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

by Bing West

  The raids were getting results, but whenever the wrong house was searched, the entry tactic—smashing down a door in the middle of the night—frightened a family and created more hostile Fallujans. LtCol Wesley called the raid successes “linear,” like picking apples in a vast orchard one by one.

  The brigade would have preferred to have “exponential” success, which involved the “carrot”: winning over Fallujan hearts and minds by infusing jobs, repairing infrastructure, and building relationships with the mayor, the sheikhs, and the clerics. The Americans would provide the city’s leaders with money and contracts. They in turn would reach out to the unemployed and disaffected, reducing the appeal of the insurgents and attracting recruits for the local security forces. If the Americans could show that they wanted to help improve the living conditions and would leave intact the city leadership and traditions, the theory went, then most youths would not support the insurgents.

  Bargaining went on with the mayor, the sheikhs, and the city elders. The brigade called this a “relational approach”; you do something for me, and I do something for you.

  “Let’s be reasonable about this,” LtCol Wesley told the city elders. “You have a stake in a better future, and we as American soldiers are here only to help you. We have no designs upon this city.”

  Whenever the nighttime attacks decreased, the curfew was lifted. Amnesty and cash rewards were offered for weapons, albeit with scant results. The Humvee replaced the tank and armored personnel carrier as the routine patrol vehicle, reducing noise and damage to the streets. As long as progress seemed to be made, the brigade would show the velvet glove rather than the iron fist.

  Sorting out who among the tens of thousands of males was a committed enemy, though, and gauging the depth of the population’s hostility proved vexing. The soldiers spent days with bulldozers and rakes constructing a first-class soccer field downtown. When they finished and returned to base, a mob gathered at the soccer field, ripped down the goalie nets, scraped the dirt from the field, and heaped garbage on the site.

  “What kind of people loot dirt?” a soldier asked.

  Inside the city were enemies determined to prevent ordinary families from ever seeing that infidel invaders had improved their lives.

  In July a massive internal explosion blew out the walls and demolished the roof of the Al Hassan Mosque, killing the imam and several other Iraqis. As a disaster crew removed the bodies, a crowd gathered to blame the Americans. “There is no God but Allah, America is the enemy of God,” they chanted, as others screamed that an invisible aircraft had dropped a bomb.

  The situation threatened to escalate into a citywide riot. Ra’ad Hussein Abed, a city official who spoke good English and hoped eventually to be appointed mayor by the city elders, approached LtCol Wesley. He arranged a meeting with Sheikh Ghazi, one of the wealthiest and most powerful traders in the city, to try to defuse the tension. Ghazi, a shrewd and urbane businessman, admitted to Wesley that the imam was a radical preacher known to be building improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, to blow up vehicles on the highways outside town. He assured Wesley there would be no riot.

  Wesley was convinced that alliances with Ra’ad and like-minded citizens who wanted the city to progress would undercut the appeal of the shadowy insurgents, who were offering fear of the Shiites and hatred of infidels. He believed that there were four types of insurgents: unemployed youths, religious extremists (who benefited by gaining a following), criminals, and former Baathists (the hidden planners and financiers). To pry away from the hard-core insurgents those motivated by revenge, the brigade paid a solatium—what Iraqi tribes called blood money—to the relatives of those who had been killed or injured in the April 28 shooting.

  The city elders praised the 3rd Brigade for the action and asserted that the Iraqi police were ready to take on more responsibility. The 2nd brigade commander, Colonel Joseph DiSalvo, turned over the twenty-two checkpoints inside the city. But Mayor Taha was worried, fearing that his pro-American stance would leave him isolated. He warned that the opposition was biding its time, not softening its stance.

  The brigade contracted with dozens of “companies,” sheikhs and loose groupings of unemployed men, to undertake projects like cleaning up the garbage. It purchased fans for the schools, air-conditioning units for the hospital, and a generator for the water-pumping station.

