No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah

by Bing West

  Both the Pentagon and CentCom had the chance to object to Bremer’s edict, but neither did so. When Bremer announced his decision in May, the Pentagon, CentCom, and the CPA shared the misimpression that the shooting war was winding down and that consequently there was no need to rush a tainted army back into service. Hearing no serious objection from CentCom, CPA started to develop from scratch an Iraqi army that would protect the country’s borders and be excluded from any internal role. Countering an insurgency was not a mission of the new Iraqi Army.

  Although Gen Abizaid declared in July that Iraq faced “a classical guerrilla-type campaign,” neither CentCom nor the CPA made any major alteration in strategy or budget. This would emerge as a major problem. Reflecting the view that prosperity is the cornerstone of security, in early fall Bremer submitted to the U.S. Congress a budget requesting $18 billion for Iraq, of which 80 percent was allocated for development (electricity, sewage, schools, and the like) and 20 percent for security (police, the army, and border guards). At a time when the insurgency was growing, the policies and the resources of the CPA presupposed an Iraq at peace.

  Beginning in late August and running throughout the fall, the deputy secretary of defense, Paul D. Wolfowitz, concerned about the trends, asked the CPA to reallocate funds to develop forty or more National Guard–type Iraqi battalions. One or two battalions would be sent to each Sunni city to back up the beleaguered and outgunned police. Wolfowitz’s request resulted in a series of budgetary tussles with Bremer, who joked to his staff about having “to feed the squirrel cages back in the Pentagon” and referred to the “6,000-mile screwdriver from Washington.”

  Bremer’s span of control and the enormity of his duties were staggering. He was responsible for selecting an Interim Governing Council, advising Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush, informing the United Nations, preparing to return sovereignty, and determining Iraqi economic and security policies and budgets. In light of the onerous restrictions imposed by Congress, readjusting security spending was no easy task.

  Nonetheless, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Abizaid kept the pressure on, and by mid-fall the CPA was reluctantly reallocating money for additional security forces. Once the CPA agreed to Wolfowitz’s request, Abizaid directed the U.S. divisions in Iraq to use the money to recruit, train, and pay the new Iraqi National Guard (initially called the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps). Fallujah, though, was near the bottom of the list of cities to receive such a battalion. National Guard soldiers would not arrive there until February 2004.

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  “YOU WORK WITH THE AMERICANS, YOU DIE.”

  AS THE SUMMER OF 2003 ENDED, the Americans pulled their units into a large base two miles east of Fallujah, sending mounted patrols downtown daily.

  At the beginning of September, the 82nd Airborne Division returned. Fallujans were still angry about the tragic killings of April 28, but the JTF had no other division to send. The 1st Battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment became the fifth American battalion in five months to enter the city. The battalion, recently returned from Afghanistan, would remain there for seven months.

  Lieutenant Colonel Brian M. Drinkwine commanded the battalion. A West Point graduate, he was a quiet leader, comfortable in his command and impressed by the size of the task. The regimental commander, Colonel Jefforey Smith, had called together his six battalion commanders and laid out their missions. The 4,400 paratroopers under Smith’s command—spread out over sixteen hundred square kilometers containing one million Iraqis—were to accomplish five tasks: (1) fight and defeat the shadowy insurgents; (2) reestablish local governing councils; (3) defuse the hostility of the Sunni population; (4) aid the Iraqi police; and (5) assist in invigorating the economy. These tasks were similar to what American and British forces were undertaking throughout Iraq. The JTF in Baghdad, however, had provided no master blueprint for rebuilding a nation. Each battalion, Smith explained in his direct, soft-spoken way, was expected to adapt and determine its own priorities.

  Drinkwine concentrated on city government during the daytime, driving in town for meetings with administrators, sheikhs, and imams. Every night the rifle companies sent out anti-IED patrols. Six IEDs had gone off the first week the battalion arrived; over the course of the summer the insurgents had become more skilled.

