At the same time Bremer was trying to assure the Sunnis of equitable treatment while balancing the demands of a Shiite majority aroused and confused by Sadr’s rebellion. Hourly television depictions of American forces destroying Fallujah and cutting down Sadr’s Shiite militia in Najaf and East Baghdad were rallying widespread sympathy and forging common bonds among Shiites and Sunnis.
The Iraqi Governing Council was comprised of twenty-four Iraqis who had opposed Saddam. None were military men; they had no experience or yardstick to put the fighting in perspective. In response to the attack on Fallujah, one member of the council had suspended his membership, and four others threatened to quit. Bremer faced a revolt inside the very Iraqi Governing Council that he had hand-picked.
One misstep, and the ambassadors would find themselves in the perfect political storm, defied by the Iraqi Governing Council, by the UN representative, and by Sunnis and Shiites alike. On April 7 Bremer and Blackwill, the two top diplomats in Iraq, saw the situation the same way. “If the top [of the Governing Councils] blows off,” a senior diplomat said, “that is a huge political defeat for the Coalition and for what we’re trying to do in Iraq. Advancing the sovereignty of Iraq is the key, not seizing one city.”
The Fallujah battle as portrayed on Arab TV threatened to collapse months of sensitive negotiations and leave America ruling Iraq without Iraqi partners. The diplomats were under the impression that it would take ten days to seize the city. They did not know Mattis was moving a third battalion into position to finish the fight in a few days. The message via sivits to the White House was succinct and to the point:
“Sir, we have a growing political problem,” Bremer told the president.
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While the president was mulling the political situation, at the fighting level Col Toolan was aligning his final pieces on the Fallujah chessboard. A year earlier the American military had charged up two narrow corridors and pounced on Saddam’s headquarters in Baghdad. That strategy, called Maneuver Warfare, employed speed and maneuver to strike the enemy’s “center of gravity” (Baghdad) and deliver a quick knockout rather than to slog forward relying on firepower and attrition. There were theories for applying Maneuver Warfare to urban combat: for instance, conducting raids against the houses of known insurgent leaders, or sending a column of tanks directly into the Jolan District to break the center of resistance. Toolan rejected these theories as quick fixes sure to fizzle.
Given the JTF order, the regiment intended to attack block by block, demolishing strong points, blowing up arms caches, and killing all who stood and fought. To aid in the fight, Mattis had ordered a third battalion, 3/4, to pull out of a city to the north and report to Toolan. Battalion 3/4 was a seasoned combat unit; most of the officers and over 60 percent of the troops had fought together a year earlier. It was 3/4 that had hauled down Saddam’s statue in Firdos Square, signaling the fall of Baghdad.
On April 8, while 3/4 was moving into position to the east, Battalion 1/5 was receiving fire from the Al Samarri Mosque, north of Highway 10. Lieutenant Josh Glover led a platoon to the mosque’s gate, blew the lock, and charged in. The insurgents fled out the back, leaving behind three hundred RPGs and 122mm rocket rounds, as well as suicide vests.
As they cleared through the junkyards, the Marines advanced cautiously. Thousands of civilians were fleeing through their lines; insurgents sometimes hid behind groups of women and children. The door of a car or taxi amid hundreds of slowly moving vehicles would open and ammunition would be dropped off. Eventually the residents were allowed to leave only on foot, as concern about suicide bombers increased with the amount of explosives discovered.
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In Battalion 2/1’s zone, in the northwestern corner above the Jolan District, civilians weren’t a problem; they had all fled the houses and apartments. The insurgents fired rockets and mortars that fell with no particular pattern or time interval. Like 1/5, Battalion 2/1 absorbed successive assaults by small gangs on April 7 and 8. Three or four times a day, a dozen or so insurgents would run forward; some would be cut down, and others would retreat. Whenever the insurgents persisted in firing from a particular building, the Marines called in fixed-wing bomb strikes and Cobra rocket attacks.
On the afternoon of April 8, Col Toolan visited Echo Company of 2/1, which was holding a line of buildings along the edge of a cemetery. In his usual state of high energy, Capt Zembiec let it be known that he favored a tank-supported assault into the Jolan. Toolan counseled patience. Battalion 3/4, he told Zembiec, was setting into position to the east. He wanted to catch the insurgents in a net and finish them, not let them scatter out of the way of a single-axis attack and regroup later.