  The needs of the city, though, overwhelmed the resources the Americans were able to offer. The brigade disbursed about $150,000 a week, while the city’s needs were a thousand times that amount, calculated at $150 million. There were 70,000 unemployed; an industrial park stood idle; and power, sewer, and water plants were decrepit. The farmers were clamoring for seeds, tractors, and gasoline; the schools had no textbooks or lights. Fallujah, like all cities in Iraq, had crumbled into ruin, as Saddam had looted his country. Any accountant would have declared the books hopelessly out of balance. But with their can-do spirit, the American soldiers had set to work.

  The occasional sniper, mortar, and RPG round—harassment attacks—was taken in stride by the 3rd ID’s combat-hardened soldiers. IEDs, though, were a different matter. In Vietnam hidden land mines were the bane of the infantryman, accounting for 20 percent of the casualties and sapping morale. A grunt never knew when he would be blown up walking down a trail. In the flatlands of Iraq, the highways were the trails. IEDs accounted for 68 percent of all American fatalities. All who traveled the roads feared and loathed them.

  IEDs were simple to make—just combine metal (for shrapnel) and an explosive armed with a blasting cap that could be set off by a radio frequency from a garage door opener or cell phone. The triggerman could be on a roof a block away.

  The 3rd ID learned to spot IEDs—in the bloated stomach of a dead dog, a barrel tipped at an improbable angle, a cardboard box too heavy to be blown by the wind, a car parked in an odd place. In mid-July, though, one soldier was killed and three wounded when an artillery shell detonated as a convoy drove through western Fallujah. Dozens of local residents had driven around the device, but no one had warned the Americans.

  In response, Lieutenant Colonel Eric Schwartz, the U.S. commander in the city, set up a checkpoint to search all cars. “If something like this happens,” he said, “we are going to take away one of their basic rights, and that’s freedom of movement.”

  While no major firefights broke out against the enormous firepower of the 3rd ID, an underlying sullenness pervaded the Fallujans. Those who would be seen with the Americans—Taha, Ra’ad, Ghazi—trod carefully. They knew others were watching them, appraising how close they were to the Americans. The town had an edginess, an attitude of simmering resentment. Visiting Fallujah in midsummer, an experienced reporter, Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post, called it “the most hostile place in Iraq.”

  It was difficult to single out an enemy who looked like every other civilian. The insurgents wore no uniforms; they operated from their homes, not from military camps; they had no military communications that could be intercepted; and they had no rank structure, yet they all knew one another. Most guerrilla movements, like the Vietcong, had an identifiable hierarchy and a clear chain of command. Not so in Iraq, where in the summer of 2003 hundreds of independent cells operated when the spirit moved them. A rough analogy were the American Indian tribes in the nineteenth century, sharing a hostility toward the settlers while launching raids at different times for different reasons.

  Throughout the scorching days of summer—as temperatures reached the 120s and 130s—the 3rd ID persisted with its two-prong approach: responding with force to attacks while working to establish good relations and modestly boost the moribund economy.

  In late August the 3rd Infantry Division departed, to return home. LtCol Wesley left believing that the tragic killing of the civilians in April had triggered resentment in a traditional city controlled more by imams and tribes than by former Baathists. He was convinced that a huge influx of money could deflect recruits from the insu
rgency. The brigade, though, had but a pittance to spend, just enough to convince the residents that the Americans could really make a difference if they wanted to. The sheikhs, quick to criticize while angling for contracts, were unimpressed by the trickle of funds; the 70,000 unemployed remained unemployed; the IEDs persisted; and the soccer field lay looted of its dirt, evidence of a hidden, calculating enemy who could organize the people.

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  A BROKEN CHAIN OF COMMAND

  IN THE CITY OF FALLUJAH, AMERICAN battlefield commanders acted as the police, the soldiers, the development planners, the economic administrators, the political advisers, and the court of final appeal. But unlike the colonial powers of Europe that had ruled the Middle East a century earlier, the Americans were filling their military, police, municipal, and political power roles without the assistance of an indigenous army and civil service bureaucracy. In this respect, Fallujah was typical of Iraq in the summer of 2003.

