Return to Ramadi

Ramadi

Operation Phantom Fury, the U.S. assault on Falluja in Iraq's Al Anbar Province in November 2004, is widely perceived as the greatest coalition victory against Iraq's insurgent and terrorist forces. It did indeed end enemy control over the city. But civilian casualties were high because of the massive use of firepower. About a fourth of the city's homes were destroyed and another fourth damaged. And while many of the enemy died, the advance notice of the attack plus the ability to escape across the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in small boats meant that most of the fighters killed were probably seeking martyrdom. The rest simply scattered like rats. Most of those rebuilt their nests 30 miles west of Falluja and 30 miles closer to Syria, in Anbar's capital, Ramadi.

Ramadi actually has many advantages over Falluja for the enemy. With about 400,000 residents, it provides almost twice the population to hide among. Falluja has a significant Shiite population; Ramadi is almost purely Sunni. And Ramadi has shorter supply lines to foreign terrorists, equipment, and cash from Syria and Jordan to the west. Once the foreign terrorists reach Ramadi, they can use it as a way station to other Sunni areas throughout the country or simply stop there and take up residence.

Last spring I visited Falluja and the surrounding area for the second time and Ramadi for the first time, writing articles on each in these pages. I noted that Falluja had clearly become more violent, but that this wasn't particularly alarming considering that about half of the population had returned and with it some of the enemy who could hide among them. Further, security in parts of the city was being turned over to the Iraqi Army (IA) and Iraqi Police (IP). Obviously this was a positive development, but when the IA or IP take over an area, the bad guys fiercely try to demoralize them and drive them out.

Ramadi was a different situation entirely. AP's Todd Pitman, with whom I was embedded, correctly noted that the "sheer scale of violence in Ramadi is astounding." And Pitman specializes in going to violent places. Leaving your base camp ("going outside the wire") during daytime practically guaranteed an attack. I went on two patrols and we got hit both times. The military says Ramadi "remains the most contentious city right now inside Iraq."

For this very reason, Ramadi is both a litmus test for the counterinsurgency effort in Iraq and a laboratory. If we can defeat the insurgent and terrorist forces here, there is no place we cannot defeat them. And from what I found, we are defeating them. It's painfully slow, and our men there are still dying in inordinate numbers from a broad variety of attacks. But a multitude of factors, including tribal cooperation, the continual introduction of more Iraqi army and police, the beginning of public works projects, the building of more Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), the installation of more small operational posts (OPs), and plunking down company-sized Combat Operation Posts (COPs) smack in the middle of hostile territory are destroying both the size and the mobility of the enemy. This time the rats are dying in place.

Return to Ramadi

I arrived in Ramadi in early October. It was good to be back. Transportation to and from Iraq and within it is the hardest part of any embed; indeed it's utterly nightmarish. After a wasted week, though, I'd made it and was breathing in that wonderful dust, which those who haven't experienced it call "sand." It goes deep into your lungs, making you cough like Doc Holliday. Add water when the rains come and it produces a mud with the consistency of peanut butter. The heat was slightly above 100, but with virtually no humidity it was nothing to complain about.

I wanted to see if Ramadi had changed in the last half year, and this was a good time to do so because it was the holy month of Ramadan, a period of fasting and prayer for the devout, and for the enemy a time to show Allah just how willing he is to die--and to kill--for Him. I expected another worthless in-briefing at Camp Ramadi such as I'd gotten from the previous tenants, the 2/28 Pennsylvania National Guard. It consisted of a film of the unit's grand history, and I was stunned that they would cut almost two days off my time in the city to arrange for me to watch it. Since then, 2/28 has departed and been replaced by the 1st Brigade Combat Team (1st BCT), whose commander, Col. Sean MacFarland, calls it "Ready First Combat Team." Happily, the briefing--provided by briefing officers Capt. Travis Patriquin and Col. Peter Lee--had nothing to do with the history of the unit and everything to do with Ramadi.