By the evening of the eighth, Toolan was set to take back the streets of Fallujah. He told MajGen Mattis all he needed was the go-ahead signal. Mattis estimated it would take forty-eight to seventy-two hours to finish the fight.
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It would be an American rather than an Iraqi force, though. The 36th Iraqi National Guard Battalion, with its four hundred men and seventeen U.S. special forces advisers, was on the lines with 2/1 and fighting well. But it was showing signs of fraying at the edges and couldn’t continue much longer as a frontline unit. The JTF had found no other reliable Iraqi force to join the attack. In the past several days a wave of Iraqi desertions and no-shows had swept throughout central and southern Iraq. In Baghdad, as MajGen Dempsey aligned his 1st Armored Division against Sadr’s militia, he ruefully watched Iraqi police and National Guard units that he had nurtured for months abandon their posts. To the Shiite south, the Coalition’s Multinational Division, comprised of Poles, Bulgarians, and the like, offered scant resistance to Sadr’s bands of thugs, while the Iraqi police and National Guard melted away. In the rebellious Sunni Anbar Province, to the west, the Marine Expeditionary Force staff was ticking off the desertions of one Iraqi unit after another. Over 80 percent of the police and National Guard had deserted.
General Abizaid later concluded that the problem lay in the lack of a functioning Iraqi chain of command. The separate Iraqi forces—police in one city, a National Guard battalion in another—had no organizational structure or set of higher allegiances. If the battalion commander folded, as happened in the case of the 2nd Battalion, or if a police chief felt he was overmatched and left his police station, his men followed. By running away, the police and National Guardsmen had saved their own lives. No higher chain of command had intervened, and no senior officers rushed to the scene to take over or to impose discipline for desertion in combat. While three- and four-star American generals regularly visited their troops on the front lines, Iraqi senior officers did not have that leadership tradition.
The insurgents, too, lacked a command structure and possessed only basic arms. Yet they fought enthusiastically against the Americans and routed the Iraqi security forces. Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya provided a scorecard as they reported heroic resistance spreading from Fallujah to Ramadi to Quaim, Hilla, Karbala, and Najaf. Not a single member of the Iraqi Governing Council, ensconced in Baghdad, left the capital to rally the Iraqi security forces or to urge a single unit to fight back. In city after city the insurgents held the streets.
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In Baghdad Ambassadors Bremer and Blackwill were fending off a torrent of complaints. Just as President Bush had reacted a week earlier to the images of the mutilated bodies of four American contractors, so too were Iraqis reacting viscerally to the images from Fallujah. After two more members of the Iraqi Governing Council quit and five others threatened to follow suit, Bremer agreed to an evening meeting on the eighth. Attending were three members of the council. Sheikh Ghazi Yawar represented the old, established power base of Sunni sheikhs. Hachim Hassani led a Sunni group called the Iraqi Islamic Party. Energetic and smooth, Hassani had lived for sixteen years in California and had embraced Fallujah as his special cause. The third member was eighty-year-old Adnan Pachachi, a polished former diplomat and a favorite of the State Department. Like the other two, Pachachi was railing about Fallujah, holding daily press conferences to denounce “an act of vengeance” and going on Arabiya television to complain that “it was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah. We consider these operations unacceptable and illegal.”
Generals Abizaid and Sanchez agreed to participate in the evening meeting. Sanchez called Conway to warn him there might be a delay before “the big push.”
Conway was not happy. “We control thirty percent of that city,” he told Sanchez. “The ACF [anti-Coalition forces] are short of ammo. We have a battalion tearing up their ammo dumps in the industrial sector. This isn’t the time to stop. We need just a few days to finish this. That’s all—days.”
The senior diplomats in Baghdad, where CPA relations with the JTF were frayed, had been shown no written ops plans or estimates of the time it would take to seize Fallujah. Based on verbal discussions, they were under the impression that the Marines needed a week to ten more days—a timeframe fraught with political risk.