  The April attack on Saddam’s regime and its headquarters in Baghdad had been overwhelming and the city had fallen more quickly than most had expected. The military leader of the Coalition (mainly American forces, with substantial British forces) was General Tommy Franks, who commanded CentCom. Before the war Franks had persuaded Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that the development of postwar Iraq should remain under the control of CentCom.

  “Unity of command is an essential principle,” he later wrote in his memoir. “In combat, there had to be one line of authority.”

  This approach reflected a lesson learned from Vietnam, where in 1967 the thousand-man American reconstruction or pacification staff had reported to the U.S. ambassador. But progress had stalled due to bureaucratic turf wars and conflicting staff procedures. By contrast, the U.S. military had a clear chain of command and standardized staff procedures. So a frustrated President Lyndon B. Johnson had shifted the reconstruction staff and budget from the U.S. ambassador to the military commander, General Creighton Abrams. This move pulled together, under one undisputed authority, all the complex, competing, and often redundant U.S. civil and military pacification programs. It consolidated both policy and resource decision-making under a single military commander, charged with the responsibility for security.

  Similarly, Rumsfeld agreed with Gen Franks that unity of command under military leadership was appropriate for Iraq. He appointed retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner as the CentCom deputy for reconstruction.

  Three weeks after Baghdad fell, President Bush signaled that major hostilities had ended in Iraq. “We’ve done it,” the president declared to rousing cheers on board the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.

  Although the war seemed over, Iraq was nonetheless convulsed by looting. Television networks nightly showed pictures of friendly but uncontrolled mobs ripping apart government buildings. From the museum of history, artifacts dating back thousands of years were being hauled off in donkey carts. LtGen Garner and his staff appeared unable to get on top of the chaotic situation. President Bush soon decided to change leaders and organizations.

  On May 10 he replaced Garner with former Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, appointing him the president’s envoy to Iraq. Bremer would administer a new organization called the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA. He would report to the president through the secretary of defense and be vested with the broad policy-making and budgetary authority to build the new Iraq.

  In regard to reconstruction, CentCom was thereby sent to the sidelines. The chain of command was broken into two pieces. If the war was over, there was no need for CentCom to remain in charge. Gen Franks, on the verge of retirement, enthusiastically agreed to abolish the post of his deputy CentCom commander for reconstruction. As Franks saw it, Bremer as the president’s personal envoy would bring to Iraq more political clout and money from the White House, which was exactly what was needed now that major hostilities had ended.

  In early summer, as hostilities persisted, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld dismissed the attacks as the actions of “dead-enders” who had no chance of prevailing. On 17 July, though, Gen Abizaid reversed Rumsfeld’s assessment. The new head of CentCom said the situation had evolved into a “classical guerrilla-type campaign.” Far from being over, the Iraqi war was continuing as an insurgency.

  With Iraq under wartime conditions, the closest historical analogy to Bremer’s post as envoy was that of the British viceroys in India in the late nineteenth century. Back then, though, the British controlled a large indigenous army commanded by British officers, and the viceroy approved all major military operations. Bremer’s case was different: he had the responsibility and the money to create Iraqi security forces—police and soldiers—in any model he saw fit, but he had no authority to approve, veto, or even comment on U.S. military operations.

  Bremer set up headquarters in a vast, heavily guarded baroque palace in Baghdad called the Green Zone. Gen Abizaid established a forward headquarters in Qatar, four hundred miles south of Baghdad, splitting his time between Qatar and CentCom’s other headquarters in Tampa, Florida. Abizaid designated LtGen Sanchez as commander of the Joint Task Force in Baghdad, responsible for operations in Iraq. Sanchez was intense, unaccustomed to political-military geopolitics, and comfortable dealing with the details of military operations. Bremer was intense and intelligent, expert in geopolitics and the ways of Washington, and swift to wield his decision-making authority.

