A Marine scans the street in an abandon building in Ramadi. (DoD)
On June 11th, the Los Angeles Times reported indicators of an imminent U.S.-led attack on Ramadi, a city in the Anbar province where insurgents, including those loyal to assassinated Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, operate openly.
Now U.S. forces have pushed deeper into Ramadi, tightened their siege of the city, and increased attacks, according to reports.
Occupation forces have struggled to control Ramadi since the 2003 invasion. Residents of the river city have are not strangers to the political maneuverings and attacks of the U.S. military and the insurgents alike. Now that long struggle appears to be coming to a climax.
"The image pieced together from interviews with tribal leaders and fleeing families in recent weeks," wrote Times correspondents Megan K. Stack and Louise Roug last week, "is one of a desperate population of 400,000 people trapped in the crossfire between insurgents and U.S. forces. Food and medical supplies are running low, prices for gas have soared because of shortages and municipal services have ground to a stop."
The report continued:
A U.S. Marine and a translator ask Iraqi women about activities in their neighborhood during a patrol in Ramadi on April 19, 2006. (DoD photo)
U.S. and Iraqi forces had cordoned off the city by Saturday, residents and Iraqi officials said. Airstrikes on several residential areas picked up, and troops took to the streets with loudspeakers to warn civilians of a fierce impending attack, Ramadi police Capt. Tahseen Dulaimi said.
U.S. military officials refused to confirm or deny reports that a Ramadi offensive was underway.
Thousands of families remain trapped in the city, those who have fled say. Many can't afford to leave or lack transportation, whereas other families have decided to wait for their children to finish final examinations at school before escaping.
"The situation is catastrophic. No services, no electricity, no water," said Sheik Fassal Gaood, the former governor of Al Anbar province, whose capital is Ramadi.
"People in Ramadi are caught between two plagues: the vicious, armed insurgents and the American and Iraqi troops."
Residents have been particularly unnerved by the recent arrival of 1,500 U.S. troops sent to reinforce the forces already stationed at the city. Street battles between troops and insurgents have been raging for months, but the troops' deployment left residents bracing for a mass offensive to take the town back from insurgents.
"It is becoming hell up there," said Mohammed Fahdawi, a 42-year-old contractor who packed up his four children and fled to Baghdad two weeks ago. "It is unbelievable: The Americans seem to have brought all of their troops to Ramadi."
Though military denied it repeatedly, many expected a massive assault similar to the November 2004 U.S.-led attack on nearby Fallujah. In that attack, the Washington Post reported last year, "More than half of Fallujah's 39,000 homes were damaged, and about 10,000 of those were destroyed or left structurally unsound to live in, U.S. officials say."
That city has still not recovered from the devastating attack, in which occupation forces raided hospitals, blocked passage of critical medical and food aid, killed countless innocents, and showered parts of the city with white phosphorous, an indiscriminate incendiary weapon that effectively burns its victims alive.
Ramadi, like Fallujah before it, has found itself a sort of headquarters for elements of Iraq's insurgency - elements that the U.S. troops have been battling sporadically in the streets of Ramadi for months. Insurgents in Ramadi have killed police recruits (70 in January) and assassinated tribal leaders.
Unlike the assault on Fallujah, the military's approach in Ramadi has been called, by the New York Times, a "softer and more deliberate approach." According to a New York Times report on Tuesday, June 27th, that approach looks something like this:
American and Iraqi soldiers pushed deep into the heart of this contested city on ... the latest step in their plan to regain control of Ramadi from guerrillas and to hold onto it ... Whole city blocks here look like a scene from some post-apocalyptic world: row after row of buildings shot up, boarded up, caved in, tumbled down.
Many neighborhoods are out of the control of either the American or Iraqi government forces; insurgents hold sway. In some areas, it is hard to spot any Iraqi police officers - or any civilians or cars. Amid talk of timetables for reducing the number of American troops in Iraq, military commanders are not contemplating reducing the number in this part of the country.
But rather than assaulting the city frontally, as the Americans did in Falluja in November 2004 - destroying it in the process - American commanders have decided on a softer and more deliberate approach. This time, they have ringed Ramadi with thousands of American and Iraqi troops, and have begun to reclaim the city, not in one sudden attack, but neighborhood by neighborhood.
Instead of leaving after the shooting stops - as the Americans have been forced to do in other Iraqi cities - the Americans plan to leave behind garrisons of American and Iraqi troops at various points throughout the city. For the first time, they say, they believe they have the manpower to make the strategy work. The combat outpost the Americans and Iraqis started building on Monday morning was the fifth one to go up this month on the southern edge of the city.
Central to the strategy, American commanders say, is the decision to commit significant numbers of Iraqi troops who can hold the neighborhoods after the Americans do most of the work of pacification. That, the American commanders hope, will make the city safe enough for its shattered economy to renew itself and for Iraqi police officers to feel secure enough to start showing up for work.
. . .
One thing that seemed clear on Monday was that however small the numbers of Iraqi soldiers were, their presence was far more palatable to the locals than that of the Americans. Iraqi soldiers passed out a letter, written in unvarnished Arabic prose by Colonel Raad, to the "noble people" of the neighborhood, apologizing up front for the distress he and his men would cause.
"Military necessity will force us to do things we don't want to do," he wrote, "but what we have to do for the sake of your freedom, so you won't live in fear for the rest of your life."
"It is my foremost intention to bring peace to you," he continued. "We will stay until the job is complete, until your children can play without fear and your families can walk through the streets with honor."
One of the actions undertaken by the Americans and Iraqis was the expulsion of about 50 Iraqis from a three-block area where the new outpost was being set up. The Iraqi civilians were told to gather their things and go - where to was not clear. The troops assumed that the local Iraqis, in this land linked by bloodlines, would be able to flee to their relatives. They promised compensation. The Iraqis wandered off into the streets, some of them carrying food and clothing.
Saif al-Dulaimi, one of the expelled Iraqi men, expressed anger and suspicion toward the American soldiers, asserting, for instance, that they intended to stay in Iraq forever. Yet for the Iraqi soldiers walking alongside the Americans, Mr. Dulaimi offered a different opinion.
"They are O.K.," he said, pausing in his journey. "They are respectable."
Asked where he would go, he said: "I don't know. I don't want money. I want my home."
Electronic Iraq will be following developments in Ramadi here. Check back daily.