The CPA diplomats who were in the field agreed with the Marines that the fight should continue. Nate Jensen, a CPA diplomat, was talking with Toolan in regimental headquarters next door to the MEF when they heard that Baghdad might stop the attack. He called Stu Jones, an experienced foreign service officer, at Camp Blue Diamond, and Jones sent an immediate message to Bremer, arguing that a delay would strengthen the insurgents and accomplish no useful purpose. Ambassador Michael Gfoeller, the senior adviser in the province to the south of Anbar, sent a forceful dissenting message to Bremer, stating that any delay would be seen as weakness by the Sunni insurgents and would encourage Sadr in his rebellion as well.
Sanchez and Abizaid attended the evening meeting at Bremer’s office. The interim Iraqi defense minister, who favored continuing the attack, was not there. The three Sunni Iraqis from the Governing Council presented a powerful case against the attack, warning of massive street protests and mass resignations. The director of the Fallujah hospital had reported on Al Jazeera that six hundred civilians had died and a thousand had been seriously wounded. The Iraqi officials were passionate and convincing. Hassani showed that he was a skilled debater, deflecting Abizaid’s requests for several days to finish the fight. Hassani retorted that soon Iraq would be one big Fallujah.
Threatened resignations might be a bluff, but Fallujah did provide a means for the appointed Sunni officials to gain popular legitimacy. The IGC, heavily comprised of expatriates who had returned after Saddam was toppled, had gained only shallow support among their fellow Iraqis. Now the appointed leadership of the fledgling Iraqi democracy was rushing to the rescue of insurgents dedicated to killing them.
Abizaid agreed with Bremer that the attack on Fallujah was jeopardizing the political stability of Iraq. At the conclusion of the meeting, Abizaid ordered the Marines to suspend offensive operations. “I know major military action could implode the political situation,” he said, according to one official quoted in the
Los Angeles Times
.
Sanchez informed Conway of Abizaid’s decision, stressing that the threats of the Iraqi Governing Council to resign could not be ignored. Conway had a different perspective: “Once in, we’re committed,” he said. “Stand by it.”
The halt would be temporary, Sanchez assured Conway. The purpose was to bring medical supplies to Fallujah’s two hospitals and to permit a delegation from the Governing Council to talk with the city elders. What that was intended to accomplish was not clear. Conway relayed the news to Mattis, who discussed it with Col Dunford. Mattis reacted by quoting Napoleon.
“First we’re ordered in, and now we’re ordered out,” Mattis said. “If you’re going to take Vienna, then by God, sir, take it.”
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On April 9 the American press was focused on analyzing the testimony of Dr. Condoleezza Rice before the 9/11 Commission. The hearing had provided high drama, with Rice calmly refuting allegations of past administration failures and refusing to be baited into making any impolitic statements or showing any anger. The CPA announcement that U.S. forces in Fallujah “had initiated a unilateral suspension of offensive operations” received little play.
Sanchez met with reporters to stress that JTF resolve had not weakened. “We have got Fallujah under siege at this point,” he said, “and we will continue our deliberate operations in the city until we’ve accomplished our objectives.”
To assuage the glum Marines, Gen Abizaid visited Camp Fallujah. The MEF staff began the meeting with a briefing on Marine forces in contact. The thrust of the briefing was clear: the Marines were engaged while the politicians were talking about cease-fires. The briefing ended with the statement that the battalions were ready to continue the attack. Abizaid said the plan was to cease pushing forward for twenty-four hours and then assess. He said the insurgents inside the city thought they had beaten first the army (the 82nd) and now the Marines. They would make exaggerated claims to the press that should be ignored. Arabs had done that before, as in the 1967 war against Israel, when they declared victory knowing they had been defeated.
“But we haven’t defeated them in Fallujah,” a Marine observed.
“We’re dealing with the nastiest people here,” Conway said, making it clear he believed the attack should continue.
“The IGC has threatened to resign,” Abizaid replied. “That would be a terrible optic. We need time to get it politically right.”
Mattis arrived late to the meeting. His small command convoy was racing down the highway from Ramadi when two Humvees flagged them down. On patrol from Battalion 3/11, the Marines had been hit by machine-gun fire from a house about four-hundred meters to the north. Not wanting to leave the ambushers in place, Mattis added the firepower of his two LAVs to the patrol from 3/11.