“Your men ran away,” Toolan said.
“That is no reason to go over to the enemy,” Suleiman replied. “Tell this new brigade to stay outside the city with you, like soldiers. Let me and the police go into the city. If they go into the city, you are finished.”
“I will continue to support you,” Toolan promised.
“You are in trouble,” Suleiman said as he left, with Jabar trailing behind.
Toolan knew the score. A month ago the Marine plan had been to regain control block by block alongside the National Guard. That plan had walked out the door with Suleiman’s tattered pride. The die was cast. The MEF had thrown in with a new team led by Latif, Hatim, and Saleh.
A few hours later the main meeting broke up. Perry pounced on Saleh as he walked out. “Are you a general?” Perry asked. “How do you spell your name?”
“Yes, I am in charge of the city,” Saleh proudly answered.
Conway and Mattis ruefully said a few words, and Perry rushed off to file the story that the Marines had turned the city over to the Fallujah Brigade. That evening in Baghdad, Bremer read the story online, together with a scathing memo from the CPA diplomats in Anbar Province. The memo confirmed Perry’s account that the Fallujah Brigade would replace the Marines immediately. The memo described the arrangement as a “stunning victory for the ACF [anti-Coalition forces] . . . the ‘Brigade’ will not fight the ACF.” The memo ended by urging Bremer and the JTF to overturn the MEF’s decision, adding that many Marines opposed it as well.
Bremer, who had not been consulted or notified about the brigade, was furious. A year earlier the president had relieved Central Command of authority over the creation of the new Iraq and had given that responsibility to Bremer, who promptly abolished the Iraqi Army. Now CentCom had turned around and appointed Iraqi generals to create a Sunni brigade to take control of a Sunni city-state. Many Shiites would see this as a double-cross. The American military would appear to be rewarding Sunni insurgents with paying jobs inside a sanctuary while gunning down Shiite youths who supported Sadr. Following less than a week after Bremer’s edict authorizing the rehiring of Baathists, it would appear that Bremer had set the Shiites up, heightening political paranoia among Shiites already suspicious that the Americans were working behind the scenes against the emergence of a Shiite democratic majority.
“This is an absolute disaster,” Bremer said.
Ambassadors in Baghdad called CPA officials in the province. What are the Marines doing? they asked. Are they retreating? The officials said they didn’t know; they hadn’t been consulted. The last they had heard, the Marines wanted to finish the fight.
The CPA memo of dissent to CentCom’s decision was read over the phone to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was traveling in Germany. Powell demurred becoming involved in a tangle between the generals and the president’s envoy to Iraq. Abizaid had already called a deeply skeptical Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, advancing the argument that the Sunnis had to be given the chance of showing they could govern themselves responsibly. Rumsfeld agreed to back the decision made in the field, but his senior staff were not happy to be handed a fait accompli without having had a chance to discuss it.
The Iraqi national security adviser, Mowaffak Rubaie, and the interim defense minister, Ali Alawi, protested strongly to Bremer, calling the agreement “appeasement” and warning that the deal would backfire. The CIA station chief told Bremer that his agency had not been involved, saying he did not know by what channel Gen Shawany, the Iraqi intelligence chief, had communicated with LtGen Conway. Conway had said both Latif and Saleh had been vetted through the proper channels, but Shiite officials immediately accused Saleh of past repression and ongoing insurgent activities.
In ordinary times a major policy decision like the Fallujah Brigade would have been thoroughly vetted and debated by various staffs and been the subject of several sivits meetings among the principals. Instead Rumsfeld, Abizaid, and Sanchez said little about the Fallujah Brigade; all three knew they faced a much more politically charged crisis. For weeks their staffs had been investigating allegations of Iraqi prisoner abuse. The issue had not yet gone public.
At the same time that an angry Ambassador Bremer was reading cables from CPA diplomats in Fallujah recommending an overturn of the Fallujah Brigade concept, digital pictures of abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, ten miles east of Fallujah, suddenly ignited a worldwide firestorm of press and political attention. On April 29, CBS showed graphic pictures taken by American guards that depicted American soldiers forcing Iraqi men to lie naked in piles and stand blindfolded on stools with wires attached to their fingers, believing they would be electrocuted if they moved. As U.S. senators profusely apologized to the world, the press was bombarding defense officials for explanations about their roles in the scandal.
The entire American military effort in Iraq stood on trial for the injustices and criminal acts of a few. The president said the matter deserved the most immediate and thorough attention of the Pentagon. Congress demanded an examination of the policy directives by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Gen Abizaid received queries about the orders he gave to his subordinates, while LtGen Sanchez became the object of several high-level investigations. The political hurricane swept through Washington and Baghdad on April 29, blowing away any senior review of the precipitate decision to turn Fallujah over to the former Iraqi generals.
With the senior ranks of government preoccupied with a public scandal of the greatest proportions, Bremer could generate no consensus to overturn the Fallujah Brigade. Having urged the cease-fire and emphasized the dire consequences of an attack, he wasn’t in a strong position to insist on an immediate reversal. The senior officials with the authority to do so were fully engaged in defending their own careers. The Marines had heeded Bremer’s warning that to resume the attack jeopardized returning sovereignty to the Iraqis, which would be a severe embarrassment to the president. In any case, all parties—Abizaid, Sanchez, and Bremer—had agreed to the unusual step of assigning the chief negotiating role to the military field commander.
Conway had properly requested permission of Sanchez and Abizaid to negotiate the agreement. Neither one of them had chosen to inform or consult with Bremer on this highly sensitive political matter. American diplomats in Baghdad, knowing nothing about the agreement between Conway and Latif, expressed open distrust of the military, a feeling that was reciprocated. The civil-military relations in Iraq were described as “poisonous.”
In the Pentagon a senior official called the situation “confusing . . . There’s a disconnect here, and we can’t figure it out.” The chain of command for major decisions was clear. Secretary Rumsfeld issued a directive, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs wrote a formal tasking. The order went to the theater commander as a directive from the secretary of defense. The theater commander then issued a directive to the JTF commander, who sent a directive to the MEF commander, who sent one to the division commander. This formal system ensured a written chain of custody so there would be no verbal misinterpretations. It also enabled each level of command to include amplifying instructions. But when Sanchez and Abizaid had approved the Fallujah Brigade in lieu of an attack on the city, CentCom had not sent a written order down the chain, with a copy up the chain.
A senior Marine described the situation to a
Washington Post
reporter: “We had all these different tracks going on. Ad hoc would be a kind [description].”
Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz asked his staff, “Have we turned Fallujah over to the old regime?” The staff, unable to find any memo or written agreement, replied that was not the case. In responding to a congressional question, Wolfowitz admitted the situation was confusing but insisted that a deal had not been struck. He characterized Conway’s agreement with Latif as “conversations going on,” not a coordinated plan.
General Conway had a very different perspective. “The plan to employ an Iraqi battalion in Fallujah was closely guarded,” he said. “However, the plan was not conceived in a vacuum. Every step was coordinated with the right individuals from Baghdad to the Beltway.”
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.”
_____
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.