later. “We don’t want to call on Killer McCoy every time a convoy drives though town.”
The next day Toolan sent Battalion 3/4 back north to rejoin Col Tucker. Battalions 1/5 and 2/2 had earlier departed Fallujah. Battalion 2/1 also pulled back.
The city belonged to the Fallujah Brigade.
PART III
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REVERSAL
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May to October 2004
21
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THE BOMB FACTORY
ONCE MAJGEN MATTIS DROVE AWAY FROM the Government Center on May 10, the insurgents proclaimed victory and began to cele-brate. Pickup trucks with horns honking and men waving AKs, some with colorful bandannas wrapped around their faces, others bare-headed and grinning, drove up and down Highway 10, shouting Abu akbar! Men with RPGs stood on the rooftops, waving. Banners praising the heroic martyrs of Islam were strung across forlorn storefronts: We have defeated the devil Marines! Jihad has triumphed! Shop owners threw handfuls of candy at passersby as music blared from the minarets. The initial burst of exuberance was widespread. Police, National Guard soldiers, the Fallujah Brigade, jihadists, merchants, local gangs, foreign fighters, and young boys delighted that the city was theirs.
American reporters venturing into town over the next several days described checkpoints manned by insurgents, while the soldiers of the Fallujah Brigade stood by. Asked about this, residents replied that everyone was a mujahedeen. Such boasting provoked questions about the wisdom of canceling the attack and creating the Fallujah Brigade.
Before he left to take a command in Germany, LtGen Sanchez said those decisions were a matter of civilian politics. “We are a civilian-controlled military,” he said, “and it is our business to stay out of poli-tics.”
The White House, though, placed responsibility for the Fallujah decisions on the military. “Our commanders,” Mr. Bush said in a speech at the Army War College, “consulted with Iraq’s Governing Council and local officials, and determined that massive strikes against the enemy would alienate the local population, and increase support for the insurgents. So we have pursued a different approach. We’re making security a shared responsibility in Fallujah . . . our Marines will continue to conduct joint patrols with Iraqis.”
The Marines, though, had pursued a different approach because they had been told that the president wanted an alternative to attacking Fallujah. Disaster being an orphan, no one was rushing forward to claim credit for reining in LtGen Conway who, fed up with the empty promises of the Iraqi negotiators, had said on April 21 that he was going to attack within a few days.
The political fortunes of the president were ebbing. By mid-May only 40 percent of the electorate approved of his handling of Iraq, while 55 percent disapproved, the lowest approval rating since the war had begun. One hundred and thirty Americans had died in Iraq in April, the highest monthly total in the war. Sadr, having lost in his rebellion, had negotiated his freedom and remained at large. The press focused on the administration’s reaction to the garish pictures from Abu Ghraib, which a former secretary of defense described as the “Animal House” criminal behavior of an unsuper
vised squad on night duty.
The press and Congress, however, were looking to affix senior responsibility, stirring up speculation that the president might fire Rumsfeld or LtGen Sanchez. Given these negative developments, it did the White House no good to have a postmortem discussion of why the Marines had been ordered to seize Fallujah and now were handing it over to the politically androgynous Fallujah Brigade.
The JTF commander replacing Sanchez, Lieutenant General Thomas Metz, framed the Marines’ withdrawal in terms of its strategic benefits, rather than whether the military or the civilians had forced the decisions. “We had the combat power necessary to finish that job in a couple of days,” he said. “But having done that, there were many who thought the strategic value of that was not only zero, it could have been negative. The route we chose to go clearly saved a lot of lives.”
Marine spokesmen, in support of the rationale of saving civilian lives, had adopted what Los Angeles Times reporter Perry called a “mantra,” repeating over and over again that the MEF didn’t want to turn Fallujah into a Dresden. In Fallujah in the month of fighting there had been approximately 150 air strikes, and 75 buildings and two mosques were destroyed by approximately a hundred tons of explosives. In Dresden 1,100 allied bombers in a single night dropped 6,600 tons of explosives, destroying tens of thousands of buildings and killing between 35,000 and 45,000 civilians. In Fallujah civilian deaths ranged from 600—according to Al Jazeera—to 270, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Health. Dresden was a tragedy one hundred times the size of Fallujah.
Other spokesmen trotted out the cliché of “not destroying the city to save it.” Both infelicitous examples referred to the application of massive firepower without regard for civilian casualties—scarcely what the Marines had intended to convey about their planned attack in Fallujah.