  Because Bremer’s fledgling CPA was ill-organized and lacked sufficient State Department volunteers to act as provincial advisers, during the summer of 2003 the American and British battalion commanders acted as the de facto mayors of all Iraqi cities, reestablishing primary services and jump-starting governance. Forty battalions scattered across a country the size of California were swamped with demands for back pay, security, sewage, electric power, medical care, fuel, clean water, and the thousand-odd municipal services Americans take for granted. The CPA hadn’t either the staff or the funding to be of much practical help; in their frustration, the battalion commanders referred to CPA as Cannot Provide Anything. Across the country personal and organizational relations between the CPA and the JTF became strained.

  Among the resources not provided was training and equipment for the Iraqi municipal police departments that under Saddam had investigated petty crimes and indulged in small-time graft. The dreaded intelligence service (Mukhabarat) and the army had dealt swiftly and harshly with the serious criminals. After the Saddam regime disintegrated, the CPA envisioned that a police force of 85,000 countrywide could provide internal security, as did the police in American cities.

  As the senior CPA police adviser explained, “It’s as simple as, when have you ever seen police lead a coup? If you build a strong police force, you have a republic. If you build a strong military, you have a banana republic.”

  Whatever its theoretical merits, the CPA security plan was irrelevant to conditions inside Fallujah. The police in Fallujah could expect scant help from the CPA, which did not have any staff in the city and little money to aid in a major way.

  In the early fall of 2003, as the 3rd ID was pulling out of the city, Fallujah was not a major topic of discussion at the White House. The president and his advisers, though, were concerned that the Pentagon and the CPA weren’t acting as a coordinated team, even as pressures from the Shiites were mounting for immediate elections. So in October a third chain of command was added: the Iraq Stabilization Group, whose purpose was to coordinate Iraqi policy from inside the White House.

  In charge of the group were the national security adviser, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, and her experienced deputy, Ambassador Robert Blackwill, who was appointed deputy assistant to the president for Iraq. Bremer and Blackwill were colleagues who had worked together in the State Department.

  Thus three powerful and strong-willed personalities—Abizaid, Bremer, and Blackwill—had three separate chains of command and communication channels on Iraqi matters. Abizaid reported to Rumsfeld; Bremer reported to Ru
msfeld and, as the president’s personal envoy, kept the White House informed; and Blackwill reported to Dr. Rice at the White House.

  The priorities and the information sources of the three were vastly different. Bremer faced the most prodigious task—navigating Iraq toward a politically and economically sustainable democracy while relying on a thin staff in the provinces to provide information outside Baghdad. Blackwill was focused on preparing the path for transitioning to an Iraqi government, with eventual elections. Abizaid, working through Sanchez, had the most complete data about security and economic conditions throughout Iraq. While Ambassadors Bremer and Blackwill were concentrating on the Shiites for political stability, Generals Abizaid and Sanchez were concentrating upon the guerrilla war.

  In the fall of 2003, in Fallujah and throughout the Sunni Triangle, north and west from Baghdad, there existed no effective local police and no Iraqi army. Approximately 150,000 American soldiers were fighting several thousand insurgents hidden among five million Sunnis, whose leaders were telling them they had all been disenfranchised.

  The absence of Iraqi military units and leaders stemmed from two decisions that Ambassador Bremer had made in May. The first was to ban senior members of the Baath Party—a political organization that had served Saddam’s regime and provided the entry point for careers such as medicine, teaching, and the military—from government positions. Kurdish and Shiite leaders, who had been oppressed by the Sunni Baathists, acclaimed the ban enthusiastically.

  The second decision was to abolish the army. Bremer said he was merely codifying a fact; namely, that the Iraqi Army had dissolved. But on the ground that wasn’t quite true. Every American battalion commander was being besieged by Iraqi officers offering to come back to work and bring their soldiers with them. American divisions even had plans designating Iraqi units to be re-formed.