  Prime hours for setting in the explosives were just after dark and just before dawn. Knowing the Americans had observation posts, insurgents would ride in two cars, drive toward each other, and stop with their rear bumpers touching, as if one were helping the other change a flat tire. The cars’ headlights blinded the American night-vision devices for the few minutes it took to drop the explosive into a pre-dug hole behind a guardrail. A few hours later a man would sneak up and insert a blasting cap, wires, or a radio frequency device. The next day someone hiding in the shrubs would detonate the explosive. As the paratroopers became adept at identifying likely hiding places for IEDs, the insurgents changed locations in a daily hide-and-seek contest.

  The battalion’s initial patrols were large-scale, with quick reaction forces standing by. Shortly before midnight on September 11, 2003, the 3rd Platoon from Alpha Company left its base at an abandoned amusement park and walked north to stake out a highway. The soldiers settled into an ambush about two hundred meters west of a field hospital that the Jordanian military had established to treat Iraqis.

  Around the same time inside the city, somebody in a black BMW fired shots at the mayor’s office and then raced out of town, pursued by a police car and two pickups manned by the mayor’s militia. With their lights on, the four vehicles raced at high speed down the highway. The American soldiers turned on their flashlights and waved at the cars to halt. When the BMW turned out its lights and sped past the Americans, shots rang out in a confused melee. One police pickup was riddled with bullets and rolled to a halt. The police car and the other pickup skidded to a stop.

  A driver hopped out, yelling “Police! Police!” But now the American soldiers were under fire from the roof of the two-story building to the west. Not knowing it was a hospital, they pounded the building with .50 caliber machine-gun fire. Seven policemen and hospital guards died. It was the deadliest friendly-fire incident in the six-month-old American occupation, and it left tremendous bitterness on both sides.

  Drinkwine expressed his regret and asked why the police hadn’t contacted him by radio or turned on their flashing lights. Because, the police shouted back, you Americans promised us equipment but never delivered. Never. You’re all talk. Now you’re killing us.

  Drinkwine had little to offer the police in the way of equipment. He set up notification procedures to avoid a repeat of the tragedy and purchased some flashing lights. He understood why the police stayed away from his battalion. They lived in the city and surrounding villages; they knew the ex-officers lounging on the street corners, each with an AK at home and a skein of like-minded colleagues. Four American battalions, each offering protection in exchange for information, had come and had gone. But the insurgents were not leaving.

  Drinkwine had his hands full. Patrols were finding an average of three IEDs a day. In early October Drinkwine was arriving for a meeting at the Government Center when a man stepped out of a side street, shouted “God is great!” and started firing an AK-47 automatic rifle. The soldiers cut him down, but four bystanders were wounded.

  Local residents called the assailant a freedom fighter, and a policeman promised that more would emerge.

  “Saddam Hussein is gone. But now we have the same kind of regime,” he said. “Whenever they [the Americans] come inside Fallujah, they will be attacked.”

  Rather than backing off, Drinkwine increased the pressure. In mid-October, to get to a meeting with the sheikhs at the town hall, Drinkwine walked the two kilometers west down Highway 10 with a platoon from Charlie Company, instead of driving in Bradley fighting vehicles. When they reached the mayor’s office, a man in a blue shirt and jeans, hiding behind a silver Oldsmobile, f
ired point-blank at Specialist John Fox, striking him in the center of his armored vest. The bullet hit a gray smoke grenade strapped to his vest and bounced off. The soldiers shot the man. As he lay dying, he quietly repeated in Arabic, “God is great.”

  Drinkwine routinely met with the clerics and sheikhs, listening to their complaints and requests for aid and asking in return that they tone down the virulent anti-American sermons. American officials estimated that 43,000 former Baathists and army and intelligence corps veterans lived in and around Fallujah. In every 82nd ops center there were lists, photos, and an organizational skeleton laying out the former regime elements (FREs) suspected of running the resistance. Next to the FRE diagram was a layout of the overt power elite in the city—the sheikhs, imams, and administrators with whom Drinkwine frequently met.

  CIA and military intelligence specialists worked together to update the lists. It had taken the CIA six months to persuade the CPA that an Iraqi intelligence service had to be reconstituted, despite the horrors of its predecessor. The formation of a new intelligence service, however, was a year away. In the meantime the U.S. military was developing its own net of suspects, personality profiles, known associates, addresses, informers, and grounds for arrest.

  Drinkwine was especially impressed by the skills of special operations Task Forces 6-26 and 1-21. The Special Operations Command could operate in just about any area. Its officers and NCOs were older, more experienced, and low-key. When they showed up, they had a mission and hard intelligence. Drinkwine appreciated how they passed on tips and advice to his paratroopers.

  Drinkwine was fortunate in having on his staff Specialist Khaled Dudin, a naturalized American citizen from a prominent Jordanian family that included ambassadors and counselors to the king. Dudin’s father had served as a government liaison to the Bedouin tribes across the Arabian Peninsula. As a child, Dudin had traveled with his father, absorbing the nuances of tribal politics. Eventually the family settled in California, and after 9/11 Dudin joined the paratroopers. With his flawless Arabic and an ability to charm an Iraqi audience with tales of sheikhs from long ago, Dudin became Drinkwine’s right arm in navigating the politics of the city.

  At higher headquarters, meanwhile, the Americans debated whether courting the sheikhs paid actual dividends or merely infused with life a dying totem of feudalism. Although he met with dozens of sheikhs each week, Drinkwine had no way of knowing which ones had real power or where their loyalties lay.

  “Think of the Sopranos,” Dudin advised him. “For an American to understand Fallujah, think in terms of mob families in a city that’s broke after a war their side lost. There’s an occupying army in town offering contracts and money, clergy telling you to resist, and former generals hiding out and paying guys to set off IEDs. What would the Sopranos do? They’d play every side, make money, keep their tribe together, and stay out of politics, except when it benefited them. The sheikhs have power in the villages, but only as long as they deliver something. We can horse-trade with the sheikhs, if we give them money.

  “Inside Fallujah the imams have more power than the sheikhs. An imam gets power by attracting followers. Most Fallujans are illiterate, and the mosque is the center of the men’s social lives. The imam tells them the news and stirs them up. In return he gets donations and a cut of the action. It’s hard for an American to horse-trade with an imam. We can give him a little money, but if he loses his following, he’s finished. That’s not a good trade for him.”

  Drinkwine thought he understood the basic power structure of Fallujah. The tribal sheikhs had real but limited power. The pro-American mayor, Taha, had been installed by Khamis Hassnawi, the head sheikh of Abu Eisa, the largest tribe. Two younger sheikhs, Ghazi and Barakat, wanted to replace Taha with their candidate, Ra’ad. The 3rd Infantry Division had liked Ra’ad and had appointed him as “city manager,” a step below mayor. The old sheikh, Khamis, outfoxed his younger rivals and kept Taha in power. On behalf of their rival patrons, Taha and Ra’ad were vying for the favor of the Americans. At stake were the huge contracts the CPA was promising on Baghdad radio stations.

  Sheikh Ghazi ran the top financial family. His compound, across the Brooklyn Bridge on the west bank of the Euphrates, was as large as the hospital next door. His gardens, with red and yellow roses, hibiscus, and trim green hedges, were laid out in the intricate curlicue symbol of the Baath Party. He had a fleet of Mercedes, kept a second wife in a large house downtown, vacationed in seaside Beirut, knew the inner royal family in Saudi Arabia, and met quietly in Jordan with American officials, suggesting he understood the subtleties of wartime diplomacy.

  When Drinkwine traced the $2 million the 3rd ID had dispensed during the summer, he found few tangible results. The money spent didn’t change attitudes. Textbooks had been distributed to the schools, but the director of education persisted in paranoid rants about evil Shiites. Drinkwine visited the hospital where $200,000 of equipment had been installed, but the director—who was suspected of harboring and treating wounded insurgents—refused to talk with him.

  The two hundred or so clerics in town mostly preached the prevailing anti-American sentiment. Drinkwine couldn’t distinguish between the city elders who were keeping their mouths shut to stay alive and those who were the true insurgents. The special operations task forces believed the dangerous insurgent leaders rarely showed up in public when American forces were present. Some were in Syria, and those who lived in the city kept a low profile.

  Gradually, from wiretaps, intercepts, informers, and the like, the task forces compiled wire diagrams detailing how money moved from former Baathists in hiding through middlemen on the city council and into the hands of the foot soldiers: $50 for a lookout, $100 to dig the hole for an IED, $200 to trigger the device. There was good money to be made if you caught on with one of the right “families.”

  Sheikh Ghazi, the wealthiest trader, worked through four levels of contractors, leaving no paper trail. Some suspected he was moving funds from Syria to contacts inside the city, with Sheikh Barakat acting as paymaster for local attacks. Barakat’s son had bragged about setting off an IED. The senior imam, Jamal, was suspected of hiding insurgents inside his complex and aiding Barakat in payouts after IED attacks. Drinkwine had secured permission from Col Smith to plant listening devices inside Jamal’s mosque, risking a riot if the bugs were discovered.

  Drinkwine warned the city elders that the Americans were not fools, but the warning produced no change. On October 20 a platoon on the eastern edge of the city (called East Manhattan) noticed that the vendors selling jugs of gasoline to passing motorists were walking away quickly. When a paratrooper stepped on a hidden pressure plate, an oil barrel containing two ninety-pound 155mm shells exploded, sending chunks of red-hot metal in all directions. Sergeant P. J. Johnson was killed and seven paratroopers wounded. Small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades hit the platoon from the suburban streets to the northeast. The fighting raged for several hours before Drinkwine could extract his wounded. The pressure plate was the work of a demolitions expert whom the CIA called the “Rocket Man,” a local resident.

  Furious, Drinkwine turned up the heat on the sheikhs and imams. The special task forces pored over intercepts and captured documents, tying together seven items pointing to the mufti Jamal and Sheikh Barakat. Arresting an imam required gaining special permission. Smith, the regimental commander, listened to a recording of Jamal inciting his followers to kill the Americans and a telephone intercept instructing Jamal to hide a terrorist in his compound. In addition, he had three handwritten letters detailing rebel activities. Smith ordered Jamal and Barakat arrested.

  The raid team seized Jamal and found the terrorist—a Yemeni—hiding in a small room in his house. Jamal was brought to Drinkwine’s ops center and politely offered tea.

  As Jamal was sipping his tea, Specialist Dudin looked at his watch and said, “We have to move you. The party’s about to begin.”

  A perplexed Jamal looked around for pa
rtygoers. As they moved across the courtyard, the nightly mortar rounds crashed in nearby. Dudin sheltered Jamal and hurried him inside a bunker. A fifty-eight-year-old man of medium build and scholarly mien, Jamal was shaken by the attack.

  “See how dangerous this is?” Dudin asked in his impeccable Arabic.

  “Sure, sure,” Jamal said.

  Badly shaken by the nearby explosions, Jamal wrote a letter confessing that he had been hiding a “fundamentalist” and inciting violence. The next day Drinkwine invited a half-dozen imams to meet privately with Jamal, who again acknowledged what he and Barakat had done. After the two were driven to Abu Ghraib prison, more than seventy sheikhs and imams gathered at city hall to protest the arrests. The head sheikhs, though, showed them Jamal’s letters and the protest fizzled out. Drinkwine took this as a positive sign.

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  On the last day of October, a bomb went off inside the Government Center, and a mob gathered, accusing Mayor Taha Bedawi of profiting from American contracts. The protest was a put-up job, soon punctuated by rifle shots that escalated into a full-scale firefight. Drinkwine rushed in two reinforced platoons, covered by armed helicopters. The ensuing firefight raged for thirty hours. When it ended, the town hall was a smoking shell, and Mayor Taha, who had been staunchly pro-American, had fled town.

  Ra’ad replaced Taha as mayor, and it looked like Ghazi had out-maneuvered old Sheikh Khamis and set himself up for future contracts. Assured of temporary immunity, a dozen former senior Baathists attended a clandestine meeting hosted by Drinkwine, who wanted to hear their version of the causes of the violence. They asked for a reduced American presence in the city and a return of Baathists to government jobs. They complained that the 82nd was too quick to apply too much firepower. They preferred the approach of the 3rd Infantry Division and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which kept its soldiers outside the city and left the day-to-day security duties to the police and local